We know what you’re thinking, “Is Titan Vine serious with releasing ideas and strategies for a 2016 marketing plan? We aren’t even in 2016 yet”.
The truth is – if you aren’t already planning for the new year, then don’t expect to succeed to the expectations you want. Fail to Plan – Plan to Fail.
We are all constantly busy running our businesses and forget to take a step back and strategise what we should plan for the months and year ahead. 2015 has been quite a revolution in terms of digital marketing and if you are finding yourself reading this article, then you are unquestionably intuitive enough to spice up your digital marketing activities for the coming year. All you need is to be analytical savvy to the point that you know what sort of strategies should take place from the trends of the previous year and execute your plans accordingly, related to your business.
When reading through this blog, remember to think back to a core model for product marketing and one of our favourite funnel models – The “AARRR” Pirate Metric model by Dave McClure;
Image source: Startitup.com
This model illuminates the key characteristics to a successful marketing and startup strategy. Always keep the customer/user in mind from the moment they come to your site, until they are so obsessed with your product or service, they are willing to get your brand logo tattooed on their body (well, maybe not that far).
Here are the top 17 strategies to make sure implement and dominate into your digital marketing strategy for 2016.
- Email Marketing
Email is pivotal for your business. Full Stop. Just take a look at the diagram below.
Image source: Komarketingassociates.com
So why is email considered so important to high-profile companies?
Apart from a CRM system which is obviously associated with retention of your customers or early acquisition (also known as “Top of the Funnel Candidates) users (i.e. they signed up to your blog or interest in one of your products or services) – email marketing is essential.
As you can see in the diagram, Email Marketing is 2nd for maintaining the retention of users and to encourage repeat purchases = revenue = scalability. Email marketing illuminates Dave McClure’s pirate model;
So you need to ask yourself, are you using or should use be using email regularly? Daily? Weekly? Monthly at the least? If you aren’t using email for your business, then you are letting yourself down.
Who uses email marketing really well? Canva does. Purpose? One reason as you can see below is they are reminding their email subscribers about their new layouts, straight to their inbox.
Image Source: (Hubspot)
Email automation
Email automation can be very powerful and efficient when you are a small startup or business owner – even when you are a large organisations or tech startup with many potential opt in points where your customers/users sign up. You can’t constantly be there to help users with their onboarding process with your product.
Rather than sending one odd email in a haphazard manner, email automation can send emails regularly and even daily to let your subscribers constantly know of your plans and new content. Remember, email automation can kill your startup, make sure to value your subscribers and keep it personable! You should read this email automation guide by Campaign Monitor – it’s a great start for looking into email automation for your business or startup.
- Start doing videos and upload your videos onto Youtube
Videos are a great way to spread your marketing initiative to people all over the world. If you’re an initiative business owner or digital marketer, then videos as part of your marketing strategy can’t be ignored.
Image Source: (Brafton.com)
Key Fact: “50% Of YouTube Users Watch Business Related Videos On YouTube Once A Week” – Source: 360 Degree marketing
This statistic alone says it all. YouTube is not just a gateway for music; it is also a gateway for providing prospective clients with information about your company. If you don’t start using YouTube as a channel for your marketing, you’re potentially missing out on a large consumer demographic you want to target and continually engage. YouTube will continue to increase in popularity and as a source of information for the world, so getting your foot in the door now and building a subscriber audience will help your company reach more consumers.
One great thing about videos is that once it goes viral in the web, you will not be able to trace its where about in this era of so many social platforms. An example of an effective video marketing campaign was from Budweiser – it’s reach on youtube went to 44+ million.
Image Source: (visiblemeasure.com)
YouTube is actually a search engine – keep that in mind
Uploading videos on Youtube can be so beneficial because it is owned by Google. So, using SEO optimized titles for your videos will let people find the videos you upload whenever they search in Google. Not only titles, but your bios too. People are now looking up content on YouTube because it is explained and digested in a manner which is easier than reading blog posts.
Fact: Did you know that having a promo video on your site’s homepage can increase your search results by 53%?
