by fmadmin | May 12, 2020 | Content, Strategy
While the world is changing and the way we do business most certainly will change for the next few months at least, it’s important for businesses to keep the communication lines open. And keep their marketing going. The only difference is make sure its relevant, compassionate and connects to your audience.
Successful marketing is still governed by the same set of principles whether the world is in chaos or not. Creating communication that effectively connects emotionally with human beings never changes either.
If you think marketing is just an activity or a channel, then you are already behind. Marketing is everything you say and everything you do in your business, all the time.
My advice to all businesses is to plan key messages now and keep communication flowing as the impact of coronavirus continues to reverberate.
The big end of town, with their communication departments and strategists, are likely well ahead of the game, but small and medium size businesses also need to get on the front foot.
- Be clear and deliberate in your communication strategy – don’t be sucked into switching to tactical mode without thinking strategically or holistically across your touch points – that means sales, social media and communications all working together.
- You need to create confidence in your business and be agile in identifying other market openings or opportunities in the meantime.
- Be proactive and compassionate in your messaging. It will stamp your business as a leader in the face of uncertainty and that can carry cache well into the future.
- But in the race to get your messages out, don’t forget the importance of internal communication as well. It’s good practice, in uncertain times, for all businesses to reassure employees that plans are in place and any future responses to commercial challenges have been pre-empted rather than made on the run.
Confidence, like charity, should begin at home.
While I don’t have all the answers as to how individual businesses should navigate the way ahead, a clear communication strategy should be key in riding out this business climate, perhaps even rising above, the coronavirus curve ball.
The take-home advice is to keep communication channels open and try to be:
• Helpful
• Relevant
• Constructively distracting or
• Authentically compassionate.
A clear message and strategy will be equated to confidence in your business and, that perception may just be the self-fulfilling prophecy that’s needed.
Stop the automated promo messages as if COVID-19 doesn’t exist and communicate better with your customers.
Tell your customers about your policy and services updates. Tell them how you are taking care of your employees (and them) and tell them about your discounts or charity work – just don’t try to sell them as if nothing is happening.
And if you need help, or want to bounce some ideas around and get the creative juices flowing, we can run a virtual brainstorming session with you or act as a sanity check. All you have to do is email [email protected]
by fmadmin | May 12, 2020 | Content, Strategy
We are often asked if there is a standard template to develop a marketing plan or what is the best template to use. When it comes to developing a marketing plan, substance over form is our advice. So, before you head off to Google to find your favourite format, here are some tips on what to include in your marketing plan and how to implement it.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
– Benjamin Franklin
As marketers, we know Ben was on to something here. It seems like marketing budgets and resources for businesses of all sizes are being stretched to breaking point. As that occurs, expanding social media outlets and digital marketing platforms offer marketers seemingly limitless opportunities to reach target audiences. It’s an inverse relationship that compels marketers to choose their tactics wisely. That makes not only the planning of your marketing more important than ever, but the implementation, crucial.
You also want to prove return on investment (ROI) for your marketing spend, so you need an established plan in place to measure and show results. A successful marketing plan will address your biggest business and marketing challenges and deliver solutions via a holistic approach. It will also keep your team aligned and focused on the same goals — and, it’s instrumental in helping you establish your budget.
Far too often, though, the time and effort you and your team invest in marketing planning is either abandoned to fulfil last-minute requests, or wasted by resorting to tried-and-true tactics.
The case for a marketing plan is strong, so here, we offer 7 tips to help you and your team build a successful marketing plan for your organisation.
- Define your challenge(s)Begin with the end in mind—what problem(s) do you want to solve? What challenges must be met? What opportunities should be seized? What threats should be confronted? Yes, this is a thinly veiled SWOT but it’s important to address these issues as you move along with your plan…don’t get too tied down in tactics at this stage.
For example, a key challenge of your organisation could be a lack of leads for your sales team, or a company website that’s outdated and losing traffic due to the new Google algorithms. Whatever the issues are, identify them up front.
It’s important to know your business and your competitors well, as once you do this, you are better placed to determine or understand your target market.
If you are just starting out or launching a new product or service, your challenge could be understanding your target customer/client. Narrowing down and defining your target customer allows you to focus your efforts. Answer the question, “Who do you serve?” to help you identify your target market.
- Define your SMART goals and objectivesIt’s important to use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-Based) goals to keep you and your team on track and accountable. Once defined, they should be linked to your challenges, opportunities and threats outlined above.
Goals are generally broad in nature, while objectives should still be SMART and should clearly state the initiative to be accomplished (e.g., secure 10 leads through digital marketing efforts each month; build a responsive website in the next four months). By setting SMART goals and objectives, you are making it possible to show quantifiable evidence that the business’ marketing spend is delivering ROI.
- Set your strategyYour strategy supports the reasoning for tactics and marketing spend. This is where you will define how you plan to solve your challenges and meet your objectives. Try to think like your target audience here. What avenues should you pursue to get your message in front of them, and ultimately, how will you solve their problem? Your strategy should drive creative, messaging, channel selection and other key variables.
