The Advantages of A Marketing Strategy
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
2020 has been an interesting year in marketing, to say the least. Yes, we have all undeniably suffered under the conditions of the pandemic – but where there’s hardship there’s also an opportunity to be found and many of us have been forced into new and exciting places.
When the normal way of doing things isn’t an option anymore, we have to get creative. Marketing in 2020 has seen an increased use of digital mediums more so than ever before. And although we get more digital each and every year, it’s safe to say that no one expected a surge from necessity like this. Remote shopping and digital marketing have become more important to the business and consumer market than ever before.But the more things change, the more they stay the same. While we have found creative new ways to communicate online, the role of the marketing strategy has changed little in its central value. Given this, it’s not surprising that many have come to realize how sorely they’ve underestimated the importance of the document. A marketing strategy is a roadmap, a blueprint that sets out what and how you’ll communicate with your audience over the coming year. Without a marketing strategy, businesses are engaging their customers with one hand tied behind their back. But more specifically than that, where is the value of working with a marketing strategy?
Oversee your business, sales and marketing together
We all like to think we see the big picture, but we’re usually standing too close to know what we’re looking at. The writing of a strategy puts everything into perspective – it’s the perfect opportunity to take a step back and have an objective look at your business, sales and marketing objectives. This is the time to really get into it and think:
- What are our strengths?
- What are our weaknesses?
- What do we do to improve?
A healthy dose of introspection is not the only key to surviving in the business world but thriving.
Strategies your branding
There’s an impressive amount of variety in the ways in which people and businesses market their brands. Even just when taking a few minutes to explore this variety, it becomes quickly apparent that some marketing is organized whilst others take a more ad-hoc approach. Without a documented marketing strategy, it becomes near impossible to manage your branding activities in an organized fashion. The most successful marketing and branding campaigns involve an integrated campaign. Attempting to coordinate multiple channels to deliver branding communications without a strategy is almost certainly going to end up as an expensive waste of time. A strategy is researched and provides clarity around the execution of tactics to achieve the campaign’s ultimate objectives.
Plan the use of your resources
As business owners and employees, we’re all too aware of the limitations to our resources and expenditure. Yes, it would be nice for any small business owner to spend $1,000 a day on sponsored Facebook posts, but it’s just not feasible for most of us. A strategy crucially outlines the budgets for each and every marketing activity. It’s far too often we see small businesses managing their marketing without a strategy overspending on channels that aren’t producing the results they’re after.
A fundamental tenant of strategy is prioritizing and assigning your resources. None of us have unlimited cash reserves; we’ve got to work with what we’ve got. A strategy lays it all out: here’s what I’ve got to work with, here’s where what we want to work on, here’s how much we’re putting into what. In this sense, a strategy is crucial to the organization and administration of your resources. One single document can make every marketing decision and purchase easier for the next year – because you’ve already put the work into making the decision.
Business and marketing are all about planning. Speak to any marketing strategy consultant and they will tell you the same thing. 2020 has proven this to be the case in what can only be called a harsh reality check. As times have gotten tough, many businesses have divested from marketing and other divisions sometimes seen to be less essential. But because times have been tougher, the competition has been heightened. And this has left those companies using a marketing strategy with a clear-cut edge.
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
How to curate the most effective content
Sharing a compelling and resonating story to your audience is a goal for any brand. Andrew Davis, a keynote speaker states, “Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.” From a business perspective, content creation is an integral part of presenting a brand.
Nowadays, content creation is a must-have thing to effectively communicate important information. This can be through various social media channels, blogs, digital presentations, and websites, etc.
What makes the content effective?
Content strategy should be a foundation in curating effective content. Content strategy helps in documenting your marketing plan as it gives you a structure and keeps things organized. There are different ways of how we can develop a content strategy.
Firstly, understanding the ‘why’ or the purpose behind your venture. Simon Sinek, an unshakable optimist describes a golden circle as Why, How, and What? He states, “Very few people or companies can verify why they do what they do.”
Now you’d be wondering how does this relates to creating effective content?
Imagine if you don’t clearly understand your business and the value proposition, you can’t expect your customers to understand your product/services. Delivering content is about clearly understanding the value it brings to the user. If you clearly articulate why it’s worth their time then it’s like hitting a jackpot.
Secondly, customers are enticed by the art of storytelling. If you’re able to sell a story to your customer, you build brand loyalty. Let’s take the example of Apple, Steve Jobs was the one who told those stories. We’re all emotional people and Apple has always targeted emotional intelligence to sell their story. How do they do it?
- Entice the audience first and then introduce the product
- Build suspense
- Resonate or focus your story on customers successfully using your product
We understood the why behind the content but what’s the guide behind curating effective content?
How many times have you read a blog halfway and realized that it doesn’t answer your questions? Often, right? This is how you can solve this issue:
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What problem are you solving for your customer and how you’re unique
The product or the service you’re trying sell solves the customer’s problem. Your content acts as an educator for the customer. This can be for the new customers who are trying to understand your product/services or the existing user who is looking for solutions to the existing challenges.
