Step into part two of our marketing series blog, where we dive into the importance of marketing plans, content strategies and optimising your website. If you haven’t done so already, we recommend you read this blog post first.
Good to go? Here are our favourite marketing tips for turning your small business into a powerhouse, with techniques and tricks that will help propel your business towards your goals. So get ready to blend your creativity and credibility and work with purpose, craft compelling content and elevate your brand’s digital visibility.
getting Google sorted
By leveraging Google’s powerful tools, you can enhance your business's online presence, better understand your audience, and optimise your marketing efforts. Firstly, Google My Business is a free tool that allows you to manage your business's online presence on Google, including Google Search and Google Maps. You can create a Google My Business listing and add information about your business, including your name, address, phone number, website, hours of operation, and photos. This will help you improve your visibility, especially locally if your business has a physical aspect (it also gives you Google Maps integration), and overall credibility on Google. Plus it gives you a platform for customer reviews.
You’ll also want to register for GA4 and Search Console, and any other of the Google Suite platforms you think will be relevant and useful for you. Amongst other things, these tools allow you to index your website, analyse your website performance, get insights on keywords and track errors.
optimising your website
A non-negotiable in a new brand or product launch is ensuring that your website is optimised for search engines. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising your website and content to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). Basic SEO techniques include researching relevant keywords, and then optimising your website and content for those keywords. Once your brand is set up, it’s important to consider links (both internally and externally), and to build good ones through quality digital PR and outreach, or simply through creating super relevant content that wider audiences are interested in.
It's also important to keep your website up to date and regularly add fresh content, such as blog posts or news updates, to keep visitors coming back. Don't forget to integrate social media links and share buttons to make it easy for visitors to share your content and follow you on social media. And make sure you keep up to date, for example increasingly Google seems to be favouring satisfying content; pillar pages, which focus on a key service, product or topic; and author authority and experience, which helps to illustrate the importance of having a robust content strategy.
crafting a content plan
Once you have established your brand's objectives and written audience personas, it's time to start developing a content plan. This is an essential tool for any business looking to market itself effectively. It keeps you focused, relevant and topical, and provides a roadmap for your marketing efforts. This ensures that all of your messaging aligns with your brand's objectives and is tailored to your target audience.
When creating a content plan, it's important to consider the type of content that will resonate with your audience. This could include blog posts, social media posts and stories, videos, podcasts, graphics and more. Your content plan should also take into account the frequency of your content, as well as the channels through which it will be distributed.
Creating a content plan can seem overwhelming, but there are several steps you can take to simplify the process. These include:
Defining your themes: once you have a clear understanding of your audience and objectives, you can start to define the key themes that will underpin your content. These themes should be aligned with your brand's purpose and values, and should aim to resonate with your target audience
Mapping out your calendar: with your content themes defined, it's time to start planning out your distribution schedule. This involves producing your content in advance, ensuring that you are distributing content consistently and regularly in line with what your target audience expects to consume, and also in line with your available resources
Developing a workflow: a content creation workflow outlines the process for creating, editing, and publishing your content. This ensures that your content is of high quality and is produced efficiently. For example, do you need to build in time for designing creative assets? A sign off process? Proof-reading?
Conducting a content audit: once you have a few pieces of content in the wild, it’s helpful to take a step back and review it all, to determine what's working and what's not. This information can then be used to inform your future content strategy, or to spur you on to try something new, but don’t be shy to recycle or repurpose content that’s working for you
Measuring your results: finally, it's incredibly important to measure the results of your content plan. This will enable you to determine what's working well and what needs to be improved, allowing you to refine your strategy over time
making your mark
With your content strategy in place, a wider marketing plan will act as your strategic roadmap for your brand. A comprehensive plan should complement your content strategy and outline the specific actions and tactics you’ll pursue to distribute your messages. You should have these already by now, but if you don’t, you’ll need to have defined your goals, researched and written your target personas, and crafted your value proposition (essentially a clear and compelling statement that communicates the unique benefits of your products or services to your target audience).
Next, you’ll want to consider the most effective marketing channels to get your messages in front of your target audience. These are likely to include a tailored mix of digital channels like social media (possibly including influencers), email marketing, optimised content and paid advertising, as well as more traditional channels like print media, PR, events or experiential activity, and even direct mail. Your channel selection will largely depend on (or inform) your marketing budget requirements. Allocating resources wisely is enabled by planning in advance, ensuring that you can execute your marketing plan effectively, on time and to budget.
extra considerations
Marketing a start-up can be challenging, but with the right approach, it can be incredibly rewarding. There are, however, several common pitfalls that businesses should be aware of when starting out. These include:
focusing too much on social media: while social media can be a powerful marketing tool, it's important not to overlook other channels. Depending on your target audience, other channels could be even more effective, and remember, you don’t have to join every platform just because you can!
neglecting SEO: SEO is an essential component of any successful digital marketing strategy. Failing to optimise your website for search engines can result in all your hard work and lovely content being overlooked by potential customers.
skipping research: conducting research is an essential step in creating any marketing strategy. Without a clear understanding of your target audience, competitors, and market trends, your marketing efforts are likely to fall short.
being inconsistent: consistency is key when it comes to marketing a start-up, so don’t set yourself up to fail. Failing to produce content regularly or to maintain a consistent brand image can result in confusion among your audience. Set yourself up at a pace that can only increase, not decrease.
not measuring results: it's so important to measure the results of your marketing efforts. Without this data, you won't be able to determine what's working and what's not, making it difficult to refine your strategy over time.
in conclusion
Thanks for reading part two of our marketing blog series. Next time, we’ll deep dive into the channel you told us was most effective for reaching your target audience: content and blogs!
If this information resonated with you, you know where we are if you need some support to make it happen for your brand.
This blog was written by our CEO, Sophie Smith.
Sophie has a wealth of knowledge and experience in branding, product development and marketing strategy through driving and implementing ambitious growth plans for nearly 15 years across a variety of industries.