- Blog, blog, blog – blog like crazy if you can
Blogging (content marketing) is a very fundamental and effective way of announcing your existence and can be the most powerful ‘chain-reaction’ effect in producing more traffic to your site and ultimately increasing conversion rates. Why? Content marketing creates authority. You understand your niche.
So, what is the criteria for an effective content marketing strategy? When you start producing effective content, you should satisfy these results in the below diagram.
Image Source: (worldviewediting.com)
With many business owners, we understand some of the reasoning behind the reasons you can’t regularly produce amazing and compelling content marketing. Here are some reasons down below why;
Content marketing can be hard to achieve (we can help you out here at Titan Vine). But, this shouldn’t hold you back. These are just challenges – and successful businesses thrive through challenges.
Try and be consistent and frequent with your blog posts. Post your content links to social networking sites so that more and more people can get redirected to your site. In the process, you will be able to increase your interaction with your audience.
Do you need some ideas for content ideas? Look at this awesome diagram below.
- Content Contribution and Distribution
Content contribution also ties in with what we said about Content marketing as an essential factor for your business’s success. But, content marketing doesn’t have to stop there.
You can start writing content for other blogs of similar interests or other authority sites that have the bulk demographic of your target audience. Become a content contributor. This will help you gain more exposure and people will regard you as an expert in the field you are writing about. As a contributor, you are not going to attract people who will show interest in your content explicitly, but they will remember you and may end up visiting your site to know more about you and your initiative.
- Twitter Outreach
Among many other social media platforms out there, Twitter can be the one for you to exploit to a greater extent. It’s very undervalued by many startups and businesses. You can try to find hashtags related to your industry and reach out to users who are talking about your brand. Get engaged with the Twitter community with fruitful interaction extend your outreach in a network of more than 315 million active registered users. Looking to expand internationally? 79% of Twitter’s user base is outside of the US, so twitter is a great platform to scale your product quickly.
Image Source: (venturebeat.com)
For myself personally, Twitter has played a huge role for the startups I have been involved working for or advising for growth. I’m now on 25K followers and counting. Share your knowledge, build the presence of your product, but at the same time, you can build your own personal brand. This is essential to capitalise and be an expert in your niche, hence people know you are the person who knows your customer best. Then, customers will buy your product.
If you aren’t convinced with why you should use twitter for your business, then read these 10 reasons why.
- Paid Promotion on Facebook
Depending on your startups or businesses persona and goal, Facebook paid advertising can be a great way to acquire target users/customers. You can use the ‘boost post’ option in Facebook advertising for the purpose to make sure that your post appears in the news feeds or sidebars of target customers. In the process, you can increase your engagement with people using the network in relation to your proposed advertisement (i.e. when people comment or like your ad). However, with Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm, the probability for your posts to have a high reach organically to appear high in the news feed is fairly low unless it goes viral. That’s where paid promotions come into play. You can add just $10 to promote selected posts to make sure those appear in news feeds higher and more frequently. As they say, you have to spend money to make money, but do it wisely.
Why should you consider Facebook advertising for your startup or business?
Well, one reason is that Facebook advertising is much cheaper CPC compared to Google adwords.
Image Source: (crazyegg.com)
The Facebook ads creation process is different from AdWords. You target people’s interests rather than their search phrases. You’re targeting people based more on who they are than the information they’re looking for right now.
Users bought $234 million worth of virtual goods and gifts on Facebook over a quarter
During Q2 of 2014 alone. Facebook users proved they are not shy about utilizing Facebook in their online spending and this trend looks like it will keep increasing.
Targeting Facebook ads by custom audiences mean lower CPCs
On average, if you target your ad by a custom audience rather than by category or interest, cost-per-click is 14% lower, and cost-per-conversion is 64%. As you can see, Facebook advertising can be highly lucrative depending on your target demographic and business persona.
If you do your Facebook advertising right, then it will go down a long way for your business’s success.