Your content is a reinforcement of your solution and this is where is you can showcase your uniqueness as a brand. Competition is always a potential threat to the business so your customers need to know how you’re different or what makes your product/services better than others. This is where content can change the decision-making process. Your content needs to sell a story and prove why you’re worth their money and why you’re worth their time.
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Find your target market and brainstorm their journey
Content is about understanding who your customers are and how they interact with your brand. Who will be reading your content and how many people would be reading it?
Your content should be more than one type of customer. In terms of selling sneakers, try to publish content that is relevant to different stages of the buyer’s journey. Effective content allows the customers in decision making and move ahead with the sales process. Make sure to use different calls to action as this engages the customer.
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Provide your opinions on different things
As humans, we seek validation and encouragement every day. Try to provide your opinions, quotes, or attribute other sources so that the user can relate their problems with your solutions.
Try to curate content that is customized and humanizes their problems. Link your content with third parties which align with your core values, opinions, and create that sense of community.
Make sure it’s not self-centered content because the user would be more interested in validating their problems with your brand. Further answering users’ common questions in your content allows them to connect with your brand. These can be FAQs or blogs with your current existing challenges that users may face. While curating your content, be very selective as you’re trying to sell your unique value to them. Anything which is off-track will misguide the user.
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Being elegant in the way you present
The interactivity of your blog, EDMs, social media channels depends on the style of typography.
Texts are a major source of information. Your text is the medium of communication and the fonts attract the readers. Interactivity through your text is an influential intellectual as it showcases the mood or feeling.
If we take the example of storytelling again, it carries a rhythm that creates value for the readers. On average, a person goes through 5000 ads each day so how can you make that one interaction count? Users remember the fonts that you present in your visuals. It specializes and acts as an identification for the brand. Once you have a good visual, selecting a good title will attract the readers.
Outsourcing has been the optimum solution for curating effective content.
The data from B2B and B2C Content Marketing 2020 suggests that 84% of companies outsource their content creation. Why?
There are several benefits of outsourcing your content creation:
- Businesses will have more time to work on other activities like sales and operations. Many SMEs don’t have the time and expertise to create content. Trying to save money they don’t realize that content creation takes a lot of research, analyzing, and writing which can be a full-time job.
- Outsourcing allows you to publish more content and create high-quality engagement. It’s important to utilize the time efficiently so that the content writer can provide the best content and businesses can work on creating an experience.
- Outsourcing will allow you to have a different point of view. Content experts work with different industries and are experienced with what works in the market.
- Outsourcing allows you to reach a wider audience and have customized content. One of the key benefits of reaching a wider audience is being able to experiment with your content with different users.
If you’re unsure how your company can benefit from content strategy. Get in touch with us! At Robotic Marketer, it is our mission is to be the best; empowering talented marketers to produce outstanding results for small and medium-sized businesses. By constantly improving how we work, our technology, systems, and processes, we deliver the best possible marketing solutions to our clients.
Developing a smart marketing strategy
As 2020 draws to a close, many entrepreneurs and business leaders are coming to terms with the underperformance of marketing tactics for the year, most notably as a result of COVID-19. This has prompted many to rethink their marketing strategy and readjust their outcome expectations to increase revenue and performance. In alignment with the cardinal evolutionary practice of adapting in order to survive, companies must now make a choice: to continue as though it’s ‘business as usual,’ or to build a smart, reactive and realistic marketing strategy which responds to the current economic situation and corresponding buyer behavior.
Naturally, the only real solution for businesses who wish to stay afloat is the latter choice, which commands smart marketing strategies as a means of generating leads, increasing brand awareness and fast-tracking business growth.
First things first.
Steps required for a business to build a suitable marketing strategy
A good place to start is by readjusting expectations for performance in 2021 to increase revenue. The marketing strategy should necessarily keep pace with the times, and that means rethinking realistic business goals for the coming year.
Furthermore, maintaining discipline when it comes to the execution of your readjusted business plan and marketing strategy is key. As the holy grail of entrepreneurship has articulated, “Goals without routines are wishes; routines without goals are aimless”.
Based upon the testimonials of over 70,000 companies which successfully scaled up whilst reducing entrepreneurial contact hours, The Rockefeller Habits outline a clear path to success:
- Ensure that your management team is healthy and aligned.
- Set goals that are specific, measurable and attainable on what needs to be accomplished each quarter to achieve the year-end goal.
- Align management discussions and communication with the need to ensure that not only management is clear on the vision, but the people that make it happen are clear too.
- Use project management tools like ASANA to ensure that every facet of the organization has a person assigned with accountability for ensuring that goals are met.
- Collaborate with your marketing team and ensure that employee input is welcome and considered to identify obstacles and any opportunities as they arise.
