As an entrepreneur, looking for successful conversions, it is essential that you have a well-defined marketing plan. The changing business dynamics calls for effective planning and capable marketing goals and defined blueprint to apply the new marketing strategies.
Apart from having a successful plan, you should also strategize how you will implement the plan for improved conversions.
Here, we will take you through the types of marketing plans you can define for your business, and how to implement the plans successfully.
Let’s take you through the marketing approaches you can consider so that you are fully prepared for the battle ahead. Remember, it is important that you choose a 360-degree approach for better business conversions.
The Marketing Approaches
#1. Social Media Approach
Social media is an unavoidable approach, one that you should consider when preparing the marketing plan for your business. It helps define the brand image for your business and the positioning you aim to achieve for your business.
With time, social media marketing helps offer value to your business, and increase interactions with the target audience. This marketing plan is essential if you want to converse with your customers in real-time and ensure there is enough trust in your relationship with the customer.
When it comes to social media, you have plenty of distractions, and you need to cut down on them with an able voice. There are a few things that you ought to be able to add and define in your social media strategy for a winning marketing plan.
- Start with defining social media goals. It is important that you know what it is that you want to achieve from this medium. It could range from brand voice to visibility to trust
- You will need to maintain a social media posting calendar which will contain the main elements such as posting frequency, dates, and other details
- Once these are planned, you can move to understand what kind of content and timing ticks on social media for your brand niche. This will need some research from your end
- You will need to start working on content curation and collaboration strategies right at the start so that you can convert with social media. It is important, at this point, to define the engagement strategy as well for your social media marketing plan.
It is not possible to do a social media plan overnight. You will need to sit with your marketing team, and effectively search for social media platforms that will work for your business. It is important to note that not all platforms need your energy and investment.
#2. Email Marketing Approach
A lot of people are ready to write-off this marketing approach but, the truth is email marketing is the highest converting marketing approach ever. With minimal investment, you get a good ROI if you use this approach correctly, and with the help of defined tools.
Why does email marketing work? For one, it is a personalized marketing approach and offers more direct connection with the customer than any other medium.
40 percent of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success.
According to Statista, the United States will invest something over $350Mn in email marketing advertisements.
Considering these statistics, we can clearly say that email marketing is going to be one of the most powerful marketing approaches, and you have to be ready to accept this strategy.
When you plan on your email marketing approach, take the personalization method. It is very important that you curate the mail to resonate with the thoughts of the end-user. It will be more effective and will help you convert better.
Planning your email marketing strategy is going to take more than just understanding the email tools. You will need to define the different emails and automate the workflows. Here, we will take you through the planning techniques and what we mean by automation.
- The beginning of any marketing plan would be through identifying the target audience. You should know who you aim to please with your marketing strategies before you actually get started
- In the case of email marketing, the email list plays an important role. You need to have a list that has valid email addresses of people who are part of the target audience.
- Next on, you should segment the audience so that they are grouped according to their stage in the sales funnel. A few people in the list are still in the consideration stage while, there are a few others who have passed the consideration stage, and have entered into the actual buying stage. You will need two different types of emails to woo these customers.
- The content and the type of email that you will create plays a huge role in conversion. Make sure you have some good templates to meet the email marketing goals
- Automation is key to maximizing the conversion. When a person signs up for your newsletter, then you should welcome them. you can forget sending a mail or two if you sign up for manual emails. That’s why you ought to use the right email marketing tools and add the workflows. This way, whenever a new customer is added or the existing lead goes up in the funnel, an email is sent automatically.
#3. Search Engine Marketing Approach
We perform all our activities so that we can optimize the website and our business for the search engine. Our ultimate aim is to rank high on the search engines. However, there is a whole load of difficulty that you face when you use organic methods to rank high on search engines. You need to plan your tactics effectively if you want to improve conversions using this method.
There are two main methods to SEM: Search engine optimization and pay per click. You will need to use both techniques for effective ranking and better optimization methods.
Organic traffic does not happen overnight, and you will need to be patient with that. You will need to wait through for a while before you can achieve the desired results with SEO. Pay per click, on the other hand, can boost your results within a short period of time, that too effectively.
However, when you are taking the search engine marketing approach, you need to carefully plan your strategies.
- Plan the piece that you want to boost organically and the ones that you want to go with pay-per-click
- Once the decision is made, identify the platforms where you will boost the content, and find out the keywords that are high in demand and can get the content optimized
- You will need to perform the website optimization activities as well as use certain tools and techniques that can help boost visibility of the business through SEM
#4. Content Marketing Approach
Your marketing plan in the online age and time will remain incomplete if you have not taken the content marketing approach. It is important to think through your content and offer solutions to the pain points of your potential customer through the content.
Content, not only helps you showcase your brand as an expert in this category, but also helps effectively convert the audience.
When you are planning content marketing for your business, there are a few things that you need to consider.
- The ultimate goals that you aim to achieve through the content marketing strategy. this plays an important role
- Like social media, use certain tools to identify how often you aim to post the content and what kind of content you believe will help you increase your brand’s worth.
- The promotion and distribution strategies should be well thought out before you begin with the content marketing journey
- Finally, you should use the right tools and techniques to create and distribute the content
We have the approaches or rather the marketing routes that should be taken by the brand for effective marketing planning and ensuring good outcomes. However, the one thing that will make sure your marketing approaches work when you have a well-defined marketing plan in hand.
Here we will take you through the steps that will help you create a good marketing plan.
Create an Effective Marketing Plan
Your marketing plan should ideally include the target market, the marketing activities and the marketing budget. It will help you define the blueprint for effective approaches and better conversions. The business objectives defined in the marketing plan could be geographical in nature or product based. You could even define them for a particular customer segment.
- Know your Company: Start with knowing your company, analyze the current situation of the company, and identify where you want to take it. you should have a clear understanding of your direct competitors, your business objectives, your marketing objectives. Conduct a SWOT analysis of your company
- Define the Target Audience: Once you know your company, it is important to know the target market where you will be introducing your products or services. What kind of customers are you targeting? Know their mindsets, their buying behavior and other details important from a marketing perspective
- Define the Marketing Goals: What do you aim to achieve from the marketing plan that you are setting for your business. Be specific, real and optimistic about the marketing plan you are about to define
- Choose the Marketing Approach: research on what type of marketing approaches work for the segment. Identify if you should take a singular marketing approach or go 360-degree with the company’s marketing plan.
- Define the Budget: Once you have decided on the marketing approach, strategies, and other aspects, define the budget. You will know how much to spend on each activity, and which ought to be on your radar and which ones can move out.
Summing Up
When it comes to marketing your startup, a thoroughly defined approach and clearly chosen marketing goals are important. You will need to make sure that both the goals and the approach resonate so that you can maximize conversions.
- Defining the plan and approach is as important as clarifying the target audience and estimating the budget
- You will need to ensure that you have a clear understanding of the current situation of your company to be able to derive the right approach for it
- Your goals need to be clear for your marketing approach to take the right course of action for you
So, don’t strategize your business marketing without identifying what you really want and how you want to go about it.
About the Author!
Chirag Mudsa is the CEO of the leading web app development company, CMARIX TechnoLabs Pvt. Ltd. He is a goal-driven tech evangelist for a long time of 17 years, specializing in web and mobile development domains. His innovative spirit, strong leadership skills and a profound commitment to organizational growth have given him a key leading position in the industry.