Marketing and advertising have become so commonplace that many don’t realise they are happening. Commercials in-between your favourite shows, ad reels before a YouTube video, billboards, and magazine ads are all parts of traditional advertising and marketing ventures. For years, marketing professionals focused on what types of messages they could push out to potential customers. This tactic was known as outbound marketing–and for years, it worked.

As personal computers brought us into the digital age, marketers began to experiment with the best way to get customers to them without participating in outbound marketing. Using search engine algorithms, keywords, and personalised targeting, inbound marketing was born.

Both inbound and outbound marketing strategy are critical to successful marketing outcomes. Working together, inbound and outbound marketing can create a cyclical brand growth that builds with each campaign. Learn the difference between inbound and outbound marketing, how the two strategies work together, and how to make the most of these forms of marketing.

What is Outbound Marketing?

Outbound marketing is what most people think of when they hear the term marketing. This type of marketing includes billboards, newspaper and magazine ads, direct mails, cold calls, junk mail, brochures, telemarketing pitches, radio ads and television commercials.

With increased access to communication platforms came an avalanche outbound marketing. The internet brought new ways to market to consumers, with pop-ups and display ads on every site, from personal blogs to news sites. Oversaturation and  technology like ad blockers, DVRs, and on-demand streaming have caused outbound advertising to be less impactful than in years past. Consumers simply skip or ignore marketing messages.

What is Inbound Content?

Inbound marketing means consumers are pulled in to engaging content a company shares. Marketers create blog posts, social media messages, white papers, newsletters, and webinars relatively devoid of a sales pitch. Inbound marketing gently nudges ideal customers through the marketing funnel by answering their questions and speaking directly to their needs with great content. Inbound content also includes search engine optimisation, keyword discovery, and paid search ads.

Differences: Inbound marketing vs outbound marketing

The most significant difference between inbound and outbound marketing is personalisation. Outbound marketing is akin to casting a wide net and catching consumers using best practices for writing, design, and branding. Also known as content marketing, the inbound marketing meaning is more of a philosophy than a tactic and hinges on creating personalised connections and content relevant to individual consumers.

Outbound marketing tactics are much more disruptive. Consumers experience outbound advertising but don’t necessarily seek it out. Inbound marketing is the opposite– relevant content works in the background until consumers make a point to access it. Finally, inbound marketing techniques focus on consumers’ needs and wants, while outbound marketing focuses on the product or brand’s needs.

How inbound marketing complements outbound marketing

It’s important to note that intrusive isn’t always a bad thing; it simply means a particular piece of content or ad is placed into a consumer’s purview without them asking for it specifically. For companies new to the market, switching branding or messages, or working to grow into a new market, outbound marketing is one of the best ways to establish brand recognition and familiarity among your target audience.

Additionally, outbound advertising helps establish where your target audience is most likely to consume your content. One consumer may mention they’ve seen your brand on YouTube. A second may say they’ve seen your brand on a display ad with his favourite blogger. In these outbound marketing examples, marketers can use this data to take the next step in inbound marketing.

To use the same examples, inbound marketing may consist of brand guest posts or link exchanges with the blogger as mentioned earlier, or it could mean a brand starts an educational video series. Either way, inbound market strategies were informed by outbound marketing.

The two strategies are bound together to boost overall marketing goals.

What is more effective: outbound or inbound marketing strategies

There’s no such thing as a wrong way to market since both traditional and online marketing are dependent on business goals. The effectiveness of outbound vs inbound marketing strategies comes down to a few factors:

Reputation

Outbound marketing has received a bad reputation in the last few decades. Manipulative marketing messages, in-your-face and over-the-top messages, and intrusive campaigns have soured some marketers on using too much outbound marketing. Inbound marketing is much more subtle, and because it’s targeted, customers usually appreciate it more.

Price

Inbound marketing is the best fit for the price. Inbound marketing efforts are about 62% less than outbound. Outbound marketing rates can be expensive across the board and increase the pressure on your marketing budgets overall. 