- Collate customer feedback and analyze across data points, financial data and surveys.
- Bring your core values alive and ensure that everyone on the marketing team understands the purpose of your company.
- Continually provide platforms for employees to articulate the key components of the company’s strategy, to ensure that the message has not become diluted and off-track.
- Bring company culture to the forefront and ensure that employees are ‘heard and seen’ and that you know whether someone has had a good day or not.
1) Set short term and long term marketing goals as part of your marketing strategy.
Setting a specific goal within your marketing strategy clarifies what tactics are being implemented such as blog posts and what purpose they serve. To execute this, ensure that your marketing goals are S.M.A.R.T.: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. If your business sets a SMART measurable goal, it helps to determine if it is successful.
According to CoSchedule research, setting many measurable goals can improve the likelihood of success by almost four times as much as those who do not.
2) Market research
While market research can be conducted in any number of ways, platforms like Robotic Marketer are a sure-fire way to efficiently produce comprehensive marketing strategies based upon in-depth collated data.
What can market research tell us about?
- The relationship between the economy and buyer behavior
- Competitor profiles
- The specifics of what consumers want
- Popular content marketing to share in social media and blog posts
- What factors increase the likelihood of purchases
- What trends and challenges are most pertinent in the industry
- Who industry stakeholders are
3) Conduct a S.W.O.T. analysis
A S.W.O.T. analysis helps businesses identify their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Articulating a S.W.O.T. analysis is vital to ensuring that your company stays on track and seamlessly executives their marketing plans and marketing objectives.
While it is easy to think of, it is equally as important to write down and refer back to frequently as a means of tracking your progress and marketing plans. Constant reminders of the opportunities that lie ahead will keep you invested and inspired.
4) Identify customer profiles
It is the perfect time to hone in on customer profiles, investigating who customers are in order to best market to them. When building a customer profile, it is important to consider the following:
- The name of the profile
- What would incentivize this profile to buy from your business
- Profile demographics
- Buyer patterns
- Purchasing references
5) Do a competitor analysis
If you are serious about growing your business, achieving your goals, and taking market share from competitors, you will dedicate time to learning about your competition in order to ‘beat’ them and effectively achieve your marketing objectives. Below is a list of useful comparative platforms:
- Alexa
- SEM Rush
- Mozo
- Sprout Social
- Phlanx
- Social Blade
- Buzzsumo
- Similarweb
6) Develop strategies that support business and marketing goals
This is the fun part. Using your analysis of the market, customers and competitors, implementing the 7P’s of marketing is the key to achieving your goals:
- Products/services: Use tactics for SEO, blog posts, social media, website, email lists, EDMs and lead generation.
- Price: Ascertain the price point of your products and/or services, how big your database needs to be to achieve the sales and specific goals that you have set out for your business.
- Place: Where you are marketing.
- Promotion: How are you promoting your product or service? Through events, webinars, SEO, PPC?
- Physical Evidence: How is your branding is working across all communications touchpoints. Is it consistent?
- Processes: What does your sales model look like? How does your marketing structure work? What processes do you have in place to make sure that your marketing department works like a well-oiled machine? What technologies do you use for project management?
- People: What people and marketing team do you need to accelerate your marketing programs?
Having a powerful marketing strategy is one thing, but executing it is another. The discipline you and your marketing team and setting smart marketing goals will determine whether or not your marketing strategy is successful in content marketing and all activities.
Testing ideas and campaigns are imperative to finding campaigns that have a higher chance of success and to help you increase revenue. Robotic Marketer to develop marketing strategies not only for our company but for our clients. It is an easy to use tool, or if you prefer, you can have a marketing manager from Robotic Marketer facilitate your marketing workshop with your team.
Now more than ever, it is important to ensure that you are setting smart marketing goals, allocating budget and resources to marketing, and optimising your content writing with SEO key words, especially with the way in which business has changed in the past 12 months and how economies recover.
If you need any help in achieving your goals, don’t be afraid to contact us.
Reasons Why Everyone’s Outsourcing Their Marketing
Marketing is effective, but it isn’t easy. In today’s modern environment, marketing particularly digital marketing has rapidly evolved transforming the way businesses operate. It’s safe to say most business owners aren’t exactly marketing experts. In order to run an effective and successful business, they need help creating and implementing their marketing efforts. Building an entire marketing team can prove troublesome with limited employees. This is one of the many reasons why businesses should consider the advantages of outsourcing.
To help you understand the benefits of outsourced marketing consider our eight points below.
1. Results
Outsourcing your marketing efforts and working with a marketing agency means you can and should expect the best results possible. Marketing agencies not only provide a team of experts, but they also want to please you as their client. Agencies provide you with high-quality services because they understand that keeping customers is less expensive than finding new ones. Any marketing agency knows they can be easily replaced by another agency, so they are motivated to ensure you’re satisfied with the work they produce.
