In session 40 of A Marketing Podcast, I focus on some of the hurdles that small businesses have when adopting social media. I also talk about the difference between the major social channels in regards to the type of messaging and content that you should develop to optimize the engagement of potential customers in those channels.



Why small businesses struggle when adopting social media

To get on board with social media as a marketing, and potentially a communications, tool the measurement of its success needs to be established from the get-go.

In my experience, the number 1 reason why businesses of all sizes struggle to find value in social media is the way in which they try to measure its effectiveness as part of their marketing budget.

The typical measurement for any marketing is a boost in sales.

Social media, however, is better served by the volume of engagement and size of a community. Let me explain:

social media requires a sustained level of effort of a long period of time in order to produce tangible results. Social media by its very nature is about being social, not being a salesperson.

I like to explain social media as a party, or even better a networking event. How many times do you walk into a conversation and say hey I’m Matt, here’s my thing you should buy??? I’m wagering never.

But if you join the conversation, maybe listen for a while, then add value – you’re more likely to be included, listened to, and seen as someone that can provide future value.

That’s how you should use social.

So with that in mind – measuring social media is not about the boost in sales, it’s about the growth of community and growth of engagement.

So why do small business struggle adopting social media – they’re looking for short-term results and measuring the wrong things.

Personal Social Media vs Business Social Media

First off, the most important thing is to keep your personal social media, personal. Unless of course, if you’re providing a product or service that is a result or relates to your personal experiences or life.

The two main reasons for keeping things separate:



* Your personal tone and brand is not the same as your businesses, so mixing those would create confusion to potential customers

* Mixing your personal opinions and thoughts in the business social channels, essentially means your businesses opinions match yours. And that can be dangerous!!!



Context of Social Media Channels – Different content and messaging

Different social media channels warrant different messaging. This is important to know when adopting social media.

Not all social channels are created equal, and the way in which people consume content on each channel is different. Knowing this means we need to adapt our content for each channel we use, to ensure we’re talking the way in which our audience expects and is looking for.

The channels that you select as part of your marketing strategy should be based on the content you already have and wish to create. and a little about how much time you have to spend managing your social media.

Let’s quickly cover the content expectations in the main social media channels:

Facebook – Facebook content if probably to most comprehensive of the social media channels (except maybe LinkedIn more on that in a sec). You can use all types of content mediums, but more importantly is that Facebook users aren’t necessarily attracted to one form of the content verse the other. From short textual posts to short stories accompanied by videos. So Facebook is a great place to start if you have the time to put a fair amount of effort into creating content.

LinkedIn – Known as the B2B social channel, also has the ability to deliver many types of content mediums. However,

Session 40: Adopting Social Media for Your Small Business

In session 39 of A Marketing Podcast I walk through setting up Google analytics and claiming your Google business as part of your marketing platform setup. Ensuring that you can monitor and review your website’s traffic and interactions with various content and campaigns is imperative in understanding how your marketing is performing throughout the year.



Creating A Google account

In order to setup the various Google services available to us, we need to have a Google account created.

I recommend creating a new account for your business in order to separate your personal access and information from your business access. This is more important if you work in a small business that has multiple employees. By having a business specific account your can provide access to your employees without worrying about access to personal content. You can alink your personal email/Google account to your analytics and AdWords and other accounts later if you wish.

To create a new account visits google.com (you’ll be redirected to the regional version of google for your location)

Click on the sign in button and then the sign-up link. Simply enter the required details and continue the signup process.

That’s it – pretty easy!

Setting up Google analytics

Now that you’ve created your google account you can begin setting up the various services Google provides that will help us with your website and marketing monitoring and reporting.

Let’s start with setting up Google analytics.

GA is the Industry leader in analytical data for your website. Plus it’s free to install and use. There simply is no better alternative for those of you getting started out, as well as experienced marketers. There are higher level analytical tools for larger sites and for deeper dives into integrations with other systems and so on and so forth. But for your website, Google Analytics is the way to go.

Creating a new account

In order to start tracking and viewing your website’s analytics, you n eed to create an account within Google analytics.

Setting up google analytics starts once you’ve logged into your new account.

Navigate to: google.com/analytics

Then click on admin then select create account. If you don’t have any accounts yet you’ll see a big button, if you do then the create new account button will be at the bottom of your accounts list.

Enter your account name. I use the full name of the website – so A Marketing Podcast. Then enter the website name I use A Marketing Podcast Website. These are the Account name, and Property name for later reference.

Update the various other fields on the creation form such as timezone and industry. And also select the data sharing settings you’d like to use. totally up to you!

Then click get tracking code! and you’re done.

Installing your tracking code


Next step is to install your tracking code on your website. From the previous step we created your new account and obtained our tracking code, this code is a JavaScript snippet that needs to be placed on every page of your website.

The best place to put your new tracking code is right after the body tag. If you’re using a wordpress site, or most other Content Management Systems, you can obtain plugins to make it easy to put your tracking code into your site.

Another option is to use the Google Tag Manager system. You’ll need your website developer to help implement the tag manager code. But once in place, you can manage tags and codes (for things like Ad-words) without requiring help from your developer. Something to consider.

Once your code is in place and GA can see it you’ll get a verified notice in the property management section of your new account.

Session 39: Digital Marketing Setup – Setting up Google Analytics

In session 38 of A Marketing Podcast, I provide an overview of how the year is going to unfold for the show. I also get started on the first theme of the year, digital marketing setup. In particular the setup of your brand elements and website. Including some basic SEO setup and considerations for your new website.



The Plan for 2017

A themed approach to the year – one theme per month. The theory here is that you can plan for what themes you’d like to tune in for as well as know what’s coming to plan ahead in your marketing.

Themes:



* January – Digital Marketing Setup

* February – Inbound Marketing

* March – Advertising your SMB online

* April – Search Engine Optimization

* May – Social Media for Small Business

* June – Keeping up with marketing trends

* July – Day to day marketing

* August – Marketing Automation

* September – Communications in SMB

* October – Customer Journey Mapping

* November – Festive Season Marketing

* December – A Year in Review





Small Business Digital Marketing Setup Checklist [DOWNLOAD]









Before we get started on today’s topic, check out the setup checklist I’ve created that this month will cover.

With this month’s theme being all about digital marketing setup – I’ve created a checklist to walk you through the steps to complete your online presense to be ready for all your marketing efforts. It’s called the small business digital marketing setup checklist and you can find it here: http://www.amarketingpodcast.com/digitalsetup



Visual Brand Elements









In order to perform any marketing, digital or otherwise, you need to have your brand taken care of.