Time

Outbound tactics makes it much faster to see results, especially with retargeting paid advertising based on lookalike audiences (i.e., data collection from other similar sites). Inbound form of marketing takes time to ramp up and personnel time to sustain.

Inbound Methodology Basics

Because inbound marketing relies so heavily on personalisation and targeting, you’ll need to be sure you know who your target customer and how you’d like for them to utilise your content. Create a buyer profile with where your customer wants to read helpful content and what questions they’re asking. Next, create an SEO strategy with keyword research at the center based on the buyer profile’s needs. Finally, keep tabs on your metrics and measure as you go.

Whether you’re working towards an outbound strategy, an inbound strategy, or a blend of the two, you should keep one thing in mind: watching the data is the best way to ensure your marketing is the right fit.

As a business owner, your goal is to grow, and traditional marketers will tell you the best way to succeed is to use strategies that range from advertisements to brochures. Even in this digital age, many business owners think of marketing in a traditional sense: a website, signage, billboards, and commercials.

What if you could grow your business faster while only spending money on the tactics that enhance your bottom line? Speed is the key difference between growth marketing vs marketing. Instead of using the same sales cycle as always– sending an email, advertising online, using the same messaging and platforms– a growth marketing strategy keeps your marketing fresh. It tests content marketing, email marketing, and other digital tactics to ensure high-performance results. Growth marketing uses specific messaging, testing new channels, and fine-tuned target audience.

Take a deeper look into what it means to hire a growth marketing agency, and see how growth marketers can optimize your users’ experience–and how you can see massive growth fast.

How growth marketing goes beyond the top of the funnel marketing

As marketing technology has matured with available more data and automation tools, marketing strategy has changed. Sean Ellis, an entrepreneur, searching for a marketing hire to grow his user base as quickly as possible, coined the phrase “Growth hacking” in 2011 to describe how traditional marketing was transforming thanks to new technology, testing, user identification, and audience segmentation. Essentially, moving potential customers down the marketing funnel faster for a more engaged audience.

Setting up marketing funnels is one of the first pieces of the puzzle for digital marketing, including growth marketing services. The top of the funnel audience are users who have just discovered your business, are interested in services like yours, or have indicated some type of interest in what you have to offer. Traditional marketing focuses on the top of the funnel, while growth marketing focuses on the entire funnel and user engagement.

At its core, growth marketing is a data-driven strategy that has a bit of chaos and randomness in its process. Growth marketers take chances on new and unknown marketing tactics and use data to see if they work, can be tweaked to work better, or nixed completely.  Growth marketing strategy uses these techniques through the entire funnel; it ensures the funnel is more actively engaged at a level closer to the bottom of the funnel –the portion of the audience closer to buying your product or service.

Main components of a growth marketing strategy

Growth marketing strategy keeps data-driven decision-making and continuous testing at its core. Growth marketers look at metrics like conversion rates, acquisition rates, retention rates, and customer lifetime value. A growth marketing agency uses several components in every strategy.

A/B Testing

A/B testing simply uses several iterations of the same ad, landing page, email blast, or social media post with minor changes in one pre-determined area to see which option resonates most with the audience. For example, you may send out an email with two different subject lines to identical segments to see which subject line has more opens.

Cross-Channel Marketing

Cross-channel marketing starts with understanding your user and how they prefer their communications from you and implementing messages through several channels (social media, email, SMS, etc.) according to these preferences.

Customer Lifecycle Metrics

Customers will go through many cycles, and growth marketing strategy takes advantage of their location on the lifecycle to keep them engaged with your business. There are three main customer lifecycle stages: activation, nurture, and reactivation. A good growth marketer will create messages and tactics to keep customers in the nurture stage.

How can growth marketing be implemented?

Growth marketing may sound complicated, but it’s simple to implement when you remember this acronym: AAARRR (sounds like pirate metrics, no?)