2. Collaboration
When you outsource your marketing you gain access to an entire team of marketing professionals with extensive skill sets. Experts that make up the team share different thoughts and opinions on what will make your marketing success so you’re receiving a diverse wealth of experience and knowledge. Engaging marketing teams through outsourcing enables your business to collaborate in ways not previously available.
3. Strategy
Often internal marketing teams become too focused on the ‘what’ that they totally forget the ‘why’. Outsourcing your marketing efforts to a marketing agency allows you to gain an outside opinion from a range of marketing experts. A marketing agency can help identify and develop components of your marketing strategy that may have been overlooked internally.
4. Technology
Not only is the latest marketing technology expensive, but it also takes a considerable amount of time for employees to learn how to use it. Most businesses can’t afford to spend large amounts of money on software they don’t know how to use which is why outsourcing marketing is a viable option for many businesses. Marketing agencies have access to not only the latest marketing tools, platforms and technology (like Robotic Marketer) but a team of experts that know how to use it to businesses advantage.
5. An Outside Look
If you are a business owner, taking a critical look at your business can be hard which is why an outsourced marketing agency is the only option. A team of marketing professionals can analyze your business from the outside and differentiate between what is and what isn’t working. With a wealth of marketing knowledge and experience, they can help your business stand apart from your competition and attract more customers.
6. Team of Experts
There are many aspects of marketing, for example, search engine optimization, social media engagement, email campaigns and strategy analysis. Each aspect requires an entirely different skill set so it can feel overwhelming for anyone to conquer every single aspect. Engaging a team of experts, however, provides your business with an increased chance of success. An outsourced marketing team has an entire range of experts from an SEO specialist right through to a strategy analyst.
7. Saves Time
The primary goal of any business is to make sure every single aspect is running smoothly. In doing so you can focus your energy on bringing in new business. However, doing this takes time and time is something every business owner wishes they had more of. To help free up time and allow you to focus your efforts elsewhere consider hiring people with better skills than you. Outsourcing your marketing efforts to people who are better at a specific skill than you are will save time and help your business achieve greater results.
8. Optimise Spend
No business can afford to make costly marketing errors which is why outsourcing your marketing to a team of professionals will save you lots of money. Consider hiring an employee internally, you have to include their salary, benefits, personal or sick leave. Then you run the risk of hiring them only to realize they don’t fit in with your corporate culture. However, hiring an outsourced marketing agency means you not only gain access to a team of professionals but you know exactly how much you’re paying them.
Components of a Good Marketing Strategy
A good marketing strategy consists of a comprehensive collection of marketing techniques that enables a business to direct its resources towards the best opportunities in terms of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable advantage over the competition.
A marketing strategy consists of short term and long term activities that contribute towards achieving business objectives.
Remember developing a marketing plan for your business shouldn’t be complicated.
To help you generate an effective marketing strategy, here are eight basic components of any marketing strategy.
1. Market Research
An integral component of any good market strategy is market research. To lay the foundation for your strategy you must collect, organize and write down data about the market that is currently buying the products or services you intend to sell.
You should consider looking at marketing dynamics, customer demographics, market segments, target markets, needs and buying decisions.
In terms of products and services, you need to analyze the market to gauge what’s out there now and what the competition is currently offering. Identifying current sales and benchmarks in the industry in addition to suppliers that you will need to rely on will help you build a more substantial base in which you can effectively build a good marketing strategy.
2. Target and Positioning
Any good marketing strategy begins with the identification of a target audience. This is the most important component. There is no point in wasting your time and resources trying to market your products and services to an audience that isn’t interested in what you’re selling.
You should aim to sell to the market segments that will be most profitable for your business. Direct your marketing efforts towards people that are genuinely interested in your products or services. By narrowing your marketing efforts towards your ideal target audience you will greater optimize your time and resources.
Furthermore, defining your ideal target customer will allow you to adjust the overall style of your marketing strategy in a way that suits your target audience. Your content will be more targeted, using language that connects with your customers on a more personal level.
3. Awareness
The ultimate business goal should be to gain the trust of your clients and create brand awareness among your target audience. A combination of traditional techniques like magazines, TV and word of mouth should be paired with online techniques to boost the awareness of your brand.
In today’s digital environment it’s imperative strategies prioritize online marketing. A business must have a website and a blog where you post high-quality content that connects with your audience and generates traffic. Additional visual and audio content like videos, podcasts, and infographics work to further generate brand awareness and leave a lasting impression in your target audience’s mind.
4. Unique Advantages
To win over your competitors you need to offer your target audience a set of unique advantages that your competitors aren’t offering. You need to distinguish your brand by offering your target audience valuable content that they can’t find elsewhere. Creating unique brand offerings will help distinguish your business from your competition.
Aim to identify one or two things that make your product or service different and promote them as much as possible. In doing so you can create more effective marketing strategies that greater reach your target audience.