Building your brand is an entire process to itself, I’m not going to cover that today, but what I am going to cover is the minimal set of visual digital assets you need for your marketing.

List of assets you need:



* Company Logo – of course, no surprise there, however, the more sizes and colors you have it in the better

* Color Pallet – primary, secondary and tertiary colors

* Font Stack – know what fonts your brand should be using, and make sure you have a web font was chosen (Google fonts is a good place to start

* Brand Imagery – lifestyle shots, product shots, etc.





Setting up your website









Obviously to do any digital marketing you want to have a website. Although, not technically required, let’s just say it’s easier to market your business with your own website.

You can rely heavily on a social channel but you want to have your own owned property where you control everything – that’s your website.



* Most of you likely have a website already setup, but for those of you just getting started in business there are a few things to consider:





* Select a domain name – Godaddy is the way to go

* Web hosting – You can easily create an entire podcast on web hosting and all of the options available to you. I use 1and1 Hosting for A Marketing Podcast. They have many options to choose from.

* Your actual website – the files that create the pages of your site

* Basic SEO setup – more in a minute on this one.























Web Hosting and your Website









To figure out what type of web hosting to use and to build your website,

Session 38: 2017 and Small Business Digital Marketing Setup – Part 1

In session 37 of A Marketing Podcast, I give you a quick review of the year of 2016. I also talk about the plan for 2017 and what I have in store for you all.



2016 Review

Thank you to everyone who tuned into the podcast! You’re the reason for the show and I sincerely hope you’re getting the value you expect and have been able to implement a few things from the show.

The Show launched on March 31st, with the release of Session 1, 2 & 3.

A Marketing Podcast achieved 10,000 Downloads on October 7th, and sits at 14,250 as of recording.

I share to show you how the podcast is progressing and to segway into what A Marketing Podcast will be all about in 2017….

So what is the show going to be all about in 2017….

What’s in store for 2017

Still focusing on Marketing Strategy

I’m still going to focus on Marketing strategy for small business, but I’m going to work to deliver many more interviews and references to current and timely examples of marketing strategy to demonstrate how the implementation of solid strategy achieves success.

Monthly Topics and themes

The show will be themed based on a monthly basis. Meaning each month in 2017 will focus on a specific marketing topic. The final topics are still in development and I’ll share those as soon as they are finalized through the community newsletter. If you haven’t joined the email list for the AMP community you can do so at amarketingpodcast.com/joinamp

If you have a particular topic or theme you’d like to hear on the show let me know through the Ask Matt section of the website.

Same structure, but with more interviews and some marketing news

The structure of the shows will remain largely intact, but with more interviews and themes. Potentially more news as it relates to the monthly topic.

That’s all for 2016

Now that you know what your info in 2017, it’s time for the final announcement today, and that is that I’ll be taking a small hiatus until the new year.

With the festive season, busy times at work, and the launch of my first SAAS application www.podcasteasy.com – The CRM for podcasters, I don’t have the time to put together the three remaining shows for 2016. But I’ll be back and releasing the first show for 2017 on January 2 or 3.

As I mentioned earlier I’ll be sending out next year’s themes and topics in the next week or so to those in the AMP community and we’ll be in touch in 2017.

Merry Christmas everyone, may your time be spent with family and provide you with some time to reflect on all the good things in life. And we’ll get back to marketing in a huge way in early Jan.

Until then, bye for now!





Thanks for listening in!

If you have any questions about this session, leave them in the comments section below. If you enjoyed the show, let your friends know by using the social sharing buttons below. Your help sharing the podcast will allow me to help more business owners and marketers just like you be more strategic!

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, or your favorite podcast app/service. Please leave your reviews on the iTunes store. Ratings and Reviews are a huge factor in the success of the podcast, and your support of the show means a lot to me. I read every single review, so be honest and let me know if there’s something I can improve on.

Session 37: 2016 Year in Review, and the 2017 plan

In session 36 of A Marketing Podcast, I’m talking about 2017 Marketing Strategy Development. It’s that time of year to get your strategy developed and ready for the new year. In this session, I walk through the strategy template I’ve developed and outlined some of the tricks and tips to help you fill out each section and develop a strategy that’s going to make it easy to be successful in your marketing.




Session 36: 2017 Marketing Strategy Development

This session focuses in on the sections of the FREE 12 Page Marketing Strategy Template. You can Download it right here!

Theory behind the template



* Helps marketers develop a logic approach to establishing the tactics and marketing mix that will achieve your strategies goals and objectives

* Helps marketers and small business owners develop budgets that make sense by pairing back the best strategic approach to an obtainable budget amount. More on this later.



Establishing Goals and Objectives

[Related: Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives]

What a Goal is? What an objective is? It’s important to understand the difference so that they work together to achieve what it is you want for your business in relation to your marketing outcomes.

Create goals before objectives, and make sure that your objectives lather up to each goal. It’s also important to create goals that are obtainable, but still, push your marketing to achieve something worth achieving.

Understanding and Developing your target audiences

[Related: Session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences]

There is always more than one target audience for your business. Make sure to consider them all and establish a good range of target audiences, whilst ensuring that your marketing makes sense to target each audience.

Developing target audiences can be performed in many ways. However, I like to divide the initial creation of target audiences into two main groups. Current customers, and potential customers.

Talk with your current customers to develop various target audiences based on information they provide.

Then work on establishing target audience of potential customers. Those that haven’t used your product or service yet. Or even whole industries and markets that don’t know that your business product or service, could be a fit.

Performing a Marketing SWOT Analysis

[Related: Session 5: Performing a marketing SWOT analysis]

A marketing SWOT is different than a business SWOT.

It can be used as an analysis, or audit, of your past marketing efforts as well as helping you establishing the environment for your initial marketing efforts for your 2017 marketing strategy.



* Strengths – use them to position your business above your competitors

* Weaknesses – Should you improve them, or avoid them?

* Opportunities – get some advice on developing/identifying opportunities as you may not be able to see them from within your business.

* Threats – again work with someone external to help identify threats, and decide whether to avoid them or tackle them head on. Both have the potential for a high level of success but tread lightly.



Creating Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

[Related: Session 6: Creating your unique selling proposition]

Your unique selling proposition is crucial in setting your business apart from your competition.

It’s important to note what a USP is not!

There are three main questions to answer that help you develop you...

Session 36: 2017 Marketing Strategy Development

In session 35 of A Marketing Podcast I’m talking about executing a scientific approach to advertising. The approach provides you with a way to constantly compare and contrast the many different options and approaches there are to performing advertising, both online and offline.




