Tag Archive for: smallbusiness

words of the week blog

Content marketing

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Say I was a parent who was searching for some strategies on how to help my child with their handwriting. I did some google searches and found some free practice resources from an educational supplies company on Pinterest. I then shared these resources socially to my network and as a result of using the free resources I ultimately purchased handwriting grips and resources from the company. This scenario is an example of content marketing.

Content marketing is shifting away from push marketing, where you directly sell or push your products and services onto customers. Content marketing involves providing relevant information to prospects and customers that is valuable. i.e. it helps them to solve their key challenges. Done correctly, content marketing distributes this relevant and valuable information consistently throughout the customer life cycle to attract, retain and convert customers to make a purchase.  

As per my scenario above, my need or challenge was to find ways to help my child’s handwriting… the company helped me with this need by providing practical free exercises that helped with handwriting.  I then shared this socially and I ended up buying resources from the supplier.

Content marketing comes from the result of a sound content strategy and all aspects of marketing should be incorporated into it such as social media, SEO, PPC and Inbound or Pull marketing.

What is a content strategy?

A content strategy is looking at your business objectives and translating them into a plan that strongly uses content to achieve the goals set.

Forbes describes how these two work together:

“So, what’s the difference? Your content marketing efforts will drive targeted traffic to your site and once they arrive, your on-site content strategy will work to convert that traffic into leads, followers and customers”.

Bowman, Matt. “Content Strategy Vs Content Marketing: What’s the Difference?”. Forbes, Oct 17, 2018.
Content marketing
Content marketing includes blog posts, video marketing, infographics, white papers and articles, eBooks and email marketing.

What are the benefits of content marketing?

Content marketing done well can help you to achieve your key communication objectives. For example, creating brand awareness by positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry, or differentiating your offerings against competitors. Relevant and consistent content can help achieve higher rankings on SERPs, drive customers to your website but also beyond to social channels. This can in turn drive greater awareness and maximise your reach organically with your target audience.

Getting started

  1. Determine your business objectives. Use SMART principles (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound).
  2. Audience segmentation. Know your audience and their needs and segment if you have multiple offerings/services.  
  3. Content determination. Know what content you’ll be creating to tailor to those needs by segment. Conduct A/B testing to see which content type resonates best with your audience segments being targeted.
  4. Content distribution. Determine the channel distribution for your content and tailor it accordingly. Develop a content calendar and schedule posts across channels.
  5. Measurement. Know how to measure your content by segment, analyse trends and use insights to adjust content in the future.
5 steps to getting started with Content Marketing InfographicDownload

Examples of content marketing

  • Blog posts – increasing website traffic, boosting rankings on SERPs and can be used to re-purpose on social media
  • Video Marketing – same as other content marketing examples but creating a video/multimedia presentation of information. Videos achieve higher rankings and positions in search and social media platforms and tend to achieve higher engagement results.
  • Infographics – driving website traffic, through a graphical and simplified way of showcasing information.
  • eBooks – lead generation tool through a sign-up or opt in to download, can dive deeper into a particular subject matter
  • White papers and articles – lead generation tool, offering customers an in depth research report discussing a specific problem and providing a solution to the problem from their offering.
  • Email Marketing – for nurturing and conversion with customers, push marketing tactic

Contact word out today

We can help you develop a content strategy and a content marketing plan that can reach, attract, engage, convert and retain your target customers.

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words of the week blog series on Data Driven Marketing

Data Driven Marketing

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In our third part of the words of the week series, we will be tackling ‘Data Driven Marketing’ or DDM. This topic is complex and different by company size. For this post, we will be tackling DDM from a small to medium business perspective.

What is a Data Driven Marketing (DDM) approach?

A DDM approach is where you capture, analyse and assess customer data to form insights to use in future targeting. Using data to create optimised offers and communications can be more effective in connecting, converting and retaining customers.

Instead of using ‘gut instinct’ to determine what you ‘think’ customers want, A DDM approach informs your instincts and turn them into insights which can be used effectively in developing and maintaining customer relationships.

Why is Data Driven Marketing (DDM) important?

Customers want to feel valued and that their needs are understood when it’s time to make a purchase. If they see irrelevant content and offers they can become frustrated and look elsewhere. Using a DDM approach to segment and target customers effectively enables a more personalised experience. This can achieve higher customer satisfaction and retention.

Data types used in DDM

A barrier to implementing a DDM approach can be the data, as it is seldom that data is all stored in the same place. Data silos can include your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database, website analytics, eCommerce or advertising platforms and social media data. Having a platform that imports data and provides a single dashboard is desirable, but may not be possible. Especially for smaller businesses.

How do I implement a DDM approach?

Decide what your key objective is, then determine if you have the data available to analyse. If you don’t have the data you need to analyse, start small in what you do have and then focus on gaining the data and insights you need for the future.

Example 1 – Reaching prospective customers effectively through social media

  • Run A/B testing campaigns. Look at running the same ad to the same audience but try different layouts using alternative images, headings and buttons. This can show you which is more effective in terms of performance. Facebook Ads lets you shuffle your creative and provide data reports. This can then inform you of how to design more effective ads in the future. Facebook also gives you insights into your customers to help define better targeting in future campaigns.
  • Post more relevant content to followers. If you have over 100 followers on Facebook, valuable engagement insights are provided including shares, reactions and comments. This can help inform you which posts/content/themes resonate more strongly with your audience.

