Getting started with digital marketing is a process that can happen overnight or can take a very long time. At Contitude, when we start working with clients who are relatively new to digital marketing, we always go through the basic requirements that need to be in place for us to do the best job possible for and with our clients.
In this blog post, we'll go through these basics and also give you tips on how to get started on that work, in the order of priority that we think works best:
- Personas
- Keyword analysis
- Technical SEO analysis
- Set up tracking
- Contentplan
- Market plan
- Graphic profile
- Tonality guide
1. Clarify your target audience by making Personas
Developing Personas is something that most companies haven't done - but is so incredibly valuable that we think it should be priority number one. I heard somewhere: writing content without having developed Personas is like writing a letter without knowing who to send it to. That analogy is telling, imagine yourself in the situation of actually writing a letter but you don't know who to send it to. Most likely, you won't get much further than being able to write "Hello".
The same goes for writing content or working with marketing in general. If you don't know who your audience is, you won't know how to express yourself or what to say to reach your target audience.
Developing Personas can be done as big as you like (and you don't have to) but the more precise and accurate you can be in this work, the more you stand to gain from your starting to develop Personas.
To make this work as easy as possible, we have a template you can use to facilitate your work in developing Personas:
2. Keyword analysis - Where should you appear?
If you have completed your Personas, you have probably also realised that your Personas are searching for information online. If they do, which we think is highly likely, it's a good idea to do a keyword analysis (91% of all purchases are initiated by a search on the Internet via a search engine).
Once you've worked out your Personas, you'll probably have worked out what challenges they have and what problems you solve for them. Based on that, you can create an idea of what your Personas are looking for when they search for your product/service.
This then forms the basis for working out a keyword analysis. The rest of the job of developing a keyword analysis is about finding out what search volumes each keyword has and how challenging it is to be indexed highly on each such keyword. Then it's also perfect to figure out which keywords you should focus on to drive traffic organically and which keywords are worth advertising on.
Would you like help with a keyword analysis and a look at your SEO? Then you can read more about how we work with it and contact us via any form on this page:SEO - Search Engine Optimization
3. Technical SEO analysis
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an increasingly important part of digital marketing and conducting a technical SEO analysis of your website is a good thing to do at least every six months. Depending on how in-depth the SEO analysis is then, you'll get concrete advice on small and big things that need to be addressed to optimize your results in Google or other search engines or just a check that you're already working in a good way.
We perform SEO analysis regularly and can help you with that too.
4. Become data-driven! - Set up tracking
What gets measured gets done is a common expression and when it comes to digital marketing, it's very true. If you're not measuring and collecting data, you have no idea what you're doing or whether what you're doing is contributing to the results you want to achieve.
Google Analytics tends to be the standard to use and most people actually use this system in some form. If you don't have it, start using it right away. It allows you to measure how many people visit your website, what pages they view and how long they stay. Another important part of Google Analytics is that you can see from which channel visitors are coming from.
Then, of course, you'll also want to find out which visitors are completing goals/conversions in Google Analytics so you can draw better conclusions about which activities you should continue to do and which you might be able to do less of. Setting up goals can be challenging the first time you set them up and it may require some code on the website or using Google Tag Manager (GTM).
If you work in SEO (which we think you should), an extremely important tool is Google Search Console where you can find out which keywords you are indexed on and how high you rank in search engines. In many cases, you may think you rank higher than you actually do when you open your browser, type in a search term and your own website comes up high. But each search is tailored to your own browsing history and what you have searched for in the past - so you get a view that suits you and your previous searches but it doesn't necessarily match the reality for everyone else. Google Search Console gives you a better idea of what it really looks like.
If you also want to learn how visitors move around your website, you can implement HotJar or similar software to see how visitors move and where they click. You can then export a heatmap of your website with hotspots of where visitors click or move their mouse on a specific page.
We've got a quick guide to selected Google tools and what you can do with them here:
DOWNLOAD THE QUICK GOOGLE GUIDE
5. Content plan
Working with digital marketing is not an overnight fix but requires persistence and a long-term plan. For this reason, a content plan is an important cornerstone to ensure that all work is directed towards the same goals and actually have a thought with all the content you produce. It's very important to remember that there needs to be a purpose for all content that is produced and then published.
A content plan also helps when it comes to knowing what to publish in different channels. There's a certain type of content that doesn't work so well on Facebook but is great content on LinkedIn and vice versa.
A content plan needs to take into account which audience/personas you are targeting and which channel it will be visible on, but most importantly what you want the publication of this content to lead to. Should there be a Call-To-Action (CTA) to download a guide, or to buy something or subscribe to your newsletter or maybe just to get your company name out there to increase brand awareness?
Here you will find a Content Plan template that we have developed and that we believe will make your work on developing your content plan much more effective.
Download your content planning template here!
6. The overall approach to a marketing plan
When you're immersed in digital marketing, it's easy to get bogged down in the details. From time to time, it's important to lift your gaze and see the bigger picture of what marketing really is and aims to do. It's not just generating prospects and turning them into leads or getting visitors to the web who then convert to what you want. Marketing encompasses the entire customer journey from first contact to last contact and back again. To get that overview, it helps if you set up a long-term marketing plan!
There are many ways to develop and present a marketing plan. You can create a plan of several hundred pages or a marketing plan of one A4 and everything in between.We usually prefer a shorter version that is easy to overview and that colleagues, managers or investors can actually read through. Presenting a 350-page marketing plan to a manager is likely to result in it being quickly skimmed through and then put in the drawer.
A marketing plan in our view needs to be a living document based on results you want to achieve or data pointing to something else relevant to the success of your business. Therefore, our recommendation is to keep the marketing plan simple and clear.
We have developed a template for a marketing plan that we think works well and where, in the best of worlds, you can fit the entire marketing plan on one A4 page.Download it here:
DOWNLOAD MARKETING PLAN TEMPLATE
7. Graphic profile
Now we come to the parts that put the finishing touches on the basics of digital marketing. Everyone should have a graphic profile, and the vast majority of businesses have one. However, the problem usually arises when the graphic profile needs to be put into practice. When a salesperson has to put together a sales presentation, it is not certain that the salesperson will best understand and be able to put together a presentation where all the graphic guidelines are followed.
A graphic profile is primarily used only by the marketing department, but there are many other functions in a company that produce materials that also need to follow the graphic profile.
As with the marketing plan, we usually recommend keeping the graphic profile simple and easy to understand so that everyone can use it and that it is actually used.
8. Tonality guide
If you want to become a real master of marketing, you also need a tonality guide. A tone guide highlights how your company wants to express itself in different media and what tone is used in the different types of content produced for different channels.
This may be a bit of a stretch for the smaller company, but for those who are really ambitious with their digital marketing, a tone guide will be a good document to distribute among colleagues so that everyone keeps the same "tone" in all channels.
Summary
To succeed in digital marketing, it's important to have a plan and to have the key pieces of the puzzle in place - the foundations and goals of your digital marketing.
Personas, Keyword Analysis, Technical SEO Analysis, Tracking and Content Plan are the elements that we want to develop together with our clients when we start a partnership. This helps not only us but also the client to gain a deeper understanding of their business.
Marketing plan, Graphic profile, Tonality guide are in our opinion important to develop for a company and also obvious parts for those companies that have far-reaching ambitions with their marketing.
Would you like help in developing these basic requirements to make your digital marketing more successful?
Then please contact us by filling in the contact form or book a meeting directly with us through the link below.
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