Session 35: A Scientific approach to advertising

Thanks for joining me again for Session 35 of A Marketing Podcast, sorry about last week, the dreaded flu got me and I was in bed for a couple days.

But today’s sessions, I think, is worth the wait. Especially if you are doing your own advertising at the moment, or thinking about it in the future.

Today’s going to be about a scientific approach to advertising. buts its not a complex as you think. It’s about performing experiments in order to continuously improve the advertising that you perform and to maximize the bang for your buck.

Today’s show will include:



* The structure of a science experiment

* Developing a hypothesis

* Controlled elements in your experiment

* Variables in your experiment

* The experimental procedure

* Analysis and your findings



So let’s get started.

The structure of a science experiment

Remember back in high school when you were asked to prove a hypothesis and had to do so with controlled elements and variables elements.

Let’s review shall we.

All science experiments require the following to develop an insight or develop a fact:



* a hypothesis

* controlled element/s

* variable element/s

* procedure



Developing a Hypothesis

What is a Hypothesis – a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.

It’s the thing we’re trying to prove as true or false put simply.

In advertising this is the hardest part of the process. But the most important as well. Our hypothesis can be virtually anything but here’s an example to get you thinking…

“Is Facebook advertising better for my business than Display advertising through Google?”

or even better

“Facebook delivers more conversions for the same media spend then display advertising through Google”

As you can see I refine the hypothesis to help me establish something more measurable and specific – which makes it easier to prove/disprove.

Controlled elements in your experiments

The controlled element in your experiment will allow you to test different variable elements against each other. You must have at least one controlled element to execute a scientific approach to advertising.

The controlled element, may also require multiple elements such as in our previous example the controlled elements would be:



* the same budget spend

* the same targeting

* the same conversion metric

* the same advertising messaging (if not exactly the same words)



The more precise you can be in making as many things exactly the same the easier it is to pinpoint the variable and determine your hypothesis.

The variable elements

The variable elements are those that differ in your experiments. The variables for your experiment can be many, however you must work to have as few variables as possible in each experiment.

Again using our example, the only variable we want left over is the channel we’re using, be it Facebook or Google Adwords.

Now how do we actually perform the experiment???

The procedure to perform our experiments

In order to execute a scientific approach to advertising your experiment you must have a set procedure to test our hypothesis, by managing your controlled elements, and comparing the variables.

Here’s a simple procedure for our experiment.

1.

Session 35: A Scientific approach to advertising

In session 34 of A Marketing Podcast I talk Customer Marketing Overview. I go over when customer marketing kicks in and things to consider to deliver the right message to your current customers in order to achieve up-sells and additional revenue from your current customers.

There’s a way to perform customer marketing that doesn’t seem like a heavy sales approach to up-sells at the point that they make their initial purchase from you. In this show I discuss how to a chive this in a way that not only gets more revenue but does so in a way that build loyalty and retention.




Session 34: Customer Marketing Overview

When to start customer marketing

As soon as a potential customer makes a purchase you should initialize your customer marketing. That’s not to say open the flood gates to marketing right then, but start the process of developing your relationship with your customers.

Messaging for customers should be different the potential customers

Messaging for customers should not be about awareness and the benefits or solutions that your product provides, instead how you can improve their experience of the purchase they have made.

Plain and simple: improve the value of the purchase they have made.

Tactical approaches to customer marketing

Remarketing is great once we have a customer. Because we can get focused in our messages and promotions to our customers.

Email marketing is another great approach to customer marketing because we can communicate directly with our customers in a one-to-one basis.

Customer Marketing and E-mail Marketing

Get your customers email!

If you already have an email list up and running make sure that you can segment, or tag, your customers within that list. My favourite tool for this is ConvertKit – Get 30 days FREE by clicking this link and checking it out.

The reason to segment your customers out is so that, once again, we message differently to them.

Provide value in exchange for your customers joining your “member/customer” email list. Member only promotions work great, for example:



* be the first to know

* member only promotions/discounts

* new product releases and first access to those products for members only



These are also the content to put in your emails over time to entice additional sales to your current customers.

Marketing should be part of your customer support

When providing customer support, we should always be taking an approach to fix our customers issues and deliver up-sell or promotional items that relate to the purchase they have already made. So marketing at the same time as customer support.

If you’re providing customer support online, provide it in a way that again, solves the problem, but always keeps marketing in mind by using content on the website. Potentially, even referring to other products or services during the support call.

An angry customers is a great opportunity

More often than not the clients I work with do everything they can to avoid negative customers and issues online. However, they pose a great opportunity to develop a very happy , and loyal, customer.

The reason I mention this is that if you can turn an angry customer around, their story can be used in your marketing. Also, you can identify what went wrong and what may help other customers feel better about their purchase, and use that in your customer marketing.

Check out a favourite book of mine to help with this. It’s called Hug Your Haters by Jay Bear

Don’t be a pushy salesman

Deliver marketing to your current customers with great value adding up-sells. If you don’t have additional products or services that truly build on the valu...

Session 34: A Customer Marketing Discussion

In session 33 of A Marketing Podcast I talk about awareness marketing and how it’s more than just paying for impressions. I touch on the differences between brand awareness and issue awareness, as well as some thoughts on getting the most out of your awareness marketing to drive true awareness.




Session 33: Awareness marketing – Not just impressions

The different types of awareness marketing

I discuss the difference between the two main ways awareness marketing is used. Which is for brand awareness and for awareness of issues. An example being Breast Cancers pink color placement on various products and sports athletes to bring awareness to the issue.

It shouldn’t start and stop with impressions

Many marketers, and agencies, deliver awareness marketing by delivering as many impressions as possible. Now it’s not wrong to deliver as many impressions as possible, but the issue lies in impressions being the start and stop of the marketing success criteria.

I believe that engagement drives more awareness the impressions alone. Just think when you interact with a brand, or a brand interacts with you, your more likely to remember the brand and have that affect your future purchases.

Awareness marketing for small business

As a small  business, or small business marketer, performing the generic impression based awareness marketing doesn’t make sense. You’re likely working with pretty tight  budgets and are unable to pay for impressions.

My recommendation is to drive brand awareness through performing good marketing. The type of marketing that drives engagement or actions to develop real awareness of your brand.

Understanding that the first step in your marketing should always be awareness marketing. If you’re targeting new consumers with your advertising/marketing you should be delivering your brands visual elements, and tone anyway.

A real world awareness marketing example

I discuss the direction taken in my last marketing role. Focused on labor unions, public service workers specifically, and how the awareness marketing campaigns were performed and measured.

Research to help measuring awareness

In order to understand how effective your awareness marketing is, you need to perform research within the geographical regions that your marketing will be viewed.