Example 2 – Creating personalised offers to top customers/accounts in retail

In this example, top customers may or may not be known with their transaction history. To gain this information, you could use a DDM approach to determine:

The value of in-store purchases versus your online purchases

Look at data captured for each of these channels. For online purchases, login-style accounts may be set up where customer data is available and attached to purchases. If not, there will be at minimum email and delivery addresses captured which can be segmented. There may also be a eCommerce platform as part of the website platform. Here, segmenting by purchases and even categories may be possible to use in re-targeting with special offers including coupons codes, or upsell offers in line with past purchases.

In-store, there may not be a loyalty program in place where customers are attached to purchase transactions. Permanent staff might recognise who a regular customer is, but some casual staff may not.

Recommended DDM approach:

1.Determine and target top online customers

2. Design and implement an in-store loyalty program to capture top customer data. Membership numbers could be then be added to online accounts to complete a customer view.

It’s important to always check your privacy and security settings to ensure you act ethically when contacting and communicating with your customers.

Are you using your data effectively to identify and target customers?

Word out can help you to craft a DDM approach to your marketing to identify, target, convert and retain customers. Reach out to us today.

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content calendar

What day is it ‘socially’ today?

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If you look at your common wall calendar, you’ll notice that there are many ‘holidays’ that are special for one reason or another. It might be religious holidays, social media holidays, or key festivals. Some of these holidays are created by fans such May The 4th Be With You, others by official organisations. Some are silly like International Talk like a Pirate Day on September 19, some celebrate family  including National Grandparents Day on 31 October, whilst others have important purpose behind them such as today which is Remembrance Day  (#lestweforget).

Regardless, these holidays can be really useful in creating content and marketing activities that organically reaches your audience and creates shared value. They are best used when planned out in a content calendar that’s part of your communication plan.

November offers up many key ‘holidays’ such as:

  • Men’s Health Awareness Month – #movember
  • Black Friday, 26th of November – #blackfriday
  • Cyber Monday, 29th of November –  #cybermonday
  • Giving Tuesday, 30th of November – #givingtuesday

Principles of using holidays in your marketing:

  • Make sure it aligns with your company values and core beliefs
  • Ensure that it is respectful to your customers and prospective target market
  • Be respectful to other cultures and belief systems

Holiday marketing guidelines:

  1. Ensure that the holiday you are using is relevant and that you have the right date (it may change year-to-year). You can create social posts prior to the actual date and schedule these to post on the appropriate day so you don’t forget!
  2. Research and use the appropriate hashtag in your social posts for organic reach
  3. Have fun with holidays, creating marketing campaigns and conversations. For example, create dialog with your audience socially by sharing photos for #WorldPhotoDay on August 19 or run a competition with your customers by sharing their last 5 emojis on July 17 for #WorldEmojiDay
  4. Don’t overuse holidays, posting on social media ‘just because’ as that will deter your audience or connect you with an audience that may not share your core beliefs
  5. Don’t approach holidays in an adhoc manner. Identify what is relevant to your business, how it fits into your overall marketing objectives and plan out across the year.

If you would like to find out more about using holidays in your marketing strategy, or to plan your content calendar for 2022, please reach out.

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Marketing resilience

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How do we build resilience into our marketing and communication plans?

If you google the word ‘resilience’ you will be told “it’s the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness”.

In business we have to have a retrospective and a forward-looking view of where we’ve been and where we’re going. In terms of being resilient we have to be both accepting of what’s specifically happened and how we move on from it as well as acknowledging we are at a different point to where we need to be.

So how do we build resilience into our marketing plans?

1. Gain insider knowledge – understand your market and competitors. Know your strengths and weaknesses, the factors that you can control and the factors you can’t. Undertake a market insight research report, have a SWOT summary and write a risk management contingency plan that identifies potential threats and address what you can do if they happen.  

2. Build a strong and resilient brand identity. What are your brand values, specific beliefs, personality; in terms of tone and voice, and your visual identity? Develop cohesive visual and content guidelines that you and your team can work with to ensure a consistent brand is represented across all your marketing activities, including social media accounts and associated posts and paid ads.

3. See the big picture – add  ‘what if’ branches into our marketing and communication tree – plan your year out, input key events, marketing activities and external events into a communication plan and create a content calendar to plan your messaging around it. Create a flowchart of plan B and even plan C if plan A doesn’t go how you thought it would. Through doing this, you can then have the flexibility to change and evolve plans as you go without an interrupting the ‘conversation’ you are having to your customers.

4. Data is your weapon. Use it. Have analytical checkpoints in your key marketing activities including and not limited to SEO, SEM, social media and advertising. See what is working and what isn’t working and change marketing activities whilst they are ‘in motion’ rather than just an evaluation at the end of the campaign. If online advertising isn’t gaining traction, change it. If your key words aren’t achieving higher search results, change them.

5. Hear the people. Listen and adapt to customers’ changing needs to help them be resilient too. Have active engagement with your followers on social platforms such as Instagram where you can gain insights into what your customers are saying, liking, reading, watching and doing and then use those insights to attract new followers and deepen existing relationships. You can use tools on Instagram such as close friends for loyalty programs and to target special offers that are relevant to specific customers.

Find out more about building resilience into your marketing plans

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