Seven Marketing Efforts to Focus on Now
I promise not to mention Zoom or anything remotely (no pun intended) related to Zoom in this article. If you are like me, your Zoomed Zoned Out! What I will mention though are some specific marketing tasks that you can focus on right now to elevate the quality of your marketing assets and efforts. Some of these may already be on your rainy day lists or secondary action items that one may do during their downtime. Check these out and let me know if it spurs any other marketing efforts you’ve tackled lately that are worth mentioning.
Market Research - Competitive, Personas, Psychographics, Content
By default, marketers can end up overfitting demographic data, filling in the gaps with assumptions, and missing the IRL “real” people those personas (targets) are meant to represent. In reality, soccer moms, football dads, and plugged-in Millennials are the product of a marketing story and not of a data-driven analysis yielding predictive insights. If you personalize content based on characteristics drawn from incomplete or inaccurate information, your personas aren’t representative of the genuine target audience and will probably miss the target. It’s time to end the guesswork and get to the bottom of how consumers really think and act – segmenting with science.
Tool Trials - Cover Your Bases - Try Before You Buy
There are so many tools out there it’s mindboggling. Use This List of Digital Marketing Tools by Strategy so cover all the bases:
Organic Social Media
Paid Social Media
Email Marketing
Display Retargeting
Programmatic Advertising
Website Testing
Video Hosting
Content Creation
Content Curation
Website Analytics
Customer Service
Search Engine Optimization
Affiliate Marketing
Website Content - Update, Quantify, Story
It is common for businesses to create a website and keep it up for years without updating it. Technology demands that we update websites because the design of the website slowly starts to look become obsolete, as more modern website designs and features are launched. The content becomes outdated just as fast. Website visitors wonder if your business is operational. Maintaining fresh content is essential to a healthy website. It helps with SEO, traffic, and bounce rates. A call to action is important to have on every page and those should be updated as well. Remember to review the website analytics so you know what is the most read and what pages need a boost with new or fresh content. Changing out the images and graphics is helpful as well.
Writing - Blog Posts, Discussions, Outreach
Blogging is still very important. Yes for SEO and discussing your products and services. But in reality, people are devouring content all the time. There is an insatiable appetite for new content so we have to give it to them! Blogging will exist as long as search engines rank content. Nearly every year, there is a deep discussion of the imminent death of blogging. Or an assumption that you don’t need to do it anymore. No true. Brands are still publishing blog posts and audiences are still reading them. Blog content is still driving conversions, and companies are still tracing traffic and revenue back to their blog. It keeps it fresh too. If a customer or lead looks at the date of your last blog post, it sends a message. Blogging will continue to live so long as people Google for answers to their questions. As the SERP’s offer up the answers to these burning questions.
Quality Control and Quality Assurance Check - Verify, Update
Quality assurance – This is about getting the process set-up to ensure that the right things in the right place before implementation. What is your content review process? Grammer? Fact checking? Create a checklist that everyone follows and completes before new content, collateral, press releases, articles or anything is submitted.
Quality control – This is where you do everything you can during the creative process to make sure the finished results are what you expected. This speaks to aesthetics as well as copy. Someone needs to review, edit, and provide objective feedback. Another pair of eyes is always a good approach.
Branding - Re-Energize the Brand
Perform a brand audit. A brand audit is essential before any decisions are made about your branding strategy. Brand audits allow companies to look at internal factors such as brand values, voice, and positioning as well as external factors like graphics, content, and PR/social media.
Are you delivering on your brand promise or value proposition? Having a company promise or message is essential to developing a brand. Your brand represents what people expect from your product or service, so your promise should be indicative of that. It’s more than a tagline though, it’s the tagline plus the value proposition.
A brand voice is how you communicate with your consumers. The brand voice should be consistent across all platforms including collateral, website, blog, and social media accounts. Brand voice refers to the general tone in which you interact with consumers.
Partnerships - Outreach, Collaboration, Networking
Partnership marketing is one of the fastest-growing marketing strategies. It really depends on the type of business and industry you are in to have a successful partnership but well worth it if there is a genuine connection. Plus, partnerships are fun. Sharing the responsibility and the outcomes can be hugely beneficial.
Partnership Ideas Include:
Event sponsorship (for recognition as the “official” product of a large event, such as a sporting or charity event) Aligning with the event creates more value.
Partnering with charities (such as exhibiting at charitable events, contributing to raffle prizes, and sponsoring events) This speaks to your brand value.
Joint venture partnerships - teaming with firms that are similar yet different - Architecture and Engineering, Marketing and Graphic Design, and deliver the same experience can be very lucrative and create the environment for new work.
Content marketing partnerships to co-create co-branded content such as articles, whitepapers, sharing links, or creating joint videos, webinars, or podcasts.
Licensing agreements to allow one company to produce products under another brand’s name.