In the show I talk about how to perform that research and a couple items to keep in mind so that your research can identify the level of awareness and by how much it is increased.





Thanks for listening in!

If you have any questions about this session, leave them in the comments section below. If you enjoyed the show, let your friends know by using the social sharing buttons below. Your help sharing the podcast will allow me to help more business owners and marketers just like you be more strategic!

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, or your favorite podcast app/service. Please leave your reviews on the iTunes store. Ratings and Reviews are a huge factor in the success of the podcast, and your support of the show means a lot to me. I read every single review, so be honest and let me know if there’s something I can improve on.

Session 33: Awareness marketing – Not just impressions

In session 32 of A Marketing Podcast I talk about the power of a CRM tool in your marketing. I cover what a CRM is and how to sue it help develop marketing insight and even how to use it as part of your marketing automation process.

As with almost every session of the show I touch on the importance of knowing your target audience in marketing, and the CRM is a great tool for helping you do just that.




Session 32: The power of a CRM in Marketing

What is a CRM?

The acronym CRM stands for “Customer Relationship Management”, or “Client Relationship Management”.

The core functionalities of a CRM system, is to allow you the ability to record specific information about your customers. As well as information about purchases and history with your business.

Types of customer data to gather

Make sure that we have at least one piece of contact information for each customer. That means gathering an email, or phone number, of even postal address.

Second to contact information, is gathering additional information to help us develop our target audiences. So things like geographic, demographic, likes/dislikes etc. Collection information about purchases is a great way to gather additional information. Depending on your products/service different audiences may buy different products, so keeping track of those purchases and any related information.

Developing Target audiences from your CRM Data

Most CRM tools provide reporting features to help identify quick insights and information about your customer base.

Make use of surveys to build better information about your customers. Now that we have customers and their contact details sending surveys, and the number of response you get, will increase.

Once you get your survey information, or just from basic questioning of your customers, get it into your CRM tool. The cross reference, or combine your CRM with your survey data and see what you get.

Integrating your CRM in marketing processes – or marketing automation

Gather the information and insights from your CRM and base your marketing strategies, and even specific tactics, on that data.

[Related: Session 27: Getting Started in Marketing Automation]

Most CRM tools integrate directly into marketing automation processes. And those that don’t still allow you the ability to get the contact details out of the CRM and into your email marketing program.

CRM tools

These CRM tools demonstrate the different levels of CRM in marketing, and the range of tools that are available.

PipeDrive



* Focuses on marketing/sales funnels and integrates contacts in that process

* Find out more about PipeDrive



Hubspot CRM



* A free CRM tool that keeps track of customers and contacts and integrates into the Hubspot world of inbound marketing tools.

* Find out more about Hubspot CRM



SalesForce



* An enterprise level CRM and integration into LinkedIn and provides tools for marketing/sales funnels.

* Find out more about Salesforce CRM



InfusionSoft



* Great option for small business, and plays nicely with InfusionSoft’s marketing automation products. Still a very complex tool, but easy to understand and begin using.

* Find out more about InfusionSoft



Highrise



* A great place to start in your CRM implementation.

Session 32: The Power of a CRM in Marketing

It’s Thanksgiving here in Canada! So naturally I was laid out on the couch full of turkey and didn’t get to putting together a full session for you to listen too. Sometimes you simply need to lay back and hang out with your family, so that’s what I did.

Next week though, I’ve picked the topic and it’s the Power of a good CRM in your marketing. So I’ll go over what to collect in your CRM, how it can be used in your marketing, and a couple systems for different levels and types of business that might be worth implementing if you don’t currently have a solution in place.




Obviously there’ll be much more detail in next weeks show notes but’s here’s what I’m going to cover:



* What is a CRM?

* What customer information to collect

* Gathering insights for marketing strategies and tactics

* Integrating your CRM into your marketing automation

* A couple CRM systems that may work for your small business



Ok guys, see you next week!





Thanks for listening in!

If you have any questions about this session, leave them in the comments section below. If you enjoyed the show, let your friends know by using the social sharing buttons below. Your help sharing the podcast will allow me to help more business owners and marketers just like you be more strategic!

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast through iTunes, or your favorite podcast app/service. Please leave your reviews on the iTunes store. Ratings and Reviews are a huge factor in the success of the podcast, and your support of the show means a lot to me. I read every single review, so be honest and let me know if there’s something I can improve on.

Session 31: Happy Thanksgiving (Canadian Edition)

A Marketing Podcast, hosted by Matt Coco a Marketing Strategist and Digital Marketing Professional, focuses on marketing strategy and execution for business owners, and small marketing teams. The show provides insight into the development of the right marketing mix for small to medium business owners who market their own product or service.  Business owners are busy people, and that makes it difficult to develop a solid strategy and execute. There is a way, it just takes time, diligence, and a defined step by step process that you can obtain from the show and the website. The biggest thing I’ve learned is that there simply is no shortcut to success. Smoke and mirrors only work in horror houses, so unless you have a horror house for a business – you’ve got some work to do!

A Marketing Podcast with Matt Coco

In session 17 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss how to get started in Search Engine Optimization. This is your SEO 101 course as I walk you through the three basic progressions to optimizing your website in relation to your search engine rankings.




Session 17: Show Notes

Search Engine Optimization is not part of your marketing strategy

SEO is the act of providing search engines the information they need to rank your website as high as possible for the keywords that you deem to be important to you.

First off, SEO is as much an art as it is a science. Many will claim they understand the science of search engines and how to optimize and rank your website at the top of Google, but it’s a fact, that the number of factors that determine your website’s ranking for a specific term are not 100% known. Therefore, it’s impossible for someone to know all the ways in which to achieve perfect rankings.

That’s where art comes into play.

The art is marketing, making assumptions and understanding your audience to deliver content that they will read and share and get value out of.

If you want to improve your rankings and stay there, develop great content, ensure your website is setup correctly, and generate links from credible websites back to yours. SEO is essentially that easy.

Ensure your website is setup correctly, develop great content, and generate links from credible websites back to yours

But why is SEO not part of your marketing strategy?

That’s because SEO is the act of optimizing content and your sites appearance to search engines. It’s not a strategic approach to marketing, or even a marketing tactic.

SEO is applied to the various tactics that you use to market.

For example, you should have a content marketing strategy, or even campaigns, and you should apply SEO to the content you develop in that campaign.

Much like you should have a Social Media strategy that includes driving traffic to your website. Which will have an effect on your SEO rankings if other begin to share your content or visits your website.

The exception to this rule is potentially having a back linking campaign or strategy. But even then, the way in which you build back links should be through partnerships and content development.