Finally, look back at past campaigns to see what worked and what didn’t.
- Outline your tacticsThis is where you hammer out the details of your plan. Your tactics are the steps and tasks you need to complete to achieve your goals and objectives.
One tip to consider: To assist with accountability, you should assign team members to manage specific tasks (e.g., develop a new e-book in Q1, launch a new AdWords campaign with a $500 monthly budget, develop a wireframe for our new responsive website).
- Establish time framesSet short- and long-term milestones to keep yourself (and your team) motivated, while still staying focused on the big picture. Be sure to set deadlines to non-tangible milestones as well, like meetings and distribution times. Finally, get feedback from your team on realistic time frames for certain tasks and keep them updated frequently on your progress as you execute.
- Assess your resources
These include people, technology and marketing budget. Questions relevant to each could include:
- People:Do you have enough people with the right skill sets? Do you need to look for outside resources for portions of your plan…like a PR agency, graphic designer, or maybe a full marketing agency to take items off your hands while you focus on other initiatives?
- Technology:Is your technology up to date? What technology is needed to make your marketing tactics successful and are the associated costs feasible within your budgetary parameters?
- Budget:Is your marketing plan driving the budget, or do you have to work within the constraints of a previously determined budget?
- Measure and analyse
According to inbound marketing and sales software developer HubSpot, 40 percent of marketers say proving marketing ROI is their top marketing challenge. There’s no disputing the need to quantify ROI these days or the challenge in doing so; but you can’t prove ROI if you aren’t measuring your results. Therefore, be sure to set key performance indicators (KPIs) to track important metrics to your business/campaign (e.g., number of leads, web traffic, revenue).
ROI is more than a one-time exercise. Rather, to meet your goals and objectives, you should be constantly analysing your efforts, and optimising and updating your plan.
- Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture
Always keep the bigger picture in mind by making sure your marketing plan is part of your overall business strategy. Don’t be afraid to re-adjust your goals and objectives if required. Your marketing plan is there to support your business growth, so if it is not doing that, change it and improve what is not working.
Always keep the bigger picture in mind by making sure your marketing plan is part of your overall business strategy. Don’t be afraid to re-adjust your goals and objectives if required. Your marketing plan is there to support your business growth, so if it is not doing that, change it and improve what is not working.
By Kerri Eckart, CEO
by fmadmin | May 12, 2020 | Content, Digital, Strategy
By Kerri Eckart, CEO
We’ve all experienced it. Being in the position of needing to engage a service provider but when browsing around, business offerings get a little confusing.
For example, moving apartments is on the horizon for me so I’ve started doing my research on bond cleaning. However, most businesses I’ve found say they offer the usual things – exceptional cleaning, top quality cleaners and we can get your bond back!
But what does that mean for me? Will the blinds be cleaned? Does that include carpet? Will the oven and dishwasher be cleaned out?
Marketing your business is about selling your business to potential customers. Confused service offerings lead to confused customers. That’s not ideal if, like any business owner, you want long-term success.
These days, usually the first point of contact is through business websites.
But customers will only contact a business if the communicated service offerings answer what they need (or at the very least, what they think they need).
If it leaves them scratching their heads they will move on to look at the competition instead.
That’s why it’s important to clearly define and communicate service offerings across all marketing collateral.
Because if the offer makes sense, more customers will walk through your door and you’ll get the chance to meet their needs.
Simple, right?
by fmadmin | May 12, 2020 | Content, Strategy
By Kerri Eckart, CEO
How can you motivate your audience to do your marketing for you?
Online word of mouth is a great way to share your product or service across the world with minimal effort from you. The trick with word of mouth is how you get customers to talk about you.
People listen to other people more than they listen to a business, in fact people are 90% more likely to trust and buy a brand recommended by a friend*1. By encouraging people to recommend your brand or offering them an incentive they are more likely to share their purchase on their social media.
Companies like Dropbox and Raiz have cracked open the market using word of mouth with a few tweaks to the traditional strategy. Using a process of customer reward to incentivise people they encourage customers to share a customised link. Dropbox gives users extra data storage for every user that signs up using their personalised link. Similarly, Raiz gives a five dollar bonus to both invitee and recipient when the recipient signs up for a new account.
These ideas disguise your marketing as an opportunity to get extra benefits or rewards for not only you but also your invitees. Your audience is more likely to trust your company and signup hearing about your business from a trusted friend.
What we can gleam from these companies is that word of mouth marketing can be successful with the right incentives. What you offer customers must be valuable enough that they will feel happy to share their affiliation and enticing enough to make them want it. A few of the more popular examples of offerings are money/vouchers, free subscriptions, gifts or discounts. Small but free rewards are most successful because they offer instant recognition and allow compounding of many small rewards into one large one as they recommend your company to all their friends.
