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.

To the uninitiated, content marketing may seem like an excuse for marketing executives to churn out whimsical blogs whenever they have spare time on their hands.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Digital content marketing has become vitally important in securing new customers, driving organic website traffic, and helping entrepreneurs build their brands. “But how and why is content so powerful?” we hear you ask. Don’t panic – we’ve put together a handy guide to address your questions.

What is content marketing and how influential is online content in an increasingly digital world?

Content marketing refers to the creation and publication of online content across a range of formats. Types of content in digital marketing strategies often include – but are certainly not limited to – blogs, infographics, videos, podcasts, interviews, eBooks, white papers, and games.

The purpose behind the strategy is to inform new and existing customers about your brand, products, services, expertise, and any upcoming campaigns or offers. In short, digital content marketing exists to hook people’s attention, therefore encouraging them to invest time and money in a given company.

Publishing great digital content is also an effective way of pushing your website up the ranks of search engines such as Google and Bing. High-quality, informative content brimming with relevant keywords will be favoured by search engine algorithms, therefore increasing the level of traffic to your website, boosting leads and, ultimately, increasing revenue in the long term.

If you’re in any doubt as to the mighty power of online content in today’s digital world, take a moment to absorb some striking statistics. According to a HubSpot’s latest list of marketing statistics. 

Clearly, the influence of online content has never been more potent.

How important is content in a digital marketing strategy?

The power of digital content can sometimes be underestimated as its successes are not always directly measurable. If a piece of your brand’s video content goes viral and racks up thousands of views, for example, you may be left wondering whether it actually impacted your sales revenue at all. What’s more, many marketers are reluctant to craft time-consuming blog posts or long-form research articles if they can’t be sure of their success.

While newcomers to content marketing may find these things frustrating, however, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that content is fundamental to building a strong digital marketing strategy. Here are three reasons why:

1. Content is vital for search engine optimisation (SEO)

With Google currently processing a staggering 3.5 billion search queries every day, you need to make sure your website appears high on their rankings. This is where SEO comes in. Optimising your website to exploit search engine algorithms involves including keywords relevant to your industry, boosting the speed and usability of the site, adding backlinks, and avoiding posting duplicate content.

With Google currently processing a staggering 3.5 billion search queries every day, you need to make sure your website appears high on their rankings. This is where SEO comes in. Optimising your website to exploit search engine algorithms involves including keywords relevant to your industry, boosting the speed and usability of the site, adding backlinks, and avoiding posting duplicate content.

2. Content is educative and creates a loyal customer base

Content that educates potential customers about your goods and services will encourage them to trust your brand. When making a purchase decision, most people want to fully understand their available options and compare the goods and services of different companies. By including education blog posts, ‘about’ pages, videos, tutorials, and more, you will give your business a competitive advantages.

If you work in a sector that is constantly changing and updating, keeping customers informed about the latest developments will help you to secure a loyal customer base who have faith in the expertise of your teams.

Content that educates potential customers about your goods and services will encourage them to trust your brand. When making a purchase decision, most people want to fully understand their available options and compare the goods and services of different companies. By including education blog posts, ‘about’ pages, videos, tutorials, and more, you will give your business a competitive advantage.

If you work in a sector that is constantly changing and updating, keeping customers informed about the latest developments will help you to secure a loyal customer base who have faith in the expertise of your teams.

3. High-quality digital content pays for itself

Developing compelling content is one of the most effective marketing strategies if you want to reap a significant return-on-investment. Just think about how much more attention people pay to Instagram posts, online blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos compared to more traditional marketing strategies such as billboards, television adverts, and physical mail. It makes clear sense to invest your time and effort into channels that are likely to reach people and, if you have quick-working creatives on your team, it doesn’t have to be expensive.  

Developing compelling content is one of the most effective marketing strategies if you want to reap a significant return-on-investment. Just think about how much more attention people pay to Instagram posts, online blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos compared to more traditional marketing strategies such as billboards, television adverts, and physical mail. It makes clear sense to invest your time and effort into channels that are likely to reach people and, if you have quick-working creatives on your team, it doesn’t have to be expensive.  

