33 Marketing Strategy Tips
Need help getting started with your marketing plan?
This post highlights 33 tips from the Inbound Marketing GamePlan eBook, which we launched last week as a resource guide for organizations seeking to build more effective and measurable marketing strategies (click here to download the free PDF eBook).
Discovery (aka The Scouting Report)
Your organization's Inbound Marketing GamePlan starts with the discovery phase. In this phase, use customer research, industry and analyst reports, media coverage, historical sales data, competitive intelligence, surveys of key internal personnel and secondary online research to conduct a strategic analysis of audiences, the organization and the industry.
The information gathered during this phase is instrumental in the creation of brand messaging, Website development and the campaign strategy.
- Use SurveyMonkey to conduct discovery audits with internal and external audiences.
- Use WebsiteGrader to perform a free analysis of your Website.
Website Development
Your Website is a lead-generation and multi-media content publishing tool. It gives your organization the ability to build a strong brand online that creates powerful connections with audiences, and drives business growth.
The goal of your site should be to connect with audiences, drive qualified Website traffic and generate leads.
- Do not overlook the importance of strong Website copywriting that is optimized for search engine rankings and visitors. Effective Website copywriting conveys key brand messages, stresses features and benefits, and drives visitors to a desired action (e.g. call, complete a lead form, download resources).
Target Audiences
Regularly publishing fresh, relevant, link-worthy content (i.e. blogs, podcasts, videos, optimized press releases, Webinars, case studies, white papers, eBooks and articles) gives organizations and professionals the ability to boost search engine rankings, generate inbound links and drive Website traffic, while bringing value to online communities helps to establish and grow relationships.
However, content and community also strengthen your brand and enhance your position as a thought leader, which can have a much greater impact on your organization’s long-term growth, stability and success.
So, when building your inbound marketing strategy, be sure to think beyond prospects, and design a Gameplan to reach and influence all audiences relevant to your business.
- Peers: Seek opportunities to build strong relationships through online and offline networks, as a means to learn together and advance.
- Competitors: Remember that your competition is reading and watching. Be strategic in your thoughts and actions.
- Vendors: Share guest blog posts, exchange links and help to promote their capabilities and expertise.
- Partners: Subscribe to your partners’ blogs and connect with their leaders in social networks.
- Vendors/Partners: Create content featuring your Vendors and Partners, and encourage them to become active in social media, thereby extending your reach and influence.
- Job Candidates: Screen job candidates through their public profiles and online activities before you even grant an interview. Start with name searches on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Job Candidates: Use your organization’s blog and social networks to announce career opportunities.
- Media: Follow media contacts on Twitter, comment on their articles and posts, and only pitch them RELEVANT and TARGETED story ideas.
- Employees: Don’t fight it. Employees, especially younger generations, are active in social media with or without your organization’s support. View social media as an opportunity, not an obstacle. Establish social media policies, encourage professional behavior, and move on.
- Prospects: Connect with prospects where they are active online, but keep in mind that YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are brands and platforms, NOT strategies. Your organization must build a fully integrated Inbound Marketing GamePlan to consistently drive Website traffic and generate leads.
- Customers: Authenticity is key in social media. Your customers will see through false claims and blatant self-promotion. If your executives are going to contribute to a blog or participate on social networks, it must be real.
- Overall: Use social media and content to give your brand personality, and differentiate from competition.
- Overall: Use Google News Alerts to monitor mentions of your brand, executives, products, services, competitors and industry trends.
- Overall: Segment and prioritize your audiences, then tailor your content and inbound marketing activities to connect with them in meaningful and measurable ways.
Campaign Objectives
Lead generation and loyalty building are the two primary goals of every marketing campaign.
So what does it take to achieve leads and loyalty?
We have consistently found that campaigns that focus inbound marketing strategies on achieving four core objectives have the greatest potential to generate leads and build loyalty.