5. Communicate With Your Clients
It’s imperative to know how and when to communicate with your target audience. You need to strategize the types of content you are making and how you are sharing them. Think about where your target audience hangs out most and utilize the platforms that will best reach them.
The connection you develop with your customers is a key aspect for the success of your marketing strategy. It’s important to promote your products and services as the best choice on the market, but it’s even more important to focus your attention on the needs and wants of your followers. Identify the problems they have and show them how your business offers the best solution to satisfy their needs.
6. Promotional Tactics
Once you have created your marketing strategy, you must decide which marketing activities will ensure your target audience knows about the products or services you offer, and why they meet their needs.
Aim to execute a combination of tactics such as various forms of advertising, public relations, maintaining an online presence, promotions and an effective point of sale strategy. Remember every action you take must align with your marketing strategy in order to be effective and convert customers. Aim to limit your activities to those methods you think will work best with your target market.
7. Monitoring and Evaluation
This is a key component of any type of strategy and something a lot of businesses overlook. Take the time to analyze how your strategy is performing in practice. Surveying customers, tracking sales, leads, visitors to your website and percentage of sale to impressions are all worthwhile tactics to consider.
Any successful marketer will continually review the status of their marketing strategies against their set objectives. Doing so will ensure ongoing improvements to marketing initiatives and benefit future market planning.
8. Marketing Plan
Once you have finalized your marketing strategy, draw up a marketing plan that outlines how you intend to execute the strategy and evaluate its success. Your marketing plan should be excessively reviewed and if necessary updated to respond to changes in customers’ attitudes and broader economic forces.
Fundamentally, all good things take time and a successful marketing strategy takes not only time but commitment as well. When developing your marketing strategy you must be ready to invest in order to reach your business goals. Focusing on the finer details of a good marketing strategy will allow you to develop a logical, effective plan that will lead your business to success.
10 Characteristics of a Good Marketing Consultant
Marketing is a competitive game that requires carefully planned and well-executed tactics in order to be successful. Misinformed decisions often result in wasted time, resources and energy something businesses cannot afford in the current climate. A marketing consultant has the ability to look at your business and identify where the problems lie, realize where the opportunities exist, and how to create marketing that your ideal customer will respond to.
Choosing the right consultant for your business can be challenging, so take the time to consider what really makes a good marketing consultant.
To help you and your business make the right decision here are 10 characteristics of a good marketing consultant.
1. Devotion to listening and attentiveness
Consulting is so much more than the simple process of a business acquiring advice from a consultant. A good consultant will take the time to learn everything they can about their clients, listening attentively and remaining patient as they listen to any issues, requirements and goals.
Only after listening to their client will any successful marketing consultant recommend effective changes to a business’s operations. A marketing consultant that pays attention to their client not only understands their point of view but also develops relationships based on trust
2. A willingness to learn and grow
A good marketing consultant will offer expertise in a wide variety of marketing specializations. The best consultants are continually expanding their capabilities within new areas of digital marketing, social media and public relations to deliver clients more effective marketing strategies. They understand the rapidly changing environment, and never miss the necessity to evolve or risk becoming professionally obsolete.
3. Understands value
A good marketing consultant recognizes the value of great content and understands how to leverage content marketing to grow your business. Generating relevant content for your target audience is indeed a reliable, cost-effective, and successful tactic to grow your traffic and boost conversions. For a successful content marketing strategy, you need to know who your audience is.
Good consultants are able to clearly define your target audience; helping you create more personalized content that is relevant.
4. Trustworthy
One of the biggest priorities of any marketing consultant working with a new client is establishing trust. Trust is built when someone knows they are getting what they expect, every time.
Establishing trust with your clients can be difficult as most clients are result-driven and need to see the end result before recognizing any positive outcomes. So, it’s important marketing consultants prove their contributions are worth more than their cost of hire.
A good marketing consultant will have a network of connections that promote their professional activities and achievements. Businesses’ should take the time to analyze consultants’ previous client tributes, website testimonials and LinkedIn endorsements to greater understand what they can offer.
5. A creative out of the box thinker
Good marketing consultants have the creative skills to come up with innovative campaigns and tactics that attract audiences in a new way. They work with staff to understand the business first, and then develop a marketing strategy that gains attention.
It’s hard to be creative when you’re doing the same thing every day which is why an independent marketing consultant can generate new ideas businesses may not have previously thought of. A good marketing consultant will work to weave businesses’ brand stories in a way that appeals to the market and gives an advantage over competitors in the same industry.
6. Adaptable to ever-changing circumstances
A good marketing consultant should be able to integrate new information and draw conclusions from it, switching from the detail to the big picture. Being able to respond to change with a positive attitude and a willingness to learn new ways to achieve targets is a key competency. Learning to embrace technology and live with ambiguity and uncertainty is the necessity of any marketing consultant.
7. Well presented
A good marketing consultant will present themselves with respect and dignity, demonstrating a hard-working mentality to their client.