How does content marketing support digital marketing more broadly?

Top content is vital for supporting other strands of the digital marketing world including:

• Social media: Social accounts that feature click-worthy content are more likely to attract followers. It’s a symbiotic relationship that is both simple and necessary for boosting digital success.
• SEO: You can’t include backlinks or
• Analytics: Analysing the success of your content marketing is a necessary way to gauge the progress of your digital strategy at a broader level.
• PPC: Pay-per-click advertising is sometimes seen as the opposite of content marketing, but it is a great way to promote content and implement slick calls-to-action.

Start you content marketing journey today

So, as this guide has clearly demonstrated, digital content represents the very foundation on which digital marketing strategies are built and should be treated with the attention it deserves. By planning out a focussed and diverse content marketing strategy, you will start to build up a loyal fanbase whose engagement with your brand will facilitate the growth of your business.

How Allsopp Media can help

Are you ready to see your business thrive? Allsopp Media is here to help you plan and implement digital campaigns that work for you and your customers. Thanks to our team of digital content and marketing experts, we can help your business find new audiences and grow into something amazing.

Wondering how you can do that?

Keep reading as we go through what you need to decide what social media channels to choose, as well as how you can create and maintain a sustainable presence on them!

Top 3 Factors to Consider When Choosing Social Channels

From Facebook to Instagram, LinkedIn and even TikTok: there’s no shortage of platforms where brands can promote their products or services.

At first, it might be tempting to create a page on each and every one of them, but the truth is that, more often than not, that’s not the way to go.

On the contrary, it’s best to assess which channels make sense for your business, which you can do by considering three main factors:

Target Audience

It might sound obvious, but the first question you need to ask yourself is, “Where are my customers and prospects?”.

Otherwise, your messages won’t reach them and your efforts will go down the drain.

Competitors

A big part of digital marketing success relies on competitor benchmarking, and social media is no different.

Take some time to understand where your main competitors have chosen to be and, if you see that it’s working for them, consider following their footsteps

Niche

Last but not least, the industry you play in will also have an impact on which channels you should pick.

Are you in the beauty niche? Then, Instagram and TikTok are probably good choices. Are you a marketing consultant? LinkedIn might be the right channel for you. Do you own a B2C business? Then, you should consider Facebook – you get the drill.

Tips for Maintaining Your Social Media Presence

Once you know where to be, you can start thinking about how you can build a solid presence on your chosen platforms.

Doing so is very much a matter of trial and error, but there are some best practices that are always good to know:

Include SMART goals in your strategy

Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound: unless your social media goals tick all the boxes, you’ll have a hard time maintaining your presence in the long run.

Create a content calendar

Posting regularly is crucial to performing well on social media, but it requires a high level of organisation. Creating a content calendar and developing your posts ahead of time is the most effective way of doing so.

Use an efficient social media tool

Hiring someone to handle your social media presence might be a bit out of budget, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it all yourself. Using a social media tool like Buffer or Hootsuite will allow you to automate several tasks, saving you time and headaches.

Need help in finding the best social media marketing agency?

You can see a full list of best agencies on a platform called DesignRush.  This platform provides you with a comprehensive list of digital marketing agencies around the globe and allows you to choose the ones that are most suitable for your current business situation.

Combine your organic posts with other promotional tools

Organic reach is dying, and that’s something most of us have heard before. Because of this, most branded posts are shown to a limited audience, and the way to overcome this obstacle is simply by investing a portion of your digital marketing budget to strategies like paid advertising and SEO.

Use analytics to continuously improve

How will you know which step to take next, if you don’t know what in your social strategy needs improvement? Most channels provide you with a plethora of relevant metrics, so make sure to use them in order to improve over time.

After reading our quick social media guide, you have the information you need to choose your channels wisely. So… which one is the one?

If you need any help developing your social media strategy, we’d love to work alongside you. Send us an email at info@allsoppmedia.com and let’s get your project started!

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.