Getting To Know A Corkboard Concept

Before you delve into a digital marketing campaign, you first need to think: Have I made a plan? We believe that every great marketing strategy starts with a team, some ideas, and a Corkboard. Here are a few things you need to get sorted before pressing ‘Go’ on your next marketing campaign.

What are your business’ goals?

To start with, you need to think about what your business goals are – both short term and long term. Do you simply want to get more sales on a particular product, or do you want to actually create a better brand sentiment? Regardless of what it is, make sure it’s time activated, specific, and achievable.

For example, ‘My business goal is to get more customers’ while a great place to start, isn’t specific enough and doesn’t set a target that can be benchmarked. However, ‘I want 50 more inquiries in the next two months’ is time activated, achievable, and specific.

Whenever you are creating a goal for your business, make sure your whole team knows about it and understands it. When the goal is front of mind, it will give all your marketing efforts purpose and will motivate your team to achieve it.

How many goals should you Corkboard? We recommend that you plan for at least one long term goal and a short term goal. However, some businesses are targeting multiple audiences, so you may have a few slightly different goals. Just be sure to keep them clear and concise.

 

Who is your audience?

Now, this is a topic that many business owners can forget but is the most important to get right from the start. Without your audience, who will actually purchase your product/service!

If you haven’t already done so already, be sure to create a buyer persona. Your buyer persona is a semi-fictional description of your perfect audience. They are a fundamental part of any successful marketing campaign as they provide context and content for your strategy.

If you can’t engage with your ideal audience on a personal or interesting way – your campaign will not be as successful. Just think about all the ads or marketing messages you’ve ever seen that just seem vague, broad, and too general. Would you remember or purchase from them? Probably not. However, if a brand discussed your biggest fears or desires in an emotional or unique way, you’re more likely to remember and purchase from them.

So how do you create a buyer persona? 

Think of all the things that make them different from the general public. Think of things like:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• What kind of job they do
• Where they like to get information
• What issues and challenges they face (that could relate to the service/product you provide)
• What might trigger them to find a solution
• And what kind of questions they would ask when searching for a solution

These points are a great place to start when creating your buyer persona. We recommend doing this task with different people on your team. Include sales, admin and operations as they’ll all be able to bring different perspectives and insights to the table. 

Audit your existing content

Now that you know exactly who it is you’re talking to – and some of the things they may be searching for when looking for a solution, how does your current content fit in? If you have Google Analytics installed onto your website, check to see what kind of engagement you have on your web pages. Some things to look for:– How long are people spending on the website?

• What pages are getting the most views?
• What pages are people landing on when first coming to the website?

And if you’re looking at your social media metrics, look for engagement. Are people just liking, or are they actively commenting, sharing, and engaging with your content. 

It’s really important to see what your current marketing efforts are doing, what’s working well, and what needs to be changed.

Decide on your new campaign’s digital marketing channels

After you’ve been able to see what content is performing well and what channels your audience engages best with, it’s time to think about your new marketing channels. Now a common reply we hear from many business owners is “Let’s just focus on everything! It’s hard to know where our customers are these days”. While this is partly true – it would be inefficient to try and spread the marketing efforts too thin. And with digital marketing analytics, you can see where the majority of traffic is coming from and what type of traffic converts best.

By focusing on fewer channels, you’ll really be able to create more quality content that appeals to your audience and encourages them to convert. Below, however, are a few of the marketing channels we would recommend considering. Your particular marketing strategy may include a couple or most of these.

• Create a beautifully designed website
  Every business NEEDS a website. Whether you’re a restaurant, a dog daycare, a car dealership, or a nail salon, your potential customers are going to want more information on your business’ offerings. They’ll want to know prices, contact information, advice, and images. The best place to store all of this? On your website!
• SEO
  Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) is when your website is optimized for search engines like Google or Bing. Being optimized enables a website to rank highly and get more organic traffic. SEO is a fundamental part of any digital marketing strategy, because, people use search engines!
• Social media
  Especially if you’re a B2C business, social media is a great way to engage and educate your target audience. It’s also another great place to find out more about your audience’s goals/pains as you can directly engage in a more casual way.

Before you consider marketing on any particular channel ask: does this channel result in my business goals being met? If yes, continue.

Timeline and budget

Finally, it’s time to put this marketing into a timeline and add budgets to it. Timelines are key as they help give you and your team an overarching view of your marketing messages at different times. 

First of all, consider what your long and short term goals are. Next think about roughly how much you have to allocate towards your marketing spend. Then, think of the type of channels you want to use. Note – If you’re thinking about doing SEO, you have to factor in at least 6 months to start seeing organic traffic. 

Now you can start making a rough timeline of what channels you may use and at what point in time. To keep things simple to start with – we recommend planning by the month/week, and then getting specific by the day later. 

A clear and visible digital marketing strategy will help motivate your team and assist you in achieving your business goals. Think about how you display this, whether it’s on the wall, a whiteboard, or our personal favorite – the Corkboard!