A well-presented consultant leaves a good impression on others, which is appreciated by all. They look presentable every day, which helps demonstrate a marked difference in their confidence.
Furthermore, a well-presented marketing consultant will look at a challenge with excitement rather than apprehension, offering clients realistic timelines for completion of work, even when that timeline is contrary to what the client wants to hear.
8. Always willing to go the extra mile
Often businesses produce content without a clear picture of who they intend to target. A good marketing consultant takes the time to research your respective market and construct valuable content based on demographics and market trends. They track gaps in the market in order to create opportunities for your product or service to meet the specific needs of those gaps.
9. Goal Oriented
A Key Performance Indicator is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a business is achieving key business objectives. A good marketing consultant understands and applies the appropriate KPIs for your business allowing them to measure the performance of key marketing strategies and adjust them if necessary.
10. Strong Work Ethic
Part of a good work ethic is commitment and dedication to the job. A good marketing consultant knows how to focus on the task at hand with no distractions and usually work until they achieve the client’s goal successfully. Adopting a meticulous approach to their work ethic, they are reliable, professional, flexible and above all places an emphasis on quality.
There are plenty of marketing consultants on the market claiming they have the practice, means, and strategy to improve your business’ current marketing plan. But with so many consultants available, it can be overwhelming and daunting to separate the good from the bad.
If you’re considering working with a marketing consultant, they should possess a majority, if not all ten of the characteristics above. Fundamentally, a good marketing consultant has respect for your business, your time, and your point of view.
Rethinking Your Marketing Strategy
During a time of such uncertainty, it is likely you’ve thought about rethinking your marketing strategy.
With reduced demand for your product or services, the thought of perhaps saving some money has likely crossed your mind. It is important to remember that your competitors are likely to be facing the same challenges so during these times of uncertainty there may be several opportunities to rethink your marketing strategy for the better.
There are so many tools available to help you listen to and understand your target audience.
Government restrictions have meant that many individuals are spending more time online, which presents an opportunity to engage your potential target audience by creating useful content.
By continuing your marketing efforts it’s likely your target audience will remember you when some form of normality is resumed.
Below are some key points to consider when rethinking your marketing strategy.
1. Measure your current progress
Before you set out to make any significant changes to your digital marketing strategy, take a measurement as a benchmark to compare to later on down the track.
Aim to measure your progress against both your objectives and your competitors. Consider measuring channel growth, audience demographics, engagement level, social traffic and conversions.
Doing so will allow you to assess who you are engaging with and ultimately what works when targeting certain demographics.
2. Identify Your Audience
If you’re able to clearly identify and understand your target audience, you can better create engaging content that will be useful for them.
Think of it this way, the better you know your target audience the more cost-effective they are to target and convert. Ask yourself an important question, who is my target audience? Doing so will allow you to think about demographics like age, gender, city, country, languages.
This will then prompt you to think about their interests and challenges, which will ultimately lead to what content and platforms they engage with.
3. Create more effective content
Remember creating great content across a range of different digital channels will help engage users and drive them to your website.
All of your digital marketing efforts promote your website and are measured and improved using analytics.
To identify what content people are looking for, start with keyword research. Tools such as Google Analytics enable you to find what people are searching for and how users are behaving on your website.
People digest content in different ways, so to make the most of your content, create a content plan and calendar. Targeting 2-3 channels and doing them well is much better than making half-hearted attempts at numerous channels.
4. Rethink Offerings
In the current climate, there is no doubt rapid changes in customer behavior and market dynamics have occurred. During these times its imperative businesses monitor brand communication and quickly adapt to changing circumstances.
Operating in a timely manner and understanding the importance of changing market conditions will allow your business to remain relevant and succeed during times like this.
Aim to keep tabs on the growing situation as this will allow your business to make any significant alterations to business operations and ultimately better serve your customers.
5. Personalize your message
Remember personalization is one of the most important expectations of customers today. Personalization can significantly reduce acquisition costs and increase not only revenues but also the efficiency of marketing spend. Ultimately personalization benefits your bottom line.
When you rethink strategy it’s imperative to think about personalization. You want to aim at delivering real-time responsive messaging and offers that respond to where the customer is in their journey on their preferred device and in their preferred media.
In the past, we have been able to make changes gradually. In today’s market, however, tomorrow is often too late. Proactively rethinking your marketing strategy will allow you to stay at the forefront of your target audience’s mind. Although change cannot happen all at once, taking small steps to rethink your marketing strategy, can help win today’s consumer.
10 Ways to Improve SEO
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
Remember Search Engine Optimising (SEO) is a long-term game. To improve your site’s ranking (SEO) we’ve made a list ‘10 Ways to Improve SEO’. Follow these suggestions and watch your website rise the ranks to the top of search-engine results.