The term and meaning of AAARRR include:

• Awareness – the brand-building efforts to educate, entertain, and excite. These can include social media, SEO content, and content marketing.
• Acquisition – Generating leads. These include downloads, chatbots, and free trials.
• Activation – Getting people engaged in the product as quickly as possible. This includes onboarding, welcome emails, and encouraging users to invite friends.
• Revenue – Making your company money. This includes committing to a contract, upgrading a service, or purchasing a product.
• Retention – Keeping customers in love with your product. This includes sharing tips to optimise their experience and adding personalisation.
• Referral – Incentivising shares. This includes starting a referral or affiliate program. You can begin a growth marketing strategy by trying one tactic in each category and A/B testing; then, you can move on to different approaches.

Starting Your Growth Marketing Strategy

There are infinite combinations of platforms, testing, and metrics you can use for growth marketing, and your business will be unique. Hiring a growth marketing agency can give you a headstart for growth like you’ve never seen before in your business!

As the digital world becomes increasingly saturated with marketing content, it has never been more important to engage in targeted promotions. Adapting your marketing strategy to suit a target audience will ensure your core brand message gets through to the people willing to listen, rather than drowning in a sea of noise.

So, how should you go about identifying the needs of your target audience? Fleshing out a few realistic buyer persona is a good place to start.

What is a buyer persona, and how do they benefit businesses?

There is no comprehensive set of buyer persona examples, as every business serves a unique set of customers. However, there are several broad ways that customers can be grouped, including by:

Age

Under which generation(s) do most of your customers fall? Members of Generation Z live very different lives to Baby Boomers, after all.

Location

In which time zones do your key customers live? If you have customer all over the world, remember to send your marketing emails in targeted batches.

Income

How much money is your audience willing to spend? Are you trying to sell luxury or affordability?

Language

Try not to assume that all of your customers speak English. Do you have the resources to release marketing materials in different languages?

Interests

Gather and analyse data about your audience’s hobbies and habits. Are they regular TV watchers, eco-warriors, fashionistas, wine connoisseurs, or bookworms? Understanding these kinds of details could help you to build a marketing strategy that truly resonates.

Life stage

Are your customers university students, new parents, or retired adults? People in different life stages tend to face unique challenges and concerns.

Here is a customer profile example that may prove helpful if you were coming up with content marketing strategies for, say, a trendy new coffee outlet:

Cart abandoners

This user persona is very common (and frustrating!) You will need to consider how to convert them using breath-taking content marketing strategies and email campaigns.

First-time buyers

This is a precious customer persona you will need to nurture with special offers and impeccable customer service.

Bouncers

Bouncers tend to be impatient and unwilling to wait for sites to load or fill out lengthy forms. They can potentially be won over by improving your website’s user experience.

Passive browsers

These users tend to browse sites without making purchases. Marketers will need to consider how they can be encouraged to part with their money.

Impulse buyers

Perfect candidates for upselling!

How to define your perfect marketing personas using AI

If your business is fairly new, it is possible to come up with a few reasonable buyer personas based on the unique selling points of your goods and services. If you’re promoting kids’ clothing, for example, it’s fairly obvious that your key customer persona is a parent. However, to truly understand your audience and their motivations, there are several AI analytics tools out there to help refine your marketing strategy.

Such tools work by harnessing anonymised data from sites such as Google Analytics and using it to come up with detailed user personas. Most are capable of honing the marketing personas using industry-specific insights and segmenting the abstract personas according to factors such as purchasing behaviour.

Investing in this kind of technology could save your marketing team a huge amount of time and effort. What’s more, it will constantly update your buyer personas in line with changing consumer demands and market conditions.

How many target personas should you have?

Although the purpose of a customer persona is to narrow a business’s marketing focus, you may require two or three to fully account for your entire demographic base. You may, for example, need several product lines that speak to the demands of vastly different age groups, professions, or hobbyists.

Coming up with distinct and separate buyer personas to suit their different needs will help you hone your marketing techniques. It is worth noting, however, that creating too many buyer personas could make your brand strategy seem confused and incoherent.

Start understanding your ideal customer today!

