5-step process to avoid digital marketing indigestion (confusion, intimidation, skepticism)
Website, check. social media, check. blog, check. Results?
Digital marketing can make you feel like you’re blindfolded, hanging upside down throwing darts on a roller coaster. In the article Marketing Technology Have you Dazed and Confused? Mike Stiles details this harsh environment and provides suggestions for enterprise clients. The most important from my perspective:
“Whatever tech you adopt, it’s probably going to call for change in strategy… It’s not like getting a taco from a food truck.
What’s your strategy? Do you have one?
Technology, tools and tactics are an answer to “what?” but unless you want to throw darts start by answering “why.”
Here’s a story you might relate to. Through it I’ll outline the 5 steps I use to answer “why” when evaluating and creating effective and efficient digital marketing solutions.
Meet Joe
Joe used to spend two hours of every day plowing a field without direction or purpose. No Joe isn’t a farmer – Joe is a financial services provider for small and medium sized businesses.
Joe is well established and well respected locally, but he wants to grow.
Joe’s friend uses Facebook to get business. He replaces broken screens on smartphones, and his seemingly simple approach on social media (specifically Facebook) is brilliant. In a few short months Joe watched his friend grow from a one-person hobby to five-person operation.
This growth was a direct result of social media marketing.
Joe wanted that kind of growth for his company. After reading a few dozen blog posts and watching hours of YouTube he jumped in, but after a few months without worthwhile results his excitement and momentum waned.
Joe’s comments when we met.
- “Social media takes up more time than it’s worth”
- “There’s no way to tell if my digital marketing is working”
- “I’m not sure where to go from here – where to start and what to do!”
- “Is paying someone $5,000 a month to post three times a day going to help my business?”
Joe approached social media marketing like getting a taco from a food truck, and now he’s got marketing indigestion (confused, intimidated, defensive and skeptical).
He’s trying to keep up with technology, tools and tactics without a strategy to guide him. And, even more important, he’s approaching his online business different than he does in real life (more on that below).
After a very productive and lively no-obligation assessment here’s what we did to solve Joe’s frustration and generate the results he’d hoped for.
Step 1: Take a step back
Social media marketing is not an island. Whether you like it or not, everything’s connected, so we took a step back looking at everything digital.
We talked about web, social, email, content, search engines – everything that’s in play, the roles of each and how they’re connected.
Step 2: Answer Why?
Marketing that works doesn’t happen by accident. Joe wanted to make his phone ring but didn’t take into consideration who would be calling and what they’d be calling about. Working together we filled in the details.
Joe’s main goal was to generate leads, but we came up with others creating a complete strategy leveraging his unique purpose, passion and expertise.
STEP 3: Everything great about you, just online
Everything digital is modeled off something in the real world.
- Websites from storefronts and office space
- Blogs from reports, short stories, newsletters and other publications
- Social media from face-to-face networking
Armed with this familiar perspective, Joe and I built and executed his digital marketing plan based on real life. Everything he said, shared, taught, recommended and sold in his office found the right priority, place and connections online.
STEP 4: Measurable and responsive marketing strategy
Every time Joe meets with a client he learns and makes adjustments. He learns from feedback, direct or indirect, verbal or nonverbal. He uses these cues to adjust his approach, and we did the same online.
A detailed measurement plan with weekly reporting gives Joe and I the feedback we need to make adjustments.
STEP 5: Results
By partnering with McKeown MarKeting, Joe successfully extended his well established and well respected local business to a global audience. His reach, reputation and expertise generates purposeful and measurable activity leading to increased engagements and sales. He’s gone global generating opportunities only possible with digital marketing.
