Step 1: Understanding your vision
The first step in any business relationship is to understand what our client’s vision is for their business in 1,2,5, and 10 years. Maybe our client wants to build to sell (exit) or build a legacy for your children or employees to carry on. A business needs a vision or else it will ultimately fail. Because a business that is constantly reacting without a vision and not proactively planning, will not be able to adapt to the ever-changing digital marketplace.
Step 2: Make a Plan
Once a client decides to come on board, we will conduct an in-depth review of their online Digital Platforms, current Paid Advertising, and Search Engine Optimization. Also, equally as important is how they track leads and customers. Because in today’s cookie-less environment, it is critical to track 1st party data. Because without the ability to track and cultivate leads that didn’t initially purchase your product or service, a business is just casting leads away and wasting ad spend. This coupled with the ability to build relationships with current customers using a CRM, a business is losing hidden opportunities. After understanding how a business operates, its vision, advertising history, or objectives, then we will begin to plan and build a strategy.
Step 3: Content
The Internet Marketing landscape is like the Wild, Wild, West! Where each marketer is trying to outgun the other. The value of search whether it be Organic or Paid Media is critical to the modern consumer decision across multiple touch points.
Therefore, the first building block of any strategy is understanding your target audience. Once we have identified who your target audience is, we will target them by interest, income, demographic, websites they visit, and their search pattern. With today’s AI technology, being able to target your right audience a website or business can be ready to meet a searcher’s needs and wants with your product or services.
Also, what makes today’s marketing even more difficult is the reduction of the searcher’s attention span to less than a Goldfish. Marketers today only have about 8 seconds for a searcher to click on an ad or organic listing, visit the landing page or website, and act. Otherwise, the searcher has lost interest as their mind has focused on another priority. I am not saying people don’t spend more than 8 seconds on a website, what I am referring to is if a website is slow to load, not user-friendly, mobile responsive, or the searcher cannot easily find content that matches their intent, they will bounce. A website needs to convert traffic and not just get clicks because it is organically listed on the first page of Google or running ads.
Step 4: Advertise
Over the past 10 years, Google and other platforms seem to make changes almost on a weekly basis. The strategies that worked just 8 months ago are already obsolete. This coupled with the change in technology, mobile-first, and ever-shortening attention span, your marketing needs to grab someone’s attention and be the solution to their wants, needs, or desires. Just like understanding your vision, the process of building an Advertising strategy is understanding your customers, finding what audience they are categorized under, what platform they like to visit, how do they search for your product and service, etc. While most marketers run campaigns like a spaghetti test where you through ads against the wall and see which one sticks. While testing is part of the process, you must be calculated, focused, and understand the searcher’s intent. If the searcher does not see how your product and service meets their wants, needs, desires, or solves a problem, they will bounce less than 8 seconds.
Do you see a pattern? Whether it is Organic Website copy or Ad copy, everything goes back to the searcher’s intent and getting them to act before they lose interest or get distracted. That is why website copy is equally important as copy on a landing page/conversion page. Did you know that most consumers will touch both organic and paid advertising multiple times before they act? Both organic and paid advertising must be in line with the same goals because organic builds trust and paid advertising get their attention across multiple platforms.
Step 5: Know, Like, Trust, and action
To Know, Like, Trust and Action are the fundamental steps a person emotionally goes through when deciding to make a purchase, contract a service, date, or even make friends. Here are how they are related to a business.
- Know: When someone first hears of your business, they will inquire about your business, poke around a company’s website, and read reviews.
- Like: Once someone does their investigating, then they will decide if the content or services provided match their needs and provides the solutions they are seeking.
- Trust: There are three things that build trust on the internet, and they are Reviews, Testimonials (Video Testimonials are better), and Social Proof.
- Action: Once someone has passed the Trust phase, the likelihood of them making a purchase or hiring your services grows exponentially.
