Part 2 of our Marketing Planning Key Steps Guide continues with the major considerations for the Digital Strategy and Social Media Strategy components of your effective Marketing Plan. The Guide outlines the key steps to create an effective Marketing Plan so you can get more leads, clients and sales for your Business. Be sure to check back soon for the next part in our three-part series of articles on understanding the key elements of an effective marketing plan.
#6 Digital Marketing
What you need to do is make sure you are thinking about Digital Marketing (any content online):
Website
It’s important to get your strategy right by asking these questions below:
- Does the website reflect your brand strategy?
- Where does the website fit into your sales process?
- How easy is it for your visitors to navigate?
- Do you just talk about your business or do you talk about what the prospect needs?
- Is it optimised for mobile?
- Do you have a blog?
- What content will you add on a regular basis?
- How are you going to gather info from visitors to your site (so you can open up a dialogue later on)?
- What automation do you have to make sure all enquiries are handled promptly?
- What marketing and sales tools will you need to integrate with the website?
- How will you get people to the website?
- What keywords will you be targeting and what SEO will you be doing?
- What email marketing you will be doing?
- What online marketing you will be doing?
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
- SEO is not just about being seen on the first page of Google – but being on page one for the right keywords and for the right audience. It starts with the keywords i.e. what people are searching for when they are trying to find solutions to their problems.
- SEO typically is broken down into “on-page” factors and “off-page” factors that are both important in getting your website found when prospects and customers are looking for you
- On page SEO is all about optimising parts of your website that affect search engine rankings. Look at things like Title tags, Headings, URL structure, Alt text for images, fast-loading pages or page load speed, page content and internal linking
- Off page SEO focuses on increasing the authority of your domain through the act of getting links from other websites. The biggest off-page SEO factor is the number and quality of backlinks to your website.
Some ways you can build links to your site is through:
- Creating awesome content that people want to link to because it is valuable
- Creating an effective Google for business listing
- Listing on general directories like Yellow Pages, True Local and Yelp and specific industry directories Houzz, Trip Advisor etc.
- Social media shares of your content that generate links
- Outreach emails to influencers in your field
- Guest blogging on sites related to yours.
- People have been repetitively saying for the last decade email is dead. Email is still very much alive and well as it is still the most effective way to reach out to people and get them to come back to your website and your content.
- Effective Email is about creating compelling subject lines to get email opened then compelling content to get engagement and “clicks” back to your website
Online Advertising
You may also want to look at online advertising. Online advertising can consist of things like Google Adwords, Facebook advertising and Remarketing.
Don’t know what Remarketing is? If you have been on Facebook or Google and you see ads appear for the same product or service you have just looked at – this is remarketing. It’s a very cost-effective way of increasing website visitors.
#7 Social Media Strategy
Social Media is an essential part of marketing but you need to think about what platforms you want to be on. The most common question people ask is what platforms work best? The answer is, whichever platform your customers are on now and will engage with your business on. So, it’s not which platform works best rather ‘Where are your customers?’
A Facebook presence is essential for all businesses today but don’t think you need to be on every other social media channel. For example, if your customers are not on Instagram don’t be on Instagram. However, if your customers are on LinkedIn, you should also be on LinkedIn.
So, for each of the main Social Channels except Facebook (LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, Messenger) you need to think about whether your clients are using these channels, what engagement you are going to have with them, what content you are going to share and how often you are going to share that content.
You should also consider advertising on Social Media. For example, you need to regularly post on Facebook but only 4% to 6% will see the post, so unless you are supplementing these posts with advertising you will not get the full benefits of Facebook.
Want to increase your Leads, Clients and Sales? The Marketing Strategy Co develops effective Marketing Plans and supports businesses with ongoing fixed-price Marketing. Just contact Kym at the Marketing Strategy Co for an obligation-free discussion on our + Leads + Clients + Sales approach.
Kym Heffernan