- Compelling Graphics
Creating compelling graphics is crucial to your businesses’ brand. Having a beautiful design can be the differentiator between a successful purchase or failed purpose, or better so, repeat purchases and non-repeat purchases. Sometimes, all you need to do is make sure to choose the right pictures/graphics related to your brand, and also, make sure they are optimised with quality.
Visually attractive images and high quality graphics will attract people more often than not. Beautiful and engaging graphics can bring people to your site and make people notice your posts you make on social platforms. So, if you have a graphic designer, then utilise his talents to create enthralling images. Even if you do not have one, then there are affordable sites to offer you stock photography, or better yet, free photography.
If there is anything to take away from this point – keep your graphics in relation to your overall brand. That includes colour, content and emotional attachment in relation to your product or service. Keep it to your style guide.
- Open Your Instagram Account
With over 300 Million active monthly unique visitors, Instagram just keeps growing! Why? Because visual content is hot. Users demand more visual content. It has been commonly described in the digital economy as the visual web.
Image Source: (thenextweb.com)
If you have not yet opened up an instagram account for your brand then you should definitely get started. Subscription in this media platform is rising day by day and you will get the potential to catch a large portion of your target group by getting engaged with them through images and videos. Whilst 2015 results have not been revealed, you can visually see the growth Instagram has had over microblogging sites such as Twitter.
Image source: (redirectnow.com)
- Search Engine Optimization
“85% of your website traffic will come from Google Search Results”
Search Engine optimisation is a long-term strategy for your business or startup. You can’t cheat SEO, or SEO will cheat you! Make sure you optimise all these factors for your SEO strategy.
Make sure to have strategies for all of these factors in SEOmoz’s Search ranking factors. There are two main types of SEO – On-page SEO and Off-page SEO. I suggest reading this article to dive a little deeper to get an overall understanding that both SEO strategies will have your startup or business.
- Explore Google +
We know that Google+ has had it’s critics and it hasn’t turned out to be the most successful social network compared with the likes of Facebook, twitter and Instagram. However, we don’t underestimate the role Google+ plays in SEO. Whilst there is no definitive answer whether or not how much Google+ plays a stand in positive SEO, there is no harm in also posting on the social network.
Google+ has a fantastic feature called Google+ local. When you set up your business account and location, you automatically can be found in the search results when someone is looking for your service around the location of your area. Google will implement knowledge graph listings below search advertisements in the results page. If you hover over a particular business, it will set off an additional knowledge graph that overlays in the right trail of the search result page.
Also with Google+, you can use it as an alternative your website as business page. You can get reviews, post updates, share posts from other accounts, reach-out methods to influencers and publish long-form posts up to 10,000 characters (I bet most of you didn’t know that). The more reviews you get, and the more content you post to your site → increase in the number of followers, the more is the likelihood that you will be ranked higher in the search results for localized search terms and a more buzzing google+ page than your competitors.
- Get into Bing! Try it over Google adwords on a trial
As far as the pay per click campaigns go, exploring the yahoo!Bing network can be very economical as the cost per click is 10-24% lower than that of Google Adwords. This lower cost will make sure that your cost per acquisition reduces as well. So, you can start using the search network to lower your cost.
As you can see in the diagram below, more people are now using Bing to search for their beloved internet searches. At Titan Vine, we’ve even been noticing more traffic from Bing referrals from Google Analytics. So, we have decided to invest in Bing advertising. We will tell you the results later in a future post.
Image Source: (bing.com)
- Alternative ways to traditional PR
PR is gold when it comes to exposure for your brand – but darn it! It’s expensive, right? Well, if you’re smart about it, then you may be able to get it for free. How? You aren’t going to like it, but it all comes back to content marketing. When you write specifically about a particular niche and really back up your content with relevant data, then you’re setting yourself up to become very powerful that many high-profiled publications will link back to your content.
That’s not when the hard work stops though. You now need to reach out to the influencers you want to target related to your product or service offerings. You don’t need to hire a digital PR agency – if you pull this strategy off, then it becomes more valuable to have free PR than paid PR.
