Discover How To Grow Your Business in 2019 By Harnessing the Power of Digital Marketing

YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING

Blueprint

The internet is without doubt one of the most amazing technological advances in human history. With it, we can now access an ocean of information and communicate in ways never thought possible as little as 10 years ago. Most importantly from a business perspective, the internet has levelled the playing field for small businesses who now can use digital marketing to cost effectively reach new markets and grow their brands.

But there’s a catch. Although much of digital marketing is based on a marketing concept known for the last hundred years or so as direct response marketing, the technology, techniques and applications associated with marketing on the internet are new.

And as with anything new, education is required in order to understand how it works and what works best for a particular business in a particular industry. This is where the catch comes in. We live in the information age where information overload is a modern fact of life. This certainly applies to digital marketing where there is so much information and advice regarding the choices available, what to do, what not to do and the choices just keep growing and the advice keeps changing.

The result is confusion. It’s no wonder that most small businesses are suffering from paralysis by analysis. Too much information, misleading information and conflicting information. A by-product of the internet age and one of the main reasons why the vast majority of small businesses are failing to take advantage of digital marketing as a viable and sustainable source of growth.

The fact that most business owners now understand that digital marketing is so much more than just owning a website and does represent the future of marketing for all businesses large and small, is leading to fear and frustration. Fear of getting left behind and frustration with the lack of answers. Where and how do I invest my limited marketing dollars for the most profitable return?

The purpose of this report is to help provide an answer to this question and in so doing, create a blueprint for moving forward into the world of digital marketing with purpose and without fear.

Introduction

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I know what you’re thinking, strategy and planning are boring, just show me the money! I do get this, strategic planning is not sexy, but hear me out just for a moment.

All too often, businesses are quick to spend their money on digital tools like websites, blogs, videos, Facebook pages and so on, without a strategy that directs the selection and use of the right tools with the longer term in mind. This usually results in a waste of time and money.

As a marketing consultancy with over 20 years of experience, we can tell you that it’s a lot easier to sell a website than it is a marketing plan. This is despite the fact that most small businesses don’t have a marketing plan. But then again, most small businesses are not experiencing profitable growth year on year. In fact, they’re not really businesses at all, but rather, poorly paid jobs where the owner would really be much better off working for someone else. Earning more money, with more free time and much less stress.

On the other hand, successful businesses, ones experiencing profitable growth on a consistent basis all have one thing in common. The have a clearly defined marketing strategy that guides all of their marketing decisions, activities and expenditure.

They understand that building a sustainable business is like building a house, it must have a plan that begins with a solid foundation. Marketing strategy is your business’s foundation.

Digital Marketing Begins with Strategy

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Digital Marketing Strategy Starts with Target Market Selection

When it comes to digital marketing strategy, the most important foundational decision you will ever make involves deciding who is your ideal customer. If your business is new, then you will have to use some logic and reasoning in making an assumption. Observing near competitors can also help.

With established businesses, ideally you will have some data on who has the greatest need for your product or service, who is most delighted by your product or service and of course, who spends the most money with you, over time.

These are the people you would like more of as customers, so should receive priority in terms of targeting with your limited marketing dollars. In order to effectively target these people, they need to be defined in some detail. Target audience definition usually begins with demographics such as age and sex and household situation. Socio economic status can also be useful in helping to target your ideal customers. Even in the digital world, these factors still come into play when selecting appropriate media.

From a messaging perspective, it’s important to go deeper by considering factors such as lifestyle preferences, media usage, interest groups, shared language and for B2B especially, job title and industry. Going even deeper would include understanding their problems or desires relevant to the solutions or advantages your offer provides.

A useful practice in defining your target market involves the creation of a customer persona or avatar. A customer persona is a fictitious person with an invented name and described according to all the details mentioned above.

The main benefit of creating your ideal customer persona is to help you imagine how this person would react to the ideas you are proposing in your marketing activities. The ability to be able to walk in the shoes of your target audience and think and feel as they would, is one of the fundamental keys to successful marketing.

Who is your ideal customer?

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Digital Marketing Begins with StrategyBrand Positioning

The next critical step in the digital marketing blueprint involves defining your brand positioning. Brand positioning is quite simply how you intend your brand to be perceived by your target market, relative to your competition. If your ideal customer was asked to describe your product or service, what words would you hope to hear? Largest? Fastest? Safest? Strongest? Easiest? Premium? Most reliable?

There are many elements to brand positioning but one of the most important includes the concept of Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Your USP is what sets you apart from the competition. It’s your reason for being. Your uniqueness cannot be based on being different for the sake of being different, without relevance, but unique in terms of how you satisfy the needs of your ideal customer in a manner that differs from your competitors.