White Hats and Black Hats

In SEO the terms white hat and black hat are used to refer to the idea of there being some SEO tactics that are professional and sound, whilst others are little more fishy and potentially “scammy”.

I’m not going to push you in either direction, but I am going to explain the difference in relation to some tactics. And depending on your way of operating you can apply the approach you wish.

White Hat tactics

• Developing great content


• Working with others in your industry to share that content and link back to your website (guest blogging)


• Providing genuine data in your META output


• The long game of SEO, and built on honesty and a genuine approach to providing value through content.

Black Hat tactics

• Spamming forums and directories for back links


• Creating your own network of websites to deliver back links with ease


• Delivering metadata that is not related to your content and typically jammed with keyword heavy content


• Can get as bad as hacking other websites to paste links and place content referring to your website


• Hidden text or links


• And more but you get the point

Google being the leader in search is always working to prevent the black hat tactics from actually working, but as you can see, from the tactics I just mentioned, some of these still work today.

For what it’s worth the tactics I use on A Marketing Podcast are white hat tactics, not only because I want to appear genuine and stay out of trouble with Google,

Session 17: SEO 101 – Getting started in Search Engine Optimization

In session 15 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss what customer journey mapping and Omni channel marketing is all about. First I dig into two methods to understanding the shopper journey, and then how to develop the journey for your specific audience. Thew I quickly explain what Omni Channel Marketing is and how I believe it differs from multi channel marketing. As well I provide two examples of great Omni channel marketing executions by a couple of well known companies.




Session 15: Show Notes

Customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping works to identify the way in which your potential customers (as well as your current customers) move towards making a purchase from you.

The customer journey can be envisioned in two main ways:



* Marketing funnel

* Consumer decision journey



Both theories work to help you understand your potential customers journey towards making a purchase, however one is linear in nature and one is cyclical in nature.

Let me explain the difference and which theory you should focus on, depending on your marketing mix.

Marketing Funnels

Marketing funnels are made up of steps that indicate a shopper’s journey to making a purchase.

The process is linear in fashion and assumes the shoppers progress through the funnel step by step.

A typical Marketing funnel would include the following steps in this particular order:



* Awareness

* Interest

* Consideration

* Intent

* Evaluation

* Purchase

* Loyalty



However, as our marketing becomes more complex and the shopper is more in charge of their purchase decisions, the marketing funnels has become less accurate in predicting the process towards a purchase.

It’s still valuable in identifying the steps that may be taken by shoppers, but it’s not much more common for shoppers to move in different ways through the funnel. Sometimes skipping steps altogether, or even backtracking to perform steps that have already been performed.

Such as re-considering the alternative products that could be purchased (which is typically one of the first steps in a customer journey)

Some additional reading on the changes in shopper journeys and how marketers can no longer reply on the marketing funnel.

The consumer decision journey

Involves more of a cyclical approach to shopper progression towards purchases.

The consumer decision journey involves 5 phases.

Those are:



* Initial consideration

* Active evaluation

* Moment of Purchase

* Post Purchase Experience

* Loyalty Loop



Initial Consideration

Involves the shopper learning about your product or service and performing a preliminary review.

The type of marketing that helps at this phase is typically advertising or marketing tactics that target a new customer base (those who’ve never heard or you business).

Active Evaluation

The shopper has decided that your product/service is a possible solution and begins performing in depth research and information gathering.

Content marketing is great for this phase of the journey as it provides the information to make evaluation of your business and product/service as easy as possible.

Those who communicate the best appear the most viable. Quality aside.

Moment of Purchase

Pretty self explanatory – our shopper has made the leap – yay our marketing worked!

Post Purchase Experience

This is, what I believe, to be the easiest and most important part of the journey.

Of course getting a sale is a great thing to achieve, but now you have a potential advocate for your business who can tell your story with more power and conviction than you ever can.

Session 15: Customer Journey Mapping and Omni Channel Marketing

In session 8 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss tactical and campaign planning and strategies as part of your marketing strategy. This is the section of your marketing strategy to provide further guideline to the execution of your marketing mix and the tactics within it. I walk through some basic social, email, website, and content marketing strategies.




Session 8: Show Notes

Recap of Previous Sessions (related to strategy development):



* [FREE DOWNLOAD] Small Business Marketing Strategy Template

* Session 2: What is a marketing strategy and why do I need one?

* Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives

* Session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences

* Session 5: Performing a marketing SWOT analysis

* Session 6: Creating your selling proposition

* Session 7: Developing a marketing mix



What this section of the strategy is for

To help further plan your tactical and campaign executions now that we’ve developed our marketing mix.

I break it down into two types of planning tactical strategies and campaign plans.

An example of an ongoing tactic would be a social media strategy.

The 5 Essential strategies for Small business



* Marketing Strategy – The big one (so need to cover it)

* Social Media Strategy

* Email Marketing Strategy

* Website strategy

* Content Marketing Strategy



Related: 5 Essential Small Business Marketing Strategies

Social Media Strategy

I like to use a social media strategy to focus on the development of my community within each channel. As opposed to including things like social content marketing, or advertising in social to drive website traffic. These types of social marketing belong in content strategies or website strategies (in my mind).

Things to consider:



* Which channel/s to target (make sure your desired audience is there)

* What kind of content we need for that channel (how to talk our audience, specific type of content)

* An editorial or content distribution calendar

* Timing and volume of content distribution

* Divisions of content (internal divisions, by product service, etc)



Email Marketing Strategy

I like to break my email marketing strategy into two pieces:



* Email list building

* Marketing to your list



List building:



* Strategies on how you plan to build your list

* Check out Brian Harris of VideoFruit.com for some great list building ideas – find one of his webinars that are full of value.



Marketing to your list:



* Ways to market and communicate with general email list subscribers

* I talk about the AMP community list and marketing around it.



Website Strategy

Your website will play a role in other tactical strategies but I feel it still deserves its own strategy and plan.

It can include things like:



* Functional improvements (may cross over into IT but if you don’t have IT department it needs to live under marketing strategy)



* I’m referring to lead gen tool development, or functionality that improves user experience to drive more lead generation.

Session 8: Tactical and Campaign Planning

In session 9 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss how to develop a budget for marketing using one of three different calculations/methods. At the end of this session you’ll have developed a budget that suites your business and delivers on what we’ve worked to achieve in our marketing strategy.




Session 9: Show Notes

Recap of Previous Sessions (related to strategy development):



* Session 2: What is a marketing strategy and why do I need one?

* Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives

* Session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences

* Session 5: Performing a marketing SWOT analysis

* Session 6: Creating your selling proposition

* Session 7: Developing a marketing mix

* Session 8: Tactical and Campaign Planning

* [FREE DOWNLOAD] Small Business Marketing Strategy Template



Some stats on SMB marketing spending

Some amazing numbers around small business marketing budgets of SMB’s in North America.



* 70% are spending less than $500 on marketing per month (vs. 73% in 2013) total of less than $6,000 a year – making the average marketing budget for small business less than $6,000 a year. WOW – that’s not much.

* 83% are spending less than $1,000 on marketing per month (vs. 85% in 2013)

* Just 16% are spending more than $1,000 on marketing per month (vs. 16% in 2013)

* The highest percentage of smb’s spending between 0-100 per month.

* As the smb company size grows so to does the budget – makes sense.

*  31% of smbs saw phone calls as the major metric measuring success (collection of emails was no-where to be seen)



Some notes on the stats presented:



* In this survey we had a wide-range of small & medium businesses take part; from plumbers, event planners and private investigators, to locksmiths, mechanics and party entertainers. It’s fair to say that the participants don’t come from any one industry alone, and so the results should be treated as such.

* The study was conducted in October / November 2014

* 736 SMBs completed the survey with 95% located in North America



These numbers are according to Bright Local – you can see the report here: https://www.brightlocal.com/2015/01/07/37-smbs-plan-spend-internet-marketing-2015/

Different methods for establishing a budget for marketing

There’s essentially three methods of developing your marketing budget. They are:



* Percentage of previous years sales

* Percentage of previous years overall budget

* Tactic by tactic, prioritized, and scaled approach



1. Percentage of sales approach

As a general rule look to spend around 5-10% of your sales number on marketing.  In my research as to the percentage other marketers recommend, it ranged from 5 – 15%.

This approach requires that we divide the established number towards our marketing mix in the prioritized order we created when developing our marketing mix.

2. Percentage of Budget

This is the more traditional, and simplified calculation used to figure out your marketing budget.

If you’re just starting your business, it’s likely that you’ll be looking to grow at an increased r...

Session 9: What should I budget for marketing

In session 10 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss how to write your executive summary as well as how to execute your strategy now that we’ve put in all the work to develop it! The execution includes the setup, the monitoring and adjusting, and the measurement of success. I also release my new strategy development crash course.




Session 10: Show Notes

Recap of Previous Sessions (related to strategy development):



* Session 2: What is a marketing strategy and why do I need one?

* Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives

* Session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences

* Session 5: Performing a marketing SWOT analysis

* Session 6: Creating your selling proposition

* Session 7: Developing a marketing mix

* Session 8: Tactical and Campaign Planning

* Session 9: What Should I budget for marketing

* [FREE DOWNLOAD] Small Business Marketing Strategy Template



Writing an Executive Summary

The summary is exactly that, a summary! So all you need to do is summarize your strategy for yourself and anyone who will be involved in your marketing. This will allow others to get an idea of what you’ve developed and what you plan to do with your marketing.

There’s no need to spend hours on your executive summary either. Write one or two sentences for each section of your strategy and you’ll be just fine.

Keep the same order as your strategy in your summary, so it makes sense as someone flips through your strategy document.

Apart from being the way for others to get an idea of what you’re doing with your marketing, the summary serves as the first place to reviewing your success measurement and throughout your marketing (more on executing in a minute)

Executing your marketing strategy

Online presence setup

First off, make sure your business’s online presence is setup. I’ll link to a checklist I created to walk you through setting up your business online.

This is important to ensure that your marketing provides somewhere for potential customers to find out more, but more importantly that you can track your marketing results.

Tactical/Campaign setup

Setup ongoing tactics first

Setup the tactics or campaigns that are ongoing for the period of your strategy. For example, Social media channels or Search engine marketing.

Get to work on the complex tactics next

This is just a personal preference, but I like to get the complex tactics setup and ready to go first while I’m still pumped about getting started.

Then setup the remaining tactics according to your tactical/campaign planning schedules. Pretty straight forward stuff.

Marketing In Motion

Now that your marketing is in motion it’s time to monitor and adjust throughout the strategies period. Depending on the tactics, the time span between monitoring and adjusting will differ.

For example, if you’re advertising through Search Engine Marketing – I like to review the results daily for the first week or so, then back off to weekly. Making adjustments each time I review if I’m missing obvious opportunities or there are any issues.

But for things like direct mail, obviously you would review how the tactic went a couple weeks after the mail out.

Session 10: Executing your marketing strategy

In session 5 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss performing a marketing SWOT analysis as part of your marketing strategy. I walk through why your need to do one, and what you will get out of the process. I also walk you through developing each element of the SWOT and provide plenty of examples.



Session 5 Show Notes:

Recap of Previous Sessions (related to strategy development):



* [FREE DOWNLOAD] Small Business Marketing Strategy Template

* Session 2: What is a marketing strategy and why do I need one?

* Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives

* Session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences



What’s the purpose of a Marketing SWOT Analysis



To identify marketing opportunities and marketing weaknesses, so that you can exploit opportunities and protect yourself from threats

This process will be instrumental in the development of your marketing mix.

If you’re not starting a new business and you’ve done marketing before the SWOT analysis, through no extra work, can be used as an Audit tool as well.



How is it different to a regular business SWOT analysis



A marketing SWOT is strictly concerned with marketing Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats

For example, the business strength of a long standing history – would be comparable to a marketing strength of a well established brand

We’re doing this to help us develop our marketing mix later in the strategy, so focusing on marketing SWOT’s is how the process and outcomes are different from a typical business SWOT.



Get your marketing strategy template that includes a SWOT template

Marketing SWOT Analysis: Strengths



Strengths are the elements of your marketing that you should lean on and use to position yourself, and your business above, your competitors

Internal and Helpful Elements

You should build your marketing mix to make use of as many strengths as possible

Compare yourself to your competitors and identify how you will stand out from them in your marketing



As a new business (no marketing yet):



You can develop strengths by thinking about your personal knowledge and experience and how that could apply to marketing for the business

Example: You’re starting a new personal coaching service for corporate 50+ year old males. You’ve worked in the corporate world for 5 years, and you know about the logistics and challenge to get to the gym. This knowledge is a strength.