With reaching out to experts, you can use the reputation of other experts to make them write about your brand/startup. In the process, you might be able to extract a diverse group of networks you may not have been able to explore otherwise – hence, penetrating your product into a new market of users.
- Unique Promotion
Think outside the square! Uniqueness pays off. This is where Dave McClure’s Acqusition and activation techniques come into fruition. Coming up with a different line of strategy within your niche compared to your competitors will attract more people and engage users with your journey. For example, you can initiate a contest among people in social media platforms to generate buzz for your advertising campaign for your product or service offering.
When the campaign was first launched in the 80’s, Absolut had a only about 2.5% of the vodka market worldwide (which is still fairly good). In the late 2000s, Absolut was importing 4.5 million cases per year, or half of all imported vodka in the U.S.
This is just one case for a successful promotion campaign by a large organisation. But what about a small business or startup that desperately needs attention for growth?
The classic example is the Dollar Shave Club campaign “Our blades are f***ing great”. The Dollar Shave club had been around for a while (roughly 10 years) before the launch of the campaign in 2012. They only had $1 million in funding, and 5 full-time employees. With the launch of this campaign, the rest is history.
Create something cool. Create something awesome! If you need promotion ideas, then read this post.
- Stick To Whatever Worked In 2015 – but Only Data-Driven campaigns which worked
Seriously! If you’ve had successful campaigns for your business or startup in 2015, then don’t throw them away. Improve on them. You do not need a complete overhaul of your plan in the coming year. Analyze your previous year’s campaigns to see what went right for you and what went wrong. Stick to the plans that bore fruit and adjust to the ones that did not provide much fruition. Look at the data. Try and figure out the reason behind their unproductiveness so that the same mistakes do not creep in in 2016.
You should always Test → Measure → Learn with your marketing. That viral campaign will eventually come.
- Make and Monitor Your Plan
Of course you craft a plan through careful consideration of many aspects and factors. Yet not plan is perfect and meant for out and out success. It may happen that by the time you implement your strategy, people will develop a newer preference. So, it is very important to constantly monitor the effectiveness of your plan to measure how efficacious the plan is and when it is necessary, bring rightful adjustments to it.
The guys from Content Marketing Institute have some great content when it comes to talking about plan your campaigns, track your campaigns, how to measure them and continually record about refining and testing campaigns – and overall marketing efforts.
- You have to start using LinkedIn for B2B
We love LinkedIn. It’s been the best media platform related to our product offerings and services.
The growth of LinkedIn has now reached over 300+ Million members who are all business professionals looking to either enhance their careers through job prospects, educational services or, your product or service.
Image Source: (amigobulls.com)
According to the Content Marketing Institute in Australia, many marketers believed that there ROI was the highest from LinkedIn.
If you really want to expand your business quickly, then LinkedIn is the best for networking/connecting with like-minded professionals and partnership opportunities – ready to take your business to the next level.
If you’re still not convinced that LinkedIn is not the right platform for your startup or business, regardless of your target niche or product/service, you should read this article about how one Aussie CEO grew her company using LinkedIn to 27 different countries.
- Invest in Planning, Executing, Evaluating and Optimisation
“Test → Measure → Learn”
We live by this quote. And you should too. Nothing is perfection when it comes to marketing due to so many variables which may be impacting the results you highly desire.
You should invest in planning, executing, evaluating and optimisation, according to your budget to in order to test and increase your ROI. Review your marketing plans and integrate your activities to achieve coherence in your effort. Lot of other digital marketers think that investing more time and money into digital marketing has the potential to fetch a greater return for their business or startup. Don’t be afraid to spend money. Just make sure to track your campaigns and learn from your data. It won’t be money wasted.
Final Word
This is just a tip of the iceberg when it comes to executing a full and highly efficient and effective marketing plan for your business. It doesn’t need to be complicated.
There are two things we want you to take away from this post.
- Remember to always refer back to Dave McClure’s “AARRR” pirate metric model for your marketing strategy
- Test → Measure → Learn. Embrace failure, create enough data and you will be creating viral and highly shareable campaigns in no time 🙂
Get ready for 2016, and make it your year!
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