- Publish relevant content
Quality content is the number one driver for your search engine rankings, and simply put there is no greater substitute for great content. When you create quality content specifically for your intended users, site traffic increases, which leads to an improvement in your site’s authority and relevance. For each page identify and target a specific keyword phrase and repeat this keyword phrase several times throughout the page.
- Update your content regularly
In addition to publishing relevant content, aim to update your content regularly. Remember search engines feel strongly about content. Regularly updated content is viewed as one of the best indicators of a site’s relevancy, so be sure to keep it fresh. Review your content on a regular basis and make any necessary updates as needed.
- Boost pages with internal links
Internal links are links from one page on the same domain to another. When internal links are used strategically, they can significantly boost the performance of pages in search engines because internal links support the flow of PageRank around your site. In simple terms, the more internal links your page has the higher its PageRank, which is important considering PageRank is a confirmed Google ranking factor.
- Refresh content with diminishing traffic
Aim to complete regular content audits of your page. If you notice that organic traffic to one of your pages is decreasing, consider updating the content. Remember updating content doesn’t always mean rewriting the entire page. It comes down to your target keywords and their competition. Quite often all you need to do is refresh the outdated sections.
- Focus on metadata
When designing your website, each page contains a space between the <head> tags to insert metadata, or information about the contents of your page. The most important type of metadata is ‘title metadata’. This metadata is responsible for the page titles displayed at the top of a browser window and as the headline within search engine results. In terms of a good meta description aim to include generally two full sentences.
- Use ALT tags
A key piece of information that will go a long way in increasing SEO is describing your visual and video media using alt tags, or alternative text descriptions. The use of Alt tags allows search engines to locate your page, which is crucial especially for those who may only use text-only browsers.
- Replicate backlinks from outdated, low-quality pages
When you perform a Google Search, often click on the first result only to find a substandard piece of content. It’s likely you started thinking how this page is ranked number one. Moments like this present opportunities in the sense that if poor pieces of content can get tons of high-quality links and rank in Google, so can you. To do this, find the substandard pieces of content that have lots of links and get the people linking to them to link to you instead.
- Have a link-worthy site
Aim to focus on creating relevant links within the text. Rather than having a link that says ‘click here’ try writing out the name of the destination. If you think about a ‘click here’ link has no real search engine value beyond the attached URL, however if you write the name of the destination for example ‘Marketing Eye Blog’ the description is rich with keywords and will more likely improve search engine rankings.
- Optimise the page speed of important pages
Everyone has clicked through to a page that takes ages to load. In most cases you either repeatedly clicked the refresh button or probably clicked the back button and tried another site. Ultimately slow pages are bad for business and SEO. To improve page speed and keep readers on your site consider reducing image sizes and enabling browser caching. This will allow your users to load your page without having to wait very long.
- Improve the click-through-rate of your top-ranking pages
The title tag of a page acts as the headline of an article. Ultimately it is your job to entice the searcher to click through to the page. If you can write a title tag that persuades people to choose your page over the others, you’ve won. Aim to add powerful words to your title that tap into people’s emotions. Keep your title tags short and sweet to capture the reader’s attention and improve readability.
Source: Marketing Eye Australia
How to Develop a Marketing Strategy in 5 Easy Steps
According to Bob Hoffman, “Without strategy and planning, marketing is useless.” This is a belief shared by all marketers in which businesses cannot move forward in the right direction without careful preparation and tactical approach. Subsequently, this is where developing a marketing strategy is essential – a practical research methodology that can provide guidance in terms of focus and direction for marketers, marketing consultants, and businesses alike with informed decision-making comes into play.
A marketing strategy provides a roadmap to enhance reputation, engage with customers effectively and persuade potential customers on the unique value of a business through identified key messaging.
Here are five steps to develop your marketing strategy easily:
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Initiate a situational analysis – An internal look into yourself
Before looking at practical advances and the manner of execution, research must be the priority in order to truly understand the foundation and situation of your business.
Primarily, characterizing your business altogether, the products or services you provide, the customers you pay attention to, also identifying the unique value proposition which positively differentiates yourself from your competition. This would be regarded as a “situation analysis”.
Effective situational analysis requires a SWOT analysis which is the summation of the business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Specifically, the strengths and weaknesses indicate the attributes that are currently present within your business, whereas the opportunities and threats belong to outside elements.
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Outline the marketing objectives and sales you want to achieve
The marketing objectives and the number of sales are interconnected aspirations for a business to achieve. Marketing consultants along with businesses should document the range and the expectancy of these outlined objectives within a short to a long-term period of time.
Your marketing objectives should be concentrated internally or externally varying on your situation. These objectives should be written in the SMART format to safeguard responsibility. SMART comprises of Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bounded. These marketing objectives should facilitate improvement in sales.
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Recognize and understand your target audience
Target audience is the specialized segmentation of your ideal niche market with the intention to position your product or service competitively. Identifying your target audience is a wide-ranging process of asking the right questions where marketing consultants need to recognize the underlying desires, challenges, and expectations of an ideal customer to know them better.
