Could our marketing be better?

This is a question that we hear a lot and it’s one of the best questions any marketing managers can be asking themselves.

Every business, and every industry, has its own unique challenges and opportunities when it comes to marketing. So there’s no one-size-fits-all solution that can be applied across the board. But there are certain rules that we suggest you follow to gain the maximum benefits and it doesn’t hurt to revisit these from time to time to check you’re still on track.

Step 1 – Create a client avatar

The best place to start is by identifying the profile of the person, or people, that you’re selling too. We call this a customer or client avatar, and heres the link to an earlier post when we wrote about the process, see below.

Your client avatar is essentially a representation of your perfect client – someone who will be drawn to your marketing and who you work well with. And you can take this to another level by identifying their age group, gender, job title, hobbies, business role and even the jobs that they’ve had in the past. You can drill down even further into their skillsets, their interests, and the places they go to online

• What forums and hangouts do they regularly visit?
• What groups do they belong to?
• Whereabouts in the country, or the world, are they?
• When are they most active online?

The list goes on and on. But it’s really important to have at least one avatar of your ideal client, because all of your marketing can then be based around that person.

Step 2 – Review your website

So once you’ve created your client avatar, the next step we recommend is taking a long, hard look at your website. The best approach is to get it professionally reviewed by someone who isn’t going to try to make money out of you by selling you a new website! Don’t be tempted to get your site reviewed by colleagues, friends or family members – it needs to be done by someone totally independent, who won’t just tell you what they think you want to hear.

Your website is important because it’s the hub of most of your marketing efforts. So it’s absolutely essential that it says the right things to your customers. This comes down to the colours and fonts you use, the photography and illustrations, the quality and even the tone of voice used in your website copy. Every blog, news post or other piece of information on your website is creating an impression, so you need to make sure that you’re sending out the right messages.

Step 3 – Consider your message

What piece of news, or services or products are you hoping to share? Do you have a product that you’re trying to sell? Or maybe you have a white paper that you’d like your visitors to download? Think about the actions you want your visitors to take once they arrive at your site.

Step 4 – Carefully choose your marketing media

Now you’ve got your message, or the products that you’re trying to get in front of your target customer, it’s time to think about the marketing platform you’ll use. It has to be a platform that suits your products, your services and, above all else, your avatar. Let’s suppose you’re selling trainers, for instance. There wouldn’t be much point trying to sell them on LinkedIn – you’d be far better heading for Google Shopping, Facebook, Instagram and other similar types of social media.

A design engineer, who spends time designing products for other engineers, could perhaps advertise on Facebook. But a B2B environment, such as LinkedIn, is going to yield much better results. You can build up relationships with the right groups of people. You’ll be able to share information about your products and services, but even more importantly, you can help to solve any problems they have. Then you’re going to get great results from your LinkedIn marketing campaign.

WARNING – Too much time is wasted on pointless social media interaction. Think carefully about the platforms you choose and what they can achieve for you. Then make a plan of how you will use these tools to promote your company and products. Stick to this plan and don’t get sucked into pointless chit chat. It’s amazing how much valuable time can be wasted on pointless posts.

People often come to us asking us to set up Google Ads for them, or to run an SEO or Instagram campaign. But all too often the same people don’t really think about the person they’re aiming their marketing at and why.

Think first about who you are targeting, then the message you want to get across to them. Then and only then, think about the best marketing tools to get this message to the target audience. Do not choose the marketing tool just because you’ve heard of other people using it or because you like the look of it. Think about your client avatar and what they engage with first.

Step 5 – Marketing strategy

Now it’s time to start thinking about your marketing strategy and sales funnel. Are you going for just one hit? Do you intend putting that pair of trainers out in front of the right people, hoping they’ll sell? Or are you going to be a little bit more subtle than that? Are you going to be putting out gradual information online, perhaps sending information directly and indirectly to people, and going for a slow and gentle build-up?

It’s essential to have a good strategy in place before you start going online with your marketing. And sometimes it can even be a good idea to run an alternate strategy alongside it. You could test two, or even three strategies to see which one delivers the best results.

1. Who are you targeting?
2. What industry are they in – B2B or B2C?
3. What is the product, service or message you want to deliver?
4. What marketing media is your client avatar engaging with in and out of working hours?
5. Test no more than two or three platforms to begin with
6. Master your choice of marketing platforms with split testing
7. Track the results
8. Work out which platforms and ads work best for your target clients
9. Make lots of money!

Step 6 – Keeping track of results

One of the great things about digital marketing is the way it lets you keep track of results. You can do conversion tracking. You can find out exactly which elements of your marketing are working, and which aren’t. So it’s important not to just rush into throwing news about products or services out there into the online world. Think, plan and analyse.

Spend time considering how best you can track your results. Once you know which adverts, and which marketing strategy is working best for you, it will show you where you need to concentrate your budget. And that means you’ll get the best possible returns on your investment.

Step 7 – Link up your CRM

You’ll need to invest in a good CRM system as well, to help you keep track of your efforts. And it will also help you to keep on top of client information, leads and the pipeline too. It’s surprising how quickly it disappears from your head, no matter how hard you try to retain it!

Step 8 – Marketing automation

Once you start getting to grips with the marketing, you need to look into some kind of automation and scheduling systems. This lets your business keep operating 24/7, so even if there’s only one of you, it will feel as though you’ve got a team of five or six people helping you. It’s amazing how much pressure you can take away through good automation and how the sales can grow.

Step 9 – Reviewing your marketing

As you progress with your marketing you need to be reviewing many elements on a regular basis – at least once a fortnight, if not more. Look at all the results and facts, not just the sales, look at your platforms, the results, cost per sale, time to make sales, required skill base, complexity, estimated life cycle of your new clients and the estimated life time spend. From this you can make better judgements on your marketing and determine which strategies, which tools, which adverts and which copy is working best for you and your target client.

We find it’s best to take time to stop, move away, and get some clear head space rather than doing this in the hustle and bustle of your office. Think carefully about the next stage forward, base decisions on the results you’ve just analysed rather than making decisions based on emotions, as quite often the two can be very different to each other.

Conclusion

Marketing can be very complex, both to set up and to keep it working correctly. But the results make it more than worth the effort. And after a while, you can get to the point where the results keep rolling in 24/7, thanks to all the groundwork. The biggest mistake is to skip the conversion tracking or simply dive in with a marketing tool because other people are using it.
If you need any further advice of help with marketing, or you’re considering a digital marketing audit, then please do get in touch with us.