Example 2: A less complicated example would be if you had 500+ connections on LinkedIn – the strength is a strong LinkedIn presence



As an audit tool (previous marketing performed):



When using the SWOT as an audit tool, think of the outcomes from your marketing and where you stood out from the crowd those are strengths

Example: if you were using  Facebook to drive traffic to an inbound marketing landing page, and you saw great results in terms of conversions- you could identify that you delivered a coherent message between platforms – your strength – understanding of your social community and how to communicate to them

As you can see, to develop and identify strengths from previous marketing, you have to do some research and find out exactly what it was that was successful or failed – this is auditing



A business strength example



as the last two were heavily focused on personal marketing strength here’s a bu...

Session 5: Performing a marketing SWOT analysis

In session 30 of A Marketing Podcast, I’m talking about micro-moments marketing and how to execute marketing that focuses on converting consumers in the micro-moments they have every day. By the end of this session you’ll understand what a micro-moment is and how to market in a way that gives you the best chance possible to convert consumers during their micro-moments into customers of your businesses products or services.




Session 30: Micro-moments marketing for small business

What are micro moments?

Mobile is heavily involved in the micro-moments environment



* 82% of people surveyed check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up

* 87% of people surveyed have their phones on them day and night

* 68% of people surveyed check their phone within 15 minutes of waking up in the morning

* 30% of people surveyed are willing to tell you that they feel anxious if they don’t have their phone on them.



[DOWNLOAD] Micro-moments: Your Guide to winning the shift to mobile

Session 19: A chat with Jonathan LaCoste – We discusses micro-moments and mobile first marketing. Listening Now

How to focus on micro moments with your marketing



* Developing the right content

* Optimizing your website for mobile

* Paid Advertising (device specific)



Developing the right content

When in micro-moment mode – consumers want answers not questions. So give them answers. Here’s some things to keep in mind when creating content specifically to capitalize on micro-moments.



* Create content that answers a specific question

* Create content that shows how-to do something

* Create content that is simple and quick to read

* Create content that provides direction (both metaphorically and how to get somewhere – for local business)

* Create content that is quick to identify with – don’t make it hard to read or written for a specific audience. Make it general in tone, but valuable at the same time.



Even if it’s a sales pitch piece, make sure the pitch is quick and the value is presented as quickly as possible. For example – of you’re selling a product that’s currently in style – say so and identify how to get it and how much it is. Don’t mess around with all the sales jargon – in micro moments we want answers not questions.

I referenced a couple other examples in the show.

How to optimize your website for mobile?

SEO optimization relating to



* responsive websites, or mobile sites

* load times (must be fast on mobile – less than 3 seconds according to Google)

* Simplistic layouts, not just responsive, but clean and only show content that you need



Paid advertisements role in Micro-moment marketing

Make use of paid advertising specifically to target mobile devices. In addition to targeting mobile devices, develop campaigns and specific messages to address micro-moments directly.

Monitoring outcomes

As with all marketing, micro-moments marketing requires that we monitor our progress and identify opportunities as we execute.

Start by creating a baseline report for your website focusing on mobile traffic and engagement. This way we can refer back to the changes in that traffic and identify if our micro-moment marketing has developed an increase in traffic and a higher level of engagement from mobile devices. Ideally, an increase in conversions from mobile devices as well.

As with all paid advertising campaigns you want to make sure you’re comparing your paid results to your websites analytics to see how...

Session 30: Micro-moments marketing for small business

In session 29 of A Marketing Podcast, I focus on making sure that you’re delivering value in content marketing campaigns. It’s not about putting out lots of content, it’s about developing valuable content and distributing that content to your audience.



Session 29: Delivering value in content marketing

1. Know your audience!

I feel like I say this every podcast session…. In order to create the right type of content you must know your audience.

If you haven’t put in the time to truly understand your target audience check out Session 4: Understanding and developing you target audiences.

2. Understand the solution that your product or service provides

This one is huge, and most business owners default to talking about the features and comparing themselves to their competitors products/services in an effort to be perceived as better.

The problem is most people begin looking for a solution – not a feature. So making sure that your content positions the solution and the outcome that solution will provide before the features is extremely important.

You should always include the features so that potential customers can go through a checklist of things that your product/service will have. However, at this point of the discovery journey the identification of features is to ensure that the solutions being sold can be achieved.

3. Write to your audience

Many small business, and even some very big ones, are more focused on writing about themselves vs writing to inform their audience.

As a potential customer you don’t want to read an article about a product/service/company/etc that is clearly positioning the writer as the best thing on earth.  Write to be informative, once again on the solution, and not to tell your audience about what you think about yourself.

Your audience can learn more about your company by reading through about us pages, and news articles, and talking to friends that are a customer of yours. Your job in content marketing is to inform on the solution and solve a problem. Not tell the world how great you think you are.



4. Provide some takeaway value

In every piece of content that you write you should be providing value to the reader.  On top of that, the value you provide should be actionable by the reader right away.

Providing value in the digital content marketing sense is also an opportunity to develop leads through the application of inbound marketing. If you are providing the value to the reader, the decision to give their email to obtain that content shouldn’t be a tough decision to make. On top of that, you now have a lead to develop further.



5. Have faith in being educational



Not every customer is going to buy your product or service at first impression. In  fact most aren’t going to.

So have faith in being educational with your content, and work to establish yourself as a subject matter expert in order to develop long term customers and sales.

Links & Resources



* Listen to the content marketing overview session

* Session 4: Understanding and developing you target audiences.

* 12 Page Free Marketing Strategy Template







Thanks for listening in!

If you have any questions about this session, leave them in the comments section below. If you enjoyed the show, let your friends know by using the social sharing buttons below. Your help sharing the podcast will allow me to help more business owners and marketers just like you be more strategic!

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast through a href="...

Session 29: Delivering value in content marketing

In session 6 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss what a USP or Unique Selling Proposition is and why you need one. I walk you through creating your unique selling proposition and 3 simple questions you need to answer. As well, I demonstrate with A Marketing Podcasts’ USP, how I developed it and the final version that I use on the site and in all my marketing messaging.




Session 6: Show Notes

Recap of Previous Sessions (related to strategy development):



* [FREE DOWNLOAD] Small Business Marketing Strategy Template

* Session 2: What is a marketing strategy and why do I need one?

* Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives

* Session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences

* Session 5: Performing a marketing SWOT analysis



What is a USP

USP stands for “Unique Selling Proposition” among others such as:



* unique sales pitch

* Unique Sales Proposition

* Unique Sales pitch

* Unique Selling pitch

* unique selling point



The USP has been around since the 1940 – so it works!

A USP is how you separate your business/product/service from your competition

An example of a USP

A&W Fast Food Restaurant



A really good USP is as much a sentence on your marketing strategy as it is a mindset for your business.

