Digital marketing encompasses a wide range of aspects. Whether your marketing team is internal or external, what exactly falls under their purview? A strong marketing team should start with your specific goals and design campaigns and strategies for each goal. Several small campaigns should be executed side by side to achieve growth in different areas.
It is a waste of resources to use the same overarching campaign to achieve three different goals. Let’s look at some example goals and how they have separate strategies, but still work together.
Goal #1 – Sales.
The obvious. You want to sell more. Products, services, it doesn’t matter. This is one important aspect of the marketing team’s job. Sell more. This campaign should have a clearly defined sales funnel. Keeping the customer on track through the funnel, directing them with no distractions or side journeys (such as social engagement or signups), is the laser-focused purpose of this campaign.
Goal #2 – Grow a social media presence, following, and audience engagement.
This campaign has more to do with giving the user a reason to follow your channels. Whether it be useful information they need, or you are the most entertaining pool guy in town, here is where you offer value. This campaign will eventually work with your sales in the form of special offers for your audience, but at first the only call to action is to subscribe or follow.
Goal #3 – Grow a mailing list.
While this campaign will be similar to the style of the social campaign, you will only focus on the one goal – getting users to sign up on your list. Again, these campaigns will eventually work closer together, but initially, they are separate goals. This is not to say you can only work on one at a time. They should be grown parallel to each other.
As a consumer, imagine if you discovered a new company that you might be interested in learning more about. If they asked you immediately to BUY THIS, SUBSCRIBE, FOLLOW US, SIGN UP NOW!, you might be a bit turned off.
One thing to consider with your marketing strategy is performance-based marketing. Many companies are choosing this style of marketing when hiring an external marketing team because the is a very specific ROI and you are only paying for the results – sales, new followers, new subscribers, new signups, etc.
Plain and simple, you will only pay for the marketing services once specific, pre-set metrics and goals are achieved. Success is predetermined, and you pay when specific actions are complete. This moves away from traditional marketing relationships because before, you paid for the effort, not for the results.
There are many great benefits to performance-based marketing.
It’s transparent. You are clear about the results you want. Marketers deliver those results, or they don’t get paid. Performance-based marketing leaves no room for Big ambiguous fees, up-front costs, or unclear expectations.
It’s direct and measurable. You know exactly where your marketing spend goes, and what it yields. With a large amount of data, such as cost-per-click, cost-per-view, and time spent on-page, you can uncover great insights into customer acquisition cost, cost-per-lead, and cost-per-sale. With this information, you can more efficiently point your spending so that it has the most impact.
It’s low-risk. You can plan your budget beforehand, view results in real-time, and adjust elements to get the best results.
“I suggest this for many of my clients. Many have been burned by other marketing companies, seeing lumps of cash fly out the window without measurable results or clear performance indicators. As a marketer myself, I’m confident I can help a business achieve their goals – but why should they pay if I can’t?” – Josh Levine, CEO, Wise Roots Marketing
Most businesses will benefit from performance-based marketing but not every company is ready. The goal is to drive customer action, not grow brand awareness. Make sure you have your foundation in place – your website, your social channels, etc. Once these are set up, you can use these assets to drive results. When you are set up, and you need quick, direct marketing results, performance-based is the way to go.
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