A goal without a plan is just a wish. This saying holds true in most fields, but especially in business and marketing. If you don’t know how you are going to achieve something, chances are it will never happen.
That’s why I recommend small businesses create a bespoke marketing strategy to ensure any efforts achieve measurable results that align to the goals of the business. Right now is a great time to get started too, so you can get in shape for a strong 2013.
Firstly, I’d suggest obtaining some data so any strategies you create are informed ones. The easiest way to do this is by surveying your customers – through email and social media. Ask them questions – what do they like and what do they dislike? It might be uncomfortable to hear but, honestly, it might be the best thing you ever do for your business.
Now you’ve got some information, analyse it. And you don’t need a doctorate in advanced physics to understand what’s going on. Don’t worry about the one-off odd comments (‘I’d like to see more antique doorknob themed images on your bakery’s Facebook Page’, for example) but if you see the same requests over and over, you’ve probably got yourself a trend and something worth dealing with.
Following the survey and analysis you should be able to make some definitive statements about your customers. For example, maybe your customers use Facebook but not LinkedIn (or vice versa), or you cater to mums who love Pinterest. Also, you learned that yes! people do want a monthly (or weekly) e-newsletter from you.
Now it’s time to build an Engagement Marketing strategy and take advantage of that knowledge to help your business grow. I recommend taking some time and getting it all written down. It doesn’t have to be long or too detailed, just a clear road-map for where you want to take your marketing and how you plan to get there.
No two plans would look the same and depending on your business or organisation, the size, and the responses to your survey, your strategy may look something like this:
Engagement Marketing Strategy
Our objective is to increase online word-of-mouth and drive traffic back to our site, we will use regular targeted email newsletters and Pinterest (which the survey results indicated our customers, who are mostly women aged 25-65, are using). To help achieve this our goals are:
- Double traffic back to our site from Pinterest within three months
- Have 100 Pinterest followers within two months
- Achieve 20% open rate on email newsletters
- Achieve a 20% “Repin” rate
- Get at least one comment or like per day on our boards
We will measure how we’re doing using the free tool Google Analytics.
We will use our email newsletters to encourage people to Pin photos from our site as well as ask people to follow us, leave comments, etc.
Once we have reached our Pinterest goals, we’ll then integrate our Pinterest account with our Facebook Page by setting up a feed between the two. As the survey results indicated this was the second place where the majority of our customers hang out.
Social media policy
We encourage our employees to maintain their own individual accounts and state that they work for us. We have held a company meeting to discuss what can and cannot be posted about our company by employees. Everyone has read and signed our Social Media Policy.
Tactics
Mary will maintain the Pinterest account. She will check in on a daily basis, add new Pins, follow other Pinners, and initiate discussion. She will also be responsible for creating the e-newsletter, which will go out the third Wednesday of each month.
By doing a little legwork upfront, you’ll help ensure that the Engagement Marketing strategy you create “sticks” and helps you meet your marketing objectives.
One thing we learnt from our own research this year is that many small businesses are actually getting better results on social media than they give themselves credit for. However, with a written plan you’ll have a much clearer view of what success looks like for your company, and you can look forward to reaping the benefits from a new or refreshed engagement marketing strategy in 2013.