Either your competitors are not addressing this unfulfilled need or you are satisfying it in a manner that is deemed better by your target audience. For example, Hungry Jacks compete with McDonalds by claiming their burgers are better because they are flame grilled as opposed to fried. For some people, this is an appealing selling point and considered unique to Hungry Jacks.

The most important thing to understand here, and this gets to the very heart of what marketing is really all about, and that is, it’s not about you, it’s all about your customer. It’s about understanding what your customer or potential customer really wants and how they really perceive you relative to your competitors, rather than what you may think they want or feel about your product or service.

Digital marketing involves delighting your customers, not every now and again, but every time they deal with you. Your offer delights them because it satisfies your customers in a way that is important to them and differentiates you from the competition. By consistently delighting your customers, they will turn into raving fans and spoil you with rave reviews that are shared across the digital universe.

What is your brand’s USP?

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Marketing Channel Selection

The third and final step in marketing strategy involves deciding which marketing channels will most effectively get your offer in front of your ideal customer. When talking about marketing channels, we are usually talking about communication channels and distribution channels.

Distribution ChannelsDistribution channel selection is key to getting your product found at your target audience’s preferred point of purchase. It may be an online medium or a certain type of bricks and mortar outlet. The more directly you can deal with your ideal customer, the more profit there will be for you. This is why direct marketing will be one of the most significant trends in marketing over the next 5 -10 years.

Communication ChannelsWith communication channels, what media does our ideal customer use when researching or reviewing products like ours? Is it Facebook? YouTube? Instagram? Magazines? If you are a B2B product or service then reaching your ideal customer may involve more traditional media such as email or trade magazines.

Reaching the right person with the right message using the right medium at the right time is key to successful communication strategy. It will also need follow up messages in order to achieve the desired action.

So there you have it, the three simple steps in examining or creating your marketing strategy. The most crucial step involves target market selection. Get that wrong, and the rest won’t matter, because it’s the needs, attitudes and behaviour of your ideal audience that drive all key marketing decisions.

And it’s the marketers who are best able to place themselves in the shoes of their ideal customer at every decision point, that develop the most effective marketing outcomes. A review of your target market selection decision, brand positioning strategy and marketing channel selection is always recommended, prior to the next step of our digital marketing blueprint which is now (finally) about marketing activities or where to spend your marketing dollars.

Have you selected the

most effective marketing

channels for your business?

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Digital Marketing Action Plan (D-MAP)

To develop an effective digital marketing action plan by selecting from the vast array of tactics available across the entire suite of internet marketing options, it helps to split marketing activities into categories in the form of a checklist.

How many of the categories you address in any one period of time (let’s say a year) will be determined by factors such as your sales goals and marketing budget. Which particular activities you choose within each category will also be influenced by financial restraints along with strategic considerations such as target market selection and brand positioning.

Limited budgets also require prioritisation of marketing activities based on relative importance.

That said, let’s get started.

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The research and review process is the first step in the creation of a D-MAP and is twofold, internal and external.

Internally it’s important to consider existing marketing executions including but not limited to;

■ Brand Identity (logo, brand name, tagline)

■ Marketing assets (website, brochures and other documents, blogs and other web content)

■ Marketing campaigns (assess what has worked in the past and what hasn’t)

In conducting the internal research and review stage, it’s important to consider how well aligned these elements are with respect to your desired brand positioning and needs and viewpoint of your ideal customer. If for example one of your brand positioning objectives is to appear to be “keeping up with the times”, then is that reflected in the look and feel of your website and marketing collateral?

From an external perspective, it’s important to review the strategy and activities of your near competitors.

■ How are they positioning their brands?

■ Who are they targeting?

■ What are they offering?

■ What marketing activities are they undertaking?

In reviewing competitor activity, it’s important to get a feel for any trends that are developing in your market as well as identifying any opportunities or gaps that you could profitably take advantage of.

1Research & Review

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Message creation evolves around your brand positioning strategy whereby the messages you create in communicating with your target market must be supporting and reinforcing how you wish your brand to be perceived.

Your messages must reflect your USP and be crafted in a manner that helps you stand out from the crowd. They must define who you are, what you are offering, and importantly, why your target market should deal with you versus somebody else.

In crafting your messages it’s also important to determine your “tone of voice” which in turn should be consistent with your brand positioning. Tone of voice can be anything from au-thoritative, friendly, approachable, humorous, irreverent, youthful or fun.

Selecting your brand archetype can also help you to define the “personality” of your brand.

Examples of messaging can include;

■ Your brand story (Your why or your about me)

■ A 30 second sales pitch

■ A bio

■ Emails and other written content

■ Advertising

Message Creation

What is your brand’s tone of

voice and have you crafted a brand

archetype?

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“Content is King”, is the message that has been doing the rounds in digital marketing circles for a number years now. It’s generally considered that content is the fuel that powers your website.