As we’ve mentioned before, understanding your target audience via buyer personas is a fundamental part of any effective marketing strategy.

If you need help building AI-informed content marketing strategies that resonate with your core base of customers, Allsopp Media is here to help. Book your free 30 minutes no obligation call with us today to find out more and get started.

Once considered a frivolous gimmick, voice search applications are becoming an increasingly popular tool among web users. Thanks to impressive growth in sales of smart home assistants and the ever-improving accuracy of voice search results, around 50% of internet searches are now thought to be voice-based. In this quick guide, therefore, we will explore the best ways to use voice search in digital marketing.

What is voice search?

Voice search is a function built into a range of internet-enabled devices that allows users to operate search engines such as Google through spoken commands. This eliminates the need for typing, offering a quick, convenient and hands-free way of obtaining useful information quickly.

If you need to find the nearest Italian restaurant in your area, for example, you can simply say “Italian restaurants near me” and the relevant search engine (typically Google and occasionally Bing) will come up with a list of helpful results.

Other than the way in which search commands are executed, there is little difference between voice and typed searches. However, people often formulate search queries differently when using their voice compared to when they are typing. This means you will need to adapt your digital marketing strategy to include voice search engine optimisation.

How does voice search optimisation work?

Voice search SEO tips

1. Conduct some keyword research for voice search

Generally speaking, people write and type very differently from how they talk. This means that you will need to think about the semantic specificities of voice search keywords. For example, if a person is shopping around for a new dining table using a traditional keyboard, they are likely to type something like “dining tables” into a search engine. If they are using a voice-activated assistant, however, they will probably say something like “Show me the best dining tables”. This is an example of a “long-tail” query, a search term that incorporates natural patterns of speech.

In this way, you need to come up with a list of long-tail keywords tailored for voice search and incorporate them in your web content. If you’re struggling to come up with relevant keywords, feel free to use an SEO tool such as Answer the Public to source popular keywords and phrases that are likely to reap positive results.

2. Adapt the structure and content of your site

With web users now asking fuller questions, it is a good idea to include plenty of informational content on your site that will boost your chances of reaching voice search users. This could include, for example, how-to guides, customer service information, FAQ pages, product guides and stories, press releases, and store locations.

3. Make your content as targeted and relevant as possible

Many voice search applications only return one search result to users, meaning you need to make your content as relevant as possible to keep your website at the top of the rankings. One way to do this is to make sure your pages are very easy to crawl. If necessary, create a new sitemap and send it over to the Google Search Console.

4. Remember that most voice searches are conducted on mobile devices

Most voice searches are carried out using mobile applications such as Siri or Cortana, so you will need to make your website as mobile-friendly as possible. This could involve improving the speed of your site or tailoring your content for local searches.

Prepare your website for the voice search revolution

With voice search on the rise, there is no excuse to ignore it when coming up with a digital marketing strategy. As we have seen, optimising your content for voice search doesn’t have to be a chore and will probably make your site even better than it was before. Don’t hesitate – get started today!

WtidiLet’s imagine a situation: you’ve come up with a brilliant idea for a new business, got yourself some cash to invest in your new venture. You might have borrowed it from a loving aunt or from a bank hungry for you interest rate repayments.  You might as well have saved it for years hoping for a sudden insight. So the great idea finally happened: it’s faultless, you’ve got your relatives and friends behind your back and you eagerly move to its realisation. 

You know that being online is essential and that brick-and-mortar solutions are not the way you want to move forward (business accommodation prices bite, hiring permanent staff at this stage is out of the question.

You set up a Facebook page, build a website, plan an email marketing campaign and start waiting for an influx of clients to your awesomely designed online store. A week passes and… nothing. A two-weeks mark makes you think you just need to wait a bit longer and maybe boost a post that Facebook lovingly offers every time you write something on your business page. Still nothing. In a month time, you might start panicking and thinking that your brilliant business idea is not so brilliant in the end.

