By Kerri Eckart, CEO
Traditional marketing has always and still does play a very big role in your overall brand and business success. The spotlight for years has been on digital marketing, with many not realising digital is just a part of their marketing strategy. Without wanting to make you cry I repeat – it’s just a part of the marketing puzzle. Digital should integrate with a traditional marketing strategy that’s already in place.
What typically happens is this. You get an idea, start your business, think of a name, create a logo then build a new website and think the job is done. Does that sound like you? Or you have a well-established brand and think, sales have dropped, I need to do what everyone else is doing – more digital marketing is required!
You must start with identifying or reidentifying your brand, your target market and finding out what keeps them awake at night before you start building a website or creating 5 new social media channels which consume your every waking hour.
Some tips to get your marketing foundations right:
- Create a written strategy – having a strategy on paper means you can share it with your team and it makes everyone accountable to actually execute what is required.
- Include both traditional and digital marketing elements in your plan – they should be treated as one channel and should integrate seamlessly with each other.
- Remember that marketing has internal and external elements – internal marketing to your team is just as important to external marketing to your customers (more on that in the next blog).
- Align your messaging offline and online – this comes back to your brand and ensuring the offline and online experience is one that makes sense to your customer, is consistent, fits your company brand and culture and is not a total miss match.
So, before you jump 4 steps ahead, start with building the right marketing foundations. And if you don’t know where to start, a marketing workshop might just be the answer to get the juices flowing.