Content can be anything you create that your audience finds useful, informative, educational or entertaining. What content is not, is salesy. Yes, you can have a sales message contained in your content, usually at the end, but its general purpose is to provide perceived value. A gift if you like, from someone who you may not know but would like to get to know you.

This makes “content” as we’ve defined it, perfect for non- salesy environments such as social media platforms where people go in an attempt to escape from the constant bombardment of sales messages.

The real value to the content creator or owner is that by consuming your content, people are becoming aware of you and what you represent in terms of values and expertise. The idea behind content marketing is that when your prospects continue to consume your valuable and relevant content, they get to know you. By getting to know you they begin to trust you and in trusting you they are more likely to buy from you.

Typical examples of content can include;

■ Blogs

■ Videos

■ E-Books

■ Reviews

■ Case studies

■ Whitepapers

■ Check lists

The most important thing to remember when creating content is that it must be perceived as quality. Useful, relevant, timely, quality that represents your brand and helps execute your brand positioning strategy.

3 Content

What types of content do you

think your target market might appreciate?

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In using media as part of your digital marketing activity plan, there a 3 types of media assets you can choose from.

■ Owned

■ Paid

■ Earned

Owned media assets are those you have created or have had created for you and you legally own the intellectual property or copyright associated with them. They can include any of the above forms of content as well as other assets such as websites and emails, basically anything that you have full control over.

Paid media assets on the other hand refer to those forms of digital media that you don’t own but can “hire” for use in your marketing campaigns. Examples include;

■ Facebook

■ Google

■ Youtube

■ Twitter

■ Instagram

■ Ebay

Earned media assets refer to the results you have achieved on various media platforms due to your planned digital marketing activities. Examples of earned media assets include;

■ Google rankings as a result of planned SEO activity

■ Reviews on media platforms such as Trip Advisor

■ Likes and follows on social media sites such as Facebook

■ Views on your Youtube channel

■ Online forum discussions

Media Selection

Which type of media assests will best help you reach your target

audience?

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5 Campaign Development

Digital marketing campaigns include a series of short term promotions with SMART goals driven by long term strategic objectives.

The campaigns can be “free” in nature such as SEO to raise organic search engine results or email marketing campaigns or “paid” promotions using pay per click advertising on platforms such as Google or Facebook.

Examples of digital marketing campaigns include;

■ Email marketing

■ Google Ads

■ Facebook campaigns

■ Inbound campaigns

■ Quizzes and competitions

Creating a campaign calendar that features a combination of activities with timings, responsibilities, budgets and KPI’s, is the best method of managing campaigns. The key is to measure and record results. What worked, when and why? Conversely, what didn’t work and why not?

Every successful business adept at the use of digital marketing to grow their sales and brands will tell you that discovering the most effective digital marketing formula for their particular business took time. It’s all about testing and measuring until you get it right. This is where analytics plays a vital role.

Where do your customers and

prospects hang out and what would

you do to engage them?

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AnalyticsOne of the truly great things about marketing on the internet is the number of tools available, many of them free, that measure outcomes achieved as a result of your digital marketing executions.

Google provides many free tools, primarily to help you spend money with them on Google Ads, but useful never the less. Examples include;

■ Google Keyword Planner

■ Google Analytics

■ Google Search Platform

■ Google Data Studio

■ Google Trends

Paid analytical tools include;

■ SEM Rush

■ Buzzsumo

■ Report Garden

■ Kiss Metrics

■ Crazy Egg

Analytics is the key to improving the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts. Analytics help you deal with the detail required to master digital marketing to the point where you receive a positive ROI on every dollar you invest in your campaigns.

When you achieve this, then budgets really are no longer relevant because you know that every dollar you spend you profit from. Why wouldn’t you keep spending more and more on digital promotions?

Take note: All things being equal, the business that spends the most

on advertising wins the most.

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SUMMARYFeatured below is the digital marketing blueprint you need to develop and execute before your competitors beat you to it. And you had better not wait too long or they most certainly will.

STRATEGY

Target Market (Definition and Needs Analysis)

Brand Positioning (Including Your USP)

Marketing Channels (Getting Your Product /

Service to Market)

DIGITAL MARKETING

ACTIVITY PLAN

Research & Review

Content

Media Assets Campaigns

Message Creation

Analytics

If having your own personalised D-MAP is something you are serious about, meaning that you are serious about the future growth of your business, then you have 3 choices.

1. Continue on as is, producing the same results

2. Devote the time to review your strategy and create your own D-MAP

3. Let the digital marketing experts Baker Marketing help you create your D-MAP with only 3 hours of your time needed

Give us 3 hours of your time and we will give you a D-MAP that will help you grow your business using the power of Digital Marketing.

Get ahead of your competitors and ring Baker Marketing today for a free no obligation consultation on

8352 3091