Time goes, but there’s nothing to show for your time and efforts. At this point, some aspiring entrepreneurs might persevere and learn the basics of online marketing on their own. Still, most might start thinking of hiring someone to do their marketing online to free some time for more business thinking. But there are some common digital marketing mistakes to avoid when looking for someone to do it for you. 

Lack of cohesive marketing strategy and plan

Hiring an individual trained to do one thing and ONLY one thing. Let’s say you want to create social media posts every day for your business page because you’ve heard it’s important to have regular posting on Facebook. But after some time you might realise that you don’t have any cohesive content on your page, because it lacks structure and set goals.

Many times at Allsopp Media, we’ve dealt with people who just wanted to hire someone to do their social media posting without any particular direction and strategy behind it. Content marketing is all about the strategy and plan. 

The key thing for such businesses usually is to do it as cheap as possible, and not worry about the type of content that will appear on the page. Promoting your business this way is the road to nowhere, as this way you don’t create any meaningful interaction with your target audience. Yes, you might get a couple of likes here and there, but without a proper marketing strategy and processes in place, all your posting efforts will go to the drain.

Understanding your end goal

You might think that throwing all your resources into one channel might eventually bring results (by ‘eventually’, many of us mean a month the maximum). So let’s say you invest 1000 pounds in Google ads without any backup plan what’s going to happen next. You want to sell straight away. Full stop. But you might want to ask yourself one crucial question: what’s the endgame for your business? Is it to be successful? Do you want your clients to come back to you for more? Do you understand your customer ‘journey’ or you just need to quickly sell something and then not bother with creating a mutual dialogue and loyalty with your potential returnees?

Quick sell mode

One of the biggest obstacles many marketing agency owners need to overcome (including us, of course) when talking to clients is a misunderstanding of how the process of making a buying decision works.

Some of you might have heard that to make a purchase, an average person needs to have ‘7 touches’. It is a fundamental marketing psychology principle stating that it takes seven “touches” before someone will process and act upon a specific call to action. Today’s consumer is sceptical. Why? Because we are bombarded with a myriad of choices from all possible media channels. And sometimes picking what’s right for them is not easy.

The path to purchase has become much more complicated than in the past as so many digital communication channels are paving the way to purchase these days: blogs, social media, chats, messengers, banners, Instagram influencers etc. It’s so easy to get lost or lose a direction in this stream.

People need to gain some trust before they make a buying decision. Many potential buyers of any product will first engage with your website (found on Google or via other search engines), then read your blog and other people’s reviews before even thinking of buying something. Think of it as a quest where certain puzzle pieces need to come together before the whole picture gets revealed.

So merely showing your potential audience a Facebook ad or posting a funny cat on your business page and saying how awesome you are, might not cut it. That’s why so many marketers create so-called ‘marketing funnels’ to allow entry of many people first at the wide end and narrow it at the bottom. That’s where the sale happens. It might involve several steps and offering multiple ‘free incentives’ on the way to this narrow end.  

Psychological principals behind a buying decision

You might find it useful to look at some basic psychological model many marketers refer to when trying to explain the purchase decision to business owners. It’s called AIDA model.

What does AIDA stand for? 

Awareness:

Creating brand awareness or connection with your service or product

Interest:

Forming an initial interest in your product or service that is enough to research more on your brand

Desire:

Creating an urge to buy your product or service with the help of an ’emotional connection’, This is where you can stand out with your brand personality and a distinct brand voice. That’s how you move a potential client from a phase where they are simply curious to desiring your product.

Action:

As you can see it’s stage 3 when you can actually move to incentivising your potential buyer to take the next step in the funnel, or CTA (call to action). It can be anything from making this phone call or subscribing to your webinar, to a paid advertisement selling high-ticket offer from your brand. 

Retention

Last, but not least is making your customer buy more from you: upsetting, cross-selling or referring you to their friends. Focusing on a lifetime value vs a one-off sell is key to having a successful business.

We hope that you enjoyed our article on digital marketing mistakes to avoid for businesses starting their digital marketing campaigns journey.

