4 Things You Should be Considering when Creating Your Marketing Plan
Marketing is more than just getting the name of your brand out there. In fact, there are a lot of different moving parts within marketing that need to be connected. Having a more holistic approach can lead to better results and more sales.
But what exactly are those dots that you need to be connecting to be successful?
Let’s dive right in!
Branding
Any successful marketing campaign needs to start with a good foundation. That foundation is your branding. What does your brand stand for? What is your voice? What does your logo look like (colors, style, etc.) and how does that help to represent your brand? Once you have figured these things out, you can begin to have a cohesive message across all your platforms, from your website to your email marketing to your social media presence. Having a cohesive message and presence helps build trust with customers and potential customers. Greater trust leads to more success. Pro Tip: Be sure that you fill out your social media bios with information that is part of your branding and can help tell your brand’s story.
Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is a whirlwind. There are many different platforms and many different forms of marketing online. This includes emails or newsletters, blog articles, search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), organic social, and paid social. Don’t think of these as separate campaigns. They really should be working in concert with one another to really boost your campaigns.
For example, you are a health clinic and you want to focus on mental health awareness for a month. To get all these moving parts working together, you’ll want to send out an email blast and have organic socials post all month about your mental health programs. You will also want to optimize your social posts, website, blog articles, and any paid ads to include keywords or phrases about mental health that will get picked up by search engines. This includes giving your images and videos specific file names with those keywords and filling out the alt text with keywords and phrases. And don’t forget hashtags! (Use a tool like SEM Rush to help you figure out which words and phrases are the best to use.) Finally, you will want to run a PPC campaign about your mental health clinic during that month to help increase your patient list.
Traditional Marketing
Even though digital is vastly changing and shaping our world, traditional marketing can still play a role. This is especially true for local businesses that don’t have an online store or provide local services, or businesses where your main audience is not online much. Here, your focus is on getting new customers or returning customers back in the door by utilizing traditional avenues such as mailers, print ads and TV or radio ads.
Traditional marketing actually works really well in conjunction with digital. You can use it to boost your online campaigns and reach people in multiple places at one time. For example, if your restaurant is running a special for a week, leading up to your event you will want to have organic social posts about it, run a paid online advertising campaign for it and send out a mailer about it, perhaps with an extra coupon! Then don’t forget to continue the digital side of your campaign during your event.
Business and Sales
Sometimes brands are so busy getting their name out there in their marketing that they are forgetting to focus on the sales aspect or connecting the dots to other parts of their business. The ultimate goal of marketing is to drive people through a sales funnel that starts with building brand recognition and ultimately leads to people pulling the lever and forking over money for a product or service you offer.
There are other parts of your business that can play a role in your marketing that you might not initially think of as marketing. These include developing new products or services, making creative partnerships and alliances, sales presentations and sales support, as well as personnel/talent recruitment. The partnerships you make and the people who work for you say just as much about your brand as the social media posts you are putting out there!
Getting Results
If all of this seems overwhelming, we understand! It’s hard to run the day-to-day of a business and worry about your marketing at the same time. That’s when you need the help of an invested partner. Attuned is different from other marketing firms because we take that holistic approach. We help you connect the dots and get real results! Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you.