Techblog
What SMEs need to consider about online marketing campaigns
In the digital age, entrepreneurs need to have a clear online marketing strategy to strengthen their brands and companies.
Coming up with a campaign from scratch may seem daunting at first, but breaking it down using a simple framework can help business owners make it seem more manageable. Here are a few points businesses need to look out for before launching a marketing campaign.
Who is my audience?
Firstly, define who you are speaking to, as knowing your audience helps you craft a more targeted message. It also determines how you can reach and connect with your audience and sell them your product or service. This sets the tone for the rest of the campaign.
Marketing Channels
After identifying your demographics, companies need to know where these target groups live and breathe, and what channels would be best to communicate the message. For example, if you are targeting teenagers or young adults, they would more likely be active on platforms like Instagram rather than LinkedIn.
There are various tools that can help you manage your social media planning. Pablo by Buffer helps you produce social media content with royalty free images while Buffer also helps with the scheduling of your posts.
If your campaign is to drive traffic to your website, this would make you more dependent on search engine placement. One of the tools that can help you with this is Web Builder as it helps to optimise your site for search engines while making it easier for you to build and update your website.
The sophisticated tool allows business owners to design websites without having to code with its advanced “WYSIWYG” (What you see is what you get) interface.
Moreover, the tools also double up as a marketing tool with its search engine optimisation (SEO) features like the ability to auto-generate a sitemap allowing search engines to index new pages. It is also able to add searchable keywords and meta descriptions to improve the Google search ranking of your website.
The message
Next, craft your key message to the public — a certain branding message or a call to action. This is ideally concise and clear so that they remain unified across various platforms. This allows you to make slight tweaks to the message based on the channel used to drive action. For example, what you would post on social media may differ from what you post on the website. Your message has to be adjusted according to the platform.
The beauty of online marketing is the extent of feedback that you can get in real-time from actions taken by customers online.
“Pirate metrics”
For the next step of measuring the results and improving the reach of the campaign, many startups use what is called the “Pirate metrics” developed by Dave McClure, according to veteran digital marketer and entrepreneur Jeremy Lim.
Lim has used the Pirate metric for his startups such as Workwander and Makerscut. It consists of “Acquisition”, “Activation”, “Retention”, “Revenue” and “Referral” (AARRR).
“I find this really useful as you're able to dissect customers into each of these five categories, you'll be able to analyse and optimise marketing efforts in more specific ways,” said Lim.
The first metric, Acquisition, refers to the number of people that visits your website or used your application. You can imagine them perhaps as a group of 100 people who visited your website after they have clicked on your advertisement.
These are the people that you have managed to acquire from your advertising efforts. After you have brought them you will be looking for the second metric, Activation.
Different businesses define activation differently. For some, this can be as simple as signing up for a newsletter. So this group of customer has gone on your website, looked through it and are now answering the call to action on your website, for example, by signing up for a newsletter.
Following the example of the 100 people that visited your website, let us say now you have 70 people who signed up for your newsletter. This would give you a pretty high conversion rate of 70 percent.
Ask for more
After you are able to activate your website visitors, you want them to come back regularly for more and this is where Retention comes in. Companies usually classify customers who click on your email newsletter links as returning customers. Assuming only 10 percent of your customers click on your email newsletters, this means more work needs to be done on the emails, or it could also signify that this is the wrong channel.
Next is Revenue, which refers to your paying customers. Returning customers are generally more likely to turn into paying customers. This way, high retention rates is one of the most important metrics to prove that the marketing campaign is successful.
Once you have a returning customer base, you would want to lower the cost of acquiring new customers and this is where Referral incentives like Uber codes are useful. Getting discounts through social media sharing or micro-influencers are some of the ways startups can further grow their customer base.
“When you put all of the numbers at each category together, you will also be able to use this as a marketing funnel,” said Lim.
“Analysing which part of the funnel has the highest attrition rate will help determine which area of marketing to prioritise your optimisation efforts on.”
Guide to online marketing campaign:
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Know who are your customers and their demographic
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Make sure you use the right channels to bring your message across in the best medium and platform for your target audience
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Have a strong, simple and memorable message
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Analyse your acquired customers and tweak your campaigns continuously to keep customers coming back