Now that you understand that there are many factors involved in building an online presence and creating effective communication with your clients via marketing funnels, you can continue your efforts in establishing a world’s domination.

Once you have figured out your marketing funnels, you can sit and relax while sipping something nice on your sunny deck and seeing these sales flowing.

But if you still need a push or a sense of direction in this complicated world of marketing communication and funnels, simply give Allsopp Media a shout, and we’ll be happy to help you find it.

Perhaps, every small or medium-sized business owner used digital marketing for promoting their brand online at some point. But most of the time, when you lack time and resources, digital marketing efforts are somewhat sporadic and lack systematisation. Most of us know that today digital marketing is more of a necessity rather than a luxury for any business, and having a system and structure to it can make it so much easier to manage all your marketing activities. If you don’t know where to start, we are going to cover it in this article and explain how to create a digital marketing strategy from scratch and make it cohesive and in line with your brand voice and identity.

What is a digital marketing strategy and planning?

Marketing planning is a process of systemising and creating a structure for all your digital marketing efforts. The ultimate goal of this process is to have a digital marketing strategy in place that is aligned with your business goals and aims to achieve them in a defined period. 

There are three main elements in this definition:

• Goals
• System and structure
• Target audience
• Digital Sales funnel
• Timeframe

Before building any marketing strategy, including digital, you need to define your marketing goals. They usually need to be aligned with your business plan, target audience and a digital sales funnel stage. Then create a structured system and marketing calendar for implementing these goals. Finally, you need to establish for how long this plan is going to last. 

Define your business goals and objectives

Before you decide on how to create a digital marketing strategy, it’s worth looking at your general business idea and goals. What do you want to achieve as a business? Are you a new brand, or do you already have some brand recognition? Does your brand need more leads and sales? Maybe you need to create or raise awareness and then start selling your services or goods?

Choose your target audience

Before moving anywhere else in defining your marketing strategy and forming an action plan, you need to know to whom you will be offering your services or selling goods. Many businesses make a mistake by trying to create a product or service for everyone. We are all very different, and so are our businesses, products and clients. One considers everyday cycling and regular jogging essential, and they will be innately interested in products and services related to physical health: sports accessories, healthy foods etc. At the same time, some of us prefer a relaxed epicurean way of life and have very little interest in new sneakers collections or a fitness club membership. They need a can of beer and the latest Assassin Creed release. 

That’s why you need to draft a very detailed portrait of your ideal user – buyer persona – who will be interested in your services or goods. 

A buyer persona is a clear profile of your perfect client. It’s a person who might have an urge to buy from you or shows some sort of liking to your brand. A buyer persona is a loyal and reliable client who will praise your brand to their friends and family.

Usually, it’s a real person image based on your current clients’ feedback. The more specific their characteristics are, the easier it will be for you to turn your website visitors into leads and leads into clients.

Example company: online shop selling cosmetics

Buyer persona: Millie Cooper, 23-year-old, has a university degree, not married and has no kids. She’s a marketing manager for a tech company, annual salary 25000 a year.

Buyer personas can be particular and sometimes have attributes that might seem unimportant. But these details can be intentionally chosen, especially if you are drawing a portrait of your buyer persona from a real person. They will let you see your potential customer much clearer.

Based on their traits and characteristics, you will be able to target some forums or groups and get valuable information about their views and preferences via polls and by asking specific questions.

Before you take on a task of creating an online marketing strategy, you need to consider your digital sales funnel. You can describe a digital sales funnel as a process of establishing relationships with your potential client through a combination of marketing tactics. Their ultimate goal is to generate leads for your business and turn prospects into loyal customers. The funnel consists of several stages that include:

Foundation. people first hear or learn about your brand

Consideration and research. It happens after your potential client has become familiar with your brand for the first time. At this stage, they do background research about your brand. They might also look at the offer your competitor has during this  

Purchase. Clients finally decide to buy from your brand at this stage.

Loyalty and post-purchase experience. If your client is happy with the purchase, they might consider buying from you in the future or spread word of mouth about your brand and become your brand advocates. 