What a USP is not



* It’s not your mission statement – that’s what you want to be when you grow up, not how you’re different

* It’s not a slogan – although you can create a slogan to encapsulate your USP, but there’s more to it as you’ll see

* A Sales pitch – it’s used in your sales pitch, or helps define your sales pitch, but once again there’s more to it.

* It’s not the BS line like “we provide the best customer service!” Honestly, every time I read that I want to punch something!



Why do you need a USP?

To separate your business from your competition – there is always competition.

Another reason is your USP will help you create messaging in your tactical executions

Creating your unique selling proposition

Step 1 – List out the differences between you and your competition

Create a list of things that you have or do differently than your competition

Step 2 – Think as your customer

We’ve already done some work on our target audiences (click to listen to session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences) so you should have some great insights already on who your target audience is and how they make their decision to buy from you vs your competitors

Dig deeper into the real reason customers buy your product, or why competitors customers buy their products over you!

Step 3 – Answer these three questions

Here’s a list of questions to help you think like your customer. Remember your audiences whilst answering…



* Why should I do business with you and not your competitor?

* How do your products/services separate you from your competition?

* Once I’ve done business with you, what am I going to feel? (Guarantee)



DON’T GET DEFENSIVE WHEN ANSWERING – because it’s easy to. Attack with confidence instead!

Another thing to remember as you’re answer these questions is that you should focus on the customer’s desires, not their needs.

Step 4 – Sum up your answers ad you’ve got your USP

Session 6: Creating your unique selling proposition

In session 7 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss the development of a marketing mix as part of your marketing strategy. The marketing mix is the biggest and most complex part of your strategy. In this session I break down the development into three simple steps and identify some things to keep in mind as you validate your mix.




Session 7: Show Notes

Recap of Previous Sessions (related to strategy development):



* [FREE DOWNLOAD] Small Business Marketing Strategy Template

* Session 2: What is a marketing strategy and why do I need one?

* Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives

* Session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences

* Session 5: Performing a marketing SWOT analysis

* Session 6: Creating your selling proposition



What is a marketing mix?



Some marketers associate, or even assimilate, the 4 p’s of marketing to the marketing mix



Quick overview on the 4 P’s – thanks to E J McCarthy in 1960.



Product/Service

Place

Price

Promotion









At AMP I refer to the marketing mix as the group of tactics you plan to use to execute your marketing strategy



Goals for your marketing mix



By defining a set of tactics it allows you to focus on tactics that are determined to be highly likely to succeed, and avoid others along the way

It’s not to shut down the potential of doing other tactics, we’ll talk about adjusting as we go in the session about executing your strategy 

To provide yet another guideline for your marketing – it’s another piece of the road-map



Things to consider when developing your marketing mix



* Now is a good point in the development of your marketing strategy to get help from a professional marketer if you feel you need some help

* The marketing mix, although it will guide us, is not set in stone. We still need to be realistic and somewhat agile in regards to the tactics we use

* Forget about budget – we’re not there yet – plus it kills your brainstorming



Developing your mix

Step 1 – Brainstorm

List out all the tactics you can think of:



* Tactics you think will work

* Tactics you’ve tried in the past

* Tactics you’ve seen others try

* Tactics that are popular at the time

* Online and offline



In the template I have outlined some basic tactical groups to get you started, those are:



* Advertising (TV, radio, magazine, newspaper, SEM, display network, video on sites like Youtube, sponsorship’s of events, etc)

* Content Marketing

* Inbound Marketing

* Social Media

* Presentations

* Public speaking, conferences, trade-shows, webinars, etc)

* Events

* Print Media (direct mail, coupons, pamphlets, newspaper, magazines etc)

* PR

* Email Marketing & Communications

* Experiential marketing

* And so on



Again this is a good step to get a marketing professional involved. This is where they will provide a ton of value from a tactical idea point of view.

Step 2 – Order by effectiveness

Reorder your tactics in order of effectiveness using the following criteria:



* Refer to our goals and objectives

* Refer to our audiences



Step 3 – Validation

The following list of items must be checked off for each of the tact...

Session 7: Developing a marketing mix

In session 3 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss how to establish marketing goals and objectives as part of your marketing strategy. I review the reasoning behind having both goals and objectives and how they differ from each other. I also provide some insight into how to build your goals and objectives to make them achievable and to achieve your business goals as well.

Session 3 Show Notes:



* Brief review of session two and the process of marketing strategy development

* Discussion on the difference between goals and objectives



* A GOAL is measurable only by personal impression/gut feeling, or the completion of your objectives if you’ve created the right objectives.

* An OBJECTIVE is measurable by numbers, and multiple objectives build the checklist you need to achieve your goals







Creating Goals



* Always create your goals before your objectives

* Shoot for 5 goals – but 3 will work

* Make sure your goals a big and push your marketing, but are also achievable within the time period of your strategy

* I mentioned that I like to divide goals up to relate to particular business areas, and used the following as examples:



* Brand

* Product/Service

* Customers

* Culture

* Revenue





* Examples of goals for each business area:



* Brand: Establish our brand as a premium brand in the industry of X

* Product/Service: establish product X as the primary revenue generator for my business

* Customers: Increase resale value to current and future customers, increase up sells

* Culture: Develop an event participation program for marketing opportunities

* Revenue: Increase revenues in South East Asia





* Make sure that your goals are big! But give yourself a chance to achieve them in the strategies period.

* Remember to make your goals read like a story. They are not measurable by numbers.



Creating Objectives



* Now that you have 5 goals (or maybe 3), let’s create objectives for each goal.

* Depending on the size of the goal you will require at least two, and most likely more objectives to achieve each goal.

* If your goal can be achieved by achieving one objective, guess what? It’s not a goal, it’s an objective, so go back and change it.

* Make sure that your objectives align with your goals, and that achieving every objective within the goals group will achieve the goal.

* If you start to produce objectives that do not fit within a current goals grouping, you may need to add a new goal or decide to push that objective into the next periods strategy.

* Examples of some objectives:



* let’s use our previous example: “Establish our brand as a premium brand in the industry of X”

* Objectives would potentially include:



* Achieve 1,000,000 impressions in online advertising without our core markets (New York city, Los Angeles)

* Work with 5 influencers to post brand imagery and recommend our brand to their followers

* attend/speak at 3 industry related events

* Complete setup of all social channels currently in use to use new brand visual elements











Recap – Establishing goals and objectives



produce 3-5 goals

make them big, but attainable

make sure they align with business goals

produce objectives for each goal (make sure there is more than one)

make sure objectives a measurable by numbers

group objectives with each goal



Links & Resources:



* Small Business Marketing Strategy Template

* Extra Reading: Marketing Goals vs Obje...

Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives

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