As a business or a marketing consultant, you need to be conscious of your target audience’s daily lives and how those concerns can be answered all through your products or services. To meet these client assessments involves the utilization of buyer personas. Buyer personas are depictions of your ideal client centered on demographic information, online behavior also speculated motivations and apprehensions that make them who they are.
Nevertheless, to effectively distinguish your constructed target audience for in-depth insights, attempt to narrowly characterize the meaning of your ideal customer within your marketing strategy.
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Evaluation and implementation of marketing tactics
In the preceding segments of the marketing strategy, you have pinpointed the customers you are targeting, and what you can provide as a business. As a result, you must feature the marketing tactics you will implement in order to connect with your customers and reach the marketing objectives you want to achieve. The listed marketing tactics should compromise with the allowance of your budget and how much you are willing to spend. Examples of these marketing activities may comprise of:
- Paid marketing: television, print and online publications, websites
- Publicity: press releases, testimonials, and referrals
- Sponsorships: community events, local charities, sport endorsements
- Promotions: direct mailings, coupons, sales, point of purchase displays
The marketing tactics you decide on should reach your ideal customer when they are highly interested in your message.
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Assessing the implications of your marketing strategy approach
Determine which marketing tactics are useful and modify your marketing strategy development. The best way to achieve this is through moderated feedback. By asking existing customers about the impact of your business and pursuing which marketing activities were most effective and generated the most sales.
5 Reasons Why it’s Time to Rethink Your Digital Marketing
It’s almost 2021 and it’s impossible to think of marketing without digital marketing. If you are a business owner, you are sure to be using at least one form of digital marketing in promoting your products and services. According to DigitalMarketer, “Digital marketing is the act of promoting and selling products and services by leveraging online marketing tactics such as social media marketing, search marketing, and email marketing.” Here are five reasons why it may be time to rethink your digital marketing strategy.
Reason #1: COVID-19
If it weren’t already obvious, COVID-19 has created waves all across every industry, the digital marketing space included.
According to Bernard Marr’s Forbes piece, COVID-19 has resulted in many businesses depending largely on their digital marketing strategies, even to the extent that it may, in many cases, “be the deciding factor in whether they make it through the tough times ahead.”
Many businesses rely on having face-to-face meetings, attending and hosting events, conferences and tradeshows and entering awards to market their brand. However, with these avenues being entirely blocked from access due to the pandemic, it’s time for marketers to get creative.
Marr explains that B2B companies particularly depend on tradeshows and exhibitions to network and build customer relations. While larger companies may be investing equally in online efforts, they would have no doubt lost millions of dollars due to canceled events. This means bringing back the focus to social marketing, content marketing, SEO and influencer-led campaigns.
Reason #2: Your digital strategy lacks clarity
Smart Insights finds that many companies (regardless of whether they have a digital strategy or not) tend to lack direction in terms of their online marketing strategies. This could be a lack of clarity in terms of their digital strategy to gain customers, retain existing customers or any other marketing goals they may have.
If your digital marketing strategy lacks direction, it’s time for a digital marketing refresher.
Start by thinking of your digital marketing objectives. Taking a SMART approach is one way to articulate this – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.
Reason #3: You’re missing adaptive content
Adaptive content is simply the opposite of static content. While static content stays the same throughout all social media channels, adaptive content is content that is tailored to each digital channel, whether it is your blog, website content, EDM, social media or other channels.
While the substance of your content can stay constant, it is really important to use the correct style, structure and length to meet each digital channel. For example, while blogs are allowed to be long-form, someone browsing your content on Instagram is not likely to read an extravagantly long caption.
Reason #4: It builds credibility
A clearly defined digital media strategy starts with your target audience.
This involves ideating and creating buyer personas to be able to target your market better – ensuring that your message reaches each target segment effectively through appropriate channels. For example, while Instagram has seen a heavy increase in popularity among people up to the age of 30, if your product is mainly aimed at people in their 40s, the message will be lost through this channel.
Similarly, Twitter users are more likely to buy a product promoted by an influencer, rather than based on a television ad. Therefore, targeting your audience appropriately can help with solidifying your brand image but building trust.
A clearly defined online customer value proposition targeted towards each target segment will help you articulate the value you can add through your online services. Develop a competitive content marketing strategy to generate new leads and keep existing customers loyal.
It’s all about getting the right message out at the right time, building trust and credibility and consequently, boosting sales.
Reason #5: It can make or break your business
The present is online, and the future will be online. Marketing without digital marketing can be equivalent to running on a treadmill – you’re putting in the work but not really getting anywhere.
According to Digital Marketer, having a strong digital marketing strategy will help to create awareness and engagement both before and after the sale, build brand loyalty and allow consumers to promote your content too.
So, if you haven’t already begun to rethink your digital marketing strategy, now might be a good time to start!