You need to consider the fact that people at different stages for your digital marketing funnel won’t do the same thing and aren’t going to respond to your marketing efforts identically. The way they will get involved with your brand will depend on where in a digital funnel stage they are now. Your final marketing strategy will heavily depend on this and ultimately will be defined by it. 

If you know at which stage of the funnel your target client is, it will be much simpler to define your marketing goal and objectives. 

How to form marketing goals and objectives? 

There are many ways of defining these goals, but the one we are using for most of our clients is using a SWOT analysis. During SWOT analysis, you scrutinise all external business environment factors in the form of threats or opportunities, and internal factors such as strengths and weaknesses, so that you can form your goals and objectives later. 

The ultimate aim of SWOT analysis is to turn negative external and internal factors into positive ones, therefore increasing the value of your business for your customers.

Example: your company provides on-demand cleaning services to clients. Your main strengths are punctuality, quality of cleaning, and quick response to clients concerns on via your website chat, but your cleaners take longer time to thoroughly clean the house than the cleaners who work for your competitors. You have a website where people can make an online booking, but it can be a bit slow at times and not everyone in your company is trained to use it properly.

There are a lot of other competitors who provide a similar service. Some of them do the cleaning quicker and cheaper than your business, but their services lack quality. Some of their clients leave bad reviews because of this. You competitors have a better-looking website but don’t have an online booking system in place. 

Strengths: punctuality of services, the excellent quality you provide your clients with, quick response and a website with online booking. 

Weaknesses: slower cleaning time, sluggish online booking system and lack of staff training. 

Threats: many competitors, some competitors do quicker cleaning, they have better-looking websites, your services are more expensive, you don’t have any online reviews yet. 

Opportunities: You competitors don’t have an online booking system; they also have quality complaints from clients and bad reviews online because of this. 

How do you turn your weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities? 

You can say that the quality of your services is better because your cleaners are more thorough and take longer to clean, but the result is always great, and you never have complaints from your clients. While your competitors have better-looking websites, you have an online booking system, and they don’t. 

After you finish SWOT analysis, it’s time to start looking at your marketing goals and objectives. 

Goals are needed to define where your business will be going with their marketing activities. Setting goals also helps to concentrate on one global thing at a time: raising your brand recognition, increasing your email list, generating sales leads, getting more positive feedback from your existing clients. Your goal will define your digital marketing strategy objectives – the steps you will take to accomplish it.

In the example above, we had a cleaning company with high-quality services but no reviews online, while their competitors did, but they weren’t positive. 

Your goal in this instance can be to create social proof with the help from your existing and new clients and encouraging them to leave reviews online.  

What is social proof?

Social proof is a piece of evidence from people who interacted with your brand in the past and praised your services by leaving a review or shared information about your services to others because they liked it. People who read the testimonial or received a recommendation from their friend are much more likely to buy from you. 

How you will work on creating social proof or implementing any other goal and objectives is the next stage of digital marketing planning and strategy – marketing tactics. 

How to choose marketing tactics and channels for promotion?

Marketing tactics will heavily depend on the chosen goals and objectives and also on the digital funnel stage. When you know who your ideal client is, where they spend their time and if they are familiar with your brand at all or not, you will be able to see which channels and marketing tactics will be more beneficial for your brand. You will also need to consider if your business is using a B2B or a B2C model to define the most effective marketing channels and tactics. 

Write a successful digital marketing strategy

If you follow the direction for creating your digital marketing strategy we outlined above and form a thorough plan for its implementation, you will be able to fulfil your business goals in no time and establish a strong reputation for your brand. A detailed marketing strategy can help you target people who are most likely to buy from you. Additionally, you will be able to use your marketing budget more effectively and stay focused if you follow the steps outlined in a marketing plan. It is especially relevant for startup businesses that have no extensive data at hand. 

If you still need some assistance with how to create a digital marketing strategy and implement it, get in touch with us or see how Allsopp Media can help you.