- Search Rankings: While your entire keyword universe may include thousands of phrases, most organizations should concentrate inbound marketing efforts on the 30 - 50 most relevant keyword phrases, and rely on the long-tail effect to take care of the rest.
- Relationships: Don’t confuse reach with influence. Building followers and friends is meaningless without engagement and action.
- Positioning: Blogging and authentic social media participation are essential to build and enhance thought leadership.
- Brand: Third-party endorsements of your brand by consumers and media are more important than ever.
- Relationships/Brand: Focus your content marketing and public relations strategies on reputation, relationship and brand building.
- Overall: Benchmark and measure the metrics that will have the greatest impact on your organization’s ability to generate leads and build loyalty.
Strategies & Tactics
Once you have established, defined and differentiated your brand, and built a powerful, content-driven Website, the key is to strategize and manage an integrated campaign fueled by the four core inbound marketing strategies: Search Marketing, Social Media, Content Marketing and Public Relations.
- Search Marketing: There are no shortcuts in search marketing. Boost traffic and leads through paid search in the short term if needed (e.g. Google AdWords and Internet Yellow Pages), but concentrate your efforts on generating inbound links, traffic and leads through creating remarkable content and social media participation.
- Social Media: Be authentic, and bring value. Social media is not as simple as creating profiles on each social networking site and making random posts. It is about listening, learning, building relationships and bringing value to the communities relevant to your organization.
- Content Marketing: Establish a quarterly blog editorial calendar that sets deadlines, topics and authors. Consider appointing an internal or external blog editor to keep your blog fresh and relevant.
- Public Relations: Carefully evaluate your PR agency based on performance and capabilities. Traditional PR firms that charge excessive retainers and high hourly rates are struggling to adapt to the social Web and remain relevant as clients demand more measurable results. See page 36 of the eBook for tips on picking an agency (click here to download the free PDF eBook).
Budgeting
Traditional marketing budget formulas (e.g. percentage of revenue/assets, competitor benchmarks, etc.) are mostly irrelevant in today’s content-driven and community-based campaigns.
Why?
Old marketing budget formulas, pushed by traditional agencies and conservative organizations, focus on strategies that pay for interruption and impressions, which means you buy everything, including: advertising space, mailing lists, printing and postage, in addition to agency costs (i.e. commissions, retainers and hourly fees).
- Assess the competency of your staff in the core areas of brand marketing, Website development, search marketing, social media, content marketing and public relations. Determine time availability of internal resources to contribute to an inbound marketing campaign.
- Determine licensing and subscription costs for inbound marketing services, software and tools (e.g. press release wire service, search engine optimization, lead nurturing, monitoring).
- Define realistic investments of the time and money your organization is able to commit.
- Plan to spend a minimum of $2,000 per month for an inbound marketing agency. The number one budget factor will be content creation, so budget significantly more if you will be outsourcing planning and production of case studies, eBooks, blogging, videos, podcasts and articles.
Measure & Evolve
Focus on meaningful metrics, monitored and evaluated in real time, that enable your organization to constantly adapt and evolve. As a result, you will experience increased efficiency, improved ROI, more leads and higher levels of loyalty.
- Running a local search campaign? Consider unique call-tracking numbers to monitor incoming calls and connect them back to marketing efforts.
- Set up Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics for your site to gain access to a wealth of information, resources and data.
Looking for More Marketing Strategy Tips and Resources?
The social Web is full of remarkable people, content and resources. Organizations like HubSpot, and influentials like Chris Brogan and David Meerman Scott, have built their brands by educating the masses through blogging, eBooks, online classes, Webinars, case studies, Web TV shows and podcasts, often for free.
Take advantage of the wealth of information and guidance available to you. Check out page 47 of the GamePlan for a list of essential resources for inbound marketers.
Click here to download the free eBook (no registration).
Paul Roetzer is founder and president of PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency and PR firm. He can be found on Twitter @PaulRoetzer
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