Trends aren’t always easy to predict, but they’re easy to follow if you monitor audience interests. In digital marketing, being on trend could be the determining factor in a successful search engine rank. As you design and implement new campaigns, a great way to plan your strategy is with a checklist.
Marketing campaign checklists are comprised of various elements. They appear differently for each company depending on the target audience and goals. While your campaign tactics may differ from your neighbour, some elements remain the same. Having the right skills is important, obviously, but so is having a marketing checklist, which should include the following steps:
Business Objectives
Before you map any other strategies, business objectives should be outlined. These are the end goals of your campaign, and the first step in any successful checklist. They ask the question, “what do you want to achieve as a brand?”
Possible objectives could be:
Retain Company Values: What your brand stands for is important to your customers. Whether you’re dedicated to high-quality products, contributing to the local community, or staying on top of consumer communication.
Great Customer Service: A commitment to your customers is an admirable objective. This is a broad goal which outlines subjects like:
Money back guarantee
Live Chat
Phone support
Maintain Profitability: Capital to get started, financial contacts to stay the course, and a long-term plan for success are all major. Sustaining profits means analysing financial data as it comes and being flexible if campaign changes are required.
Competitive Content: The content you post reflects your brand and business. It defines the way consumers view you as a company. Compared to outbound marketing, content marketing is 3x more successful. Being a good content creator is more important than ever. Examples of competitive content are:
Infographics
Sustain Growth: The continual growth of a business is based on traffic and revenue. This goal requires continued research and measurement of analytics. All the objectives above feed into this one and improve chances for success.
Marketing Metrics
Sometimes called KPIs, or key performance indicators, metrics are a measurement of digital marketing. They include costs accrued and revenue earned in various aspects of your campaign.
Some of the main areas to focus on are:
Lead to Traffic Ratio: How many of your leads are accessing your website? If you have 2000 site views and 200 leads, your ratio is 10:1. You deduce this by dividing each number by its common factor to the lowest form. In this case, the common factor was 200. This means there is a 10% rate of conversion.
Lead Cost: The cost-per-lead marketing model differs from pay per click in form and function. Rather than spending money on every click an ad generates, marketers pay for definitive conversions, such as membership signup. It’s important to know how much, overall, your leads are costing you on different platforms.
Customer Churn Rate: It’s important to know how many customers you’re losing. The churn rate is the percentage of consumers who leave memberships behind. To succeed as a company and continue to grow, the number of new subscribers must outweigh discontinued subscriptions.
Landing Page Conversion: This measures the number of visitors to your landing page who buy. The most successful sites online have a landing page conversion rate of 5.1%. This is 2.96% more than the average conversion rate.
Search Engine Optimisation
Along with other skills you need to excel, this is more of a long-term goal, but an important one none the less. Many variables go into SEO, including keyword selection, content relevance, and mobile compatibility. These factors increase visibility, brand awareness, traffic, and eventually, conversion. Research shows that of all the traffic on the internet, 93% comes from search engines. Clearly, a good SEO can propel your business.
This section of your checklist should mention:
Keyword Planning: This encompasses everything from researching the hottest keywords to checking current keyword ranks. There are several tools available, like Google Keyword Planner and Soovle.
Backlink Analysis: Backlinks work by sending potential customers to your website. They link back to your domain, hence the title. This is a measurement Google uses when ranking you. SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Kerboo all offer tools to monitor these statistics.
Rank Tracking: Your global and local search ranking dictate how many internet users will find you in a search. The closer to the top of the results page, the more likely it is to see a conversion. Aside from Googling yourself, you can track rank with Link-Assistant, Synup, and ProRankTracker.
Digital Marketing Content Assets
A content asset is any type of content used as a tool in your marketing campaign. This includes everything from social media posts to mobile apps.
Some of the most commonly used assets are:
eBooks: For B2B marketing, or any company trying to build brand authority, eBooks send a professional message.
Vlogs: One of the most popular assets in digital marketing is vlogging or video blogging. According to consumer reports, 54% of internet users want more videos from their favourite brands.
Podcasts: Podcasts send a message via audio feed and are a beneficial asset for mobile users. Like an audiobook, podcasts deliver your content in a way that requires no reading. It reaches broader audiences, including the visually-impaired.
Email newsletters: Newsletters are a great way to keep your brand fresh in the mind of consumers. Whether used as outreach for newcomers or as a customer retention tool, email circulates links and keywords into the digital atmosphere.
Blogs: Like vlogging, blogging expresses your company’s current interest or news, but in text form. Blogs are essential content assets because they help build authority, relevance, and genuine sounding keywords. All these things improve SEO and readership.
Social Media
Social media plays a massive role in modern marketing and requires a spot on any campaign checklist. There are approximately 3.4-billion social media subscribers, each with 5 to 7 accounts.
When planning for social media, the elements to consider include:
Content: The content you post over social media differs from other platforms. It’s designed for quick access, easy reading, and shareability. Eye-catching, entertaining, and newsworthy information with mixed visual media is best. This is also a prime place for contests and promotions. Use tools like live video and interactive images to tell a story and sell your brand.
Communication Tactics: Social media is a driving force in customer engagement, which means communication is crucial. When customers message, share, like, or comment on social media content, your reaction is seen and evaluated by others. Some ways to communicate over social media are:
Automated chat services
Live chat services
Contact forms
Responding to customer reviews
Commenting and liking customer comments
Automation Tools: There are so many platforms to post on that many marketers turn to automation to keep up. Tools like Hootsuite allow you to schedule content publishing in advance. Other tools, such as BuzzSumo and Mention provide quick insight into your social media popularity and current trends.
Wrapping Up
Digital trends fluctuate like the tides, which means constant vigilance is required. Your checklist may change from time to time, but having a foundation helps get you started.
Using the categories outlined above, you'll begin to build a checklist that reflects your company needs. Maybe you'll add email as a category of its own because that's what makes sense for your brand. Or, perhaps advertising requires its own space. Whatever the case, you'll find that a checklist strengthens your campaign. It's the storyboard of the marketing world, and it outlines the plot of your brand from beginning to end.
Now, you have the checklist, don’t forget to acquire the right skills to execute the ideas. This way, you come off more credible and the chance of the campaign you are doing for your brand or the brand you work for will increase by a lot.
Source: Digital Marketing Institute