This happens when you do not follow a methodology and are not clear on how to implement marketing strategies to maximize your efforts when you need it most. There’s no time or money to waste, so we show you the marketing must-haves for 2018 and tips on how to embrace them. Let’s get started!
The fundamentals
Think carefully about what are the fundamentals of your company necessary to implement marketing actions that will lead you to success. You can’t start the house from the roof when getting there is your goal, can you?
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1. Identify your target
This is one of the first exercises you will perform for your company. And it is one of the most important that you are going to do. And you will do it more than once. Because, on the one hand, it is impossible for your products or services to be of interest to a large number of people. On the other hand, your offer may change, as well as the preferences of your consumers, so you will have to make adaptations.
Tip 1. Create buyer persona profiles. These are representations of your potential customers to whom you assign sociodemographic qualities as if they were real consumers. These buyer personas have well defined their search preferences on the Internet, how they consume information and what their needs are at the time of consuming the products or services you offer.
2. Define your conversion funnel.
Conversion is the most important action your contacts will take. On the one hand, they will go from visits to leads (sales opportunities); these will be qualified as potential consumers; the next conversion, the most important, is the conversion from lead to customer; and finally, depending on the characteristics of your start-up, there is the possibility of getting that customer to be a repeat customer and promoter of your brand.
Tip 2. You must be very clear about the needs and concerns of each of your buyer personas during their buying process. In marketing we use the concept of buyer’s journey when we talk about the 3 stages a user goes through before making a purchase, which you must define in order to implement the appropriate actions at each moment. In addition, you must be clear about the cost of a lead for your company: define a budget for your marketing campaigns, and another one for lead acquisition and conversion.
3. Attract only the right traffic.
As we have said, you don’t need to attract a large number of users when only a few will actually purchase your products or services. You need to get the right traffic so that the chances of conversion are higher. Remember that conversion is the goal of all the marketing actions you are going to implement. For that reason, you need to elaborate a previous SEO work before generating any information. This way you will make sure that your start-up has the content that really interests your potential customers.
Tip 3. Starting from your buyer personas and their needs during their buyer’s journey you can select the right keywords. Since these are your most likely search terms, you are more likely to be found on search engine pages, i.e. rank better in search engines like Google.
Communication
Content is the most important thing. But among so much competition you must be clear about where, how and when to generate this content to differentiate yourself from the rest, to create your own value proposition. Because if there’s one thing you should work for, it’s the trust of your potential customers. Users who will trust you based on the value of your content.
4. Choose the right channels
One of the jobs you should have done in defining your buyer personas is the information consumption preference of your potential customers. Based on your needs, which channels do you attach most importance to?
Tip 4. If your potential consumers spend hours and hours on YouTube, don’t waste your time generating content for a channel with less visibility. If LinkedIn is the social network where you can get the most leads, make sure your employees share the posts you regularly publish there… The base will always be your website but the other channels must generate enough qualified traffic to allow conversion.
5. Create cluster content
Regardless of the format or channel, your content must meet the latest demands of search engines, which are also the latest demands of users seeking information. This involves thinking very carefully about the structure of all your content.
Tip 5. On the one hand, if you follow these steps, you should already have the keywords that will be the terms with which you will be searched, right? The second step is to structure these keywords: the most difficult to position, but the most relevant, should be the ones you work with for the On Page SEO of your main pages, pages from which you should select those that are pillars. Once you have defined what these pillar pages are, you must create content clusters (group of topics) that link to them.
6. Create content offers
Think that in order to get the contact information of your potential customers you must give them something in return. In those startups whose customers go through a complex buying process it is necessary to perform a Conversion Path Inbound.
Tip 6. To do this, think about your cluster topics to generate content offers that provide value and are of interest to your potential customers: guides, ebooks, webinars, consultancies, demos, etc. In exchange for these offers, your users will be willing to exchange their contact information and this information is what will allow you to make lists according to their characteristics and suitability for purchase.
7. Apply Lead Nurturing
Lead Nurturing consists of sending the right content at the right time to the right segmented lists, thanks to automation techniques. Based on the actions your contacts take, what they download and the information you have been able to get from them, you should apply this technique.
Tip 7. Do not underestimate email marketing, as it is the most effective strategy when it comes to Lead Nurturing. In this case, the assignment of a buyer persona at a point in the buyer’s journey is what will help you perform this technique to send the right information. For example, if they have downloaded a guide that you have identified as suitable content at an early stage, don’t send an email offering a demo, as the user may not be ready. On the contrary, you can offer an explanation or a consultation to learn more about your contact and his or her needs.
The analysis
We don’t need to say more, do we? The analysis of results must be intrinsic to every action that a start-up performs. It is the only way to know if you are reaching the conversion goals you have set, if your marketing budget is profitable or if you should implement changes that will make you grow as a company.
Tip 8. Transform the way you sell to avoid falling into the mistakes of conventional marketing. Implement an Inbound Marketing methodology and have a good plan at hand.
