9 Things You Need for a Successful Marketing

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There are nine key elements you should include to
ensure your plan
accomplishes your goals.
Carve Out Funds For Your Marketing Strategy
If youre serious about promoting your business,
you need to put your money where your mouth is
and invest in your marketing strategy.
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Not sure how much to set aside? A good rule
of thumb is to dedicate about 10 percent of your
gross annual revenue to your companys marketing
and public relations efforts.
Define Your Marketing Strategys Goals Be SMART
About It!
If you dont set goals, how will you know if
your marketing strategy was effective?
Make sure the goals you set are SMART
Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and
Timely.
The goals you define will determine how you
guide your marketing and PR activities for the
year take the time to set objectives that will
achieve the results you want.
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Clarify Your Branding Guidelines
The best way to do this is by setting clear
brand guidelines for your content creation team.
This goes far beyond creating a logo! It includes
Exactly which shades of various colors youll
use in graphics
The overall look and feel of visuals youll
use, from stock photos to in-house imagery
Which fonts youll use throughout your
website, graphics, brochures and any other
branded content
Types of vocabulary youll use throughout
your content
Messaging youll use across all your platforms
this can include specific phrases and/or
general tone of the text
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Refresh Your Website
When was the last time you evaluated your
website? If its been a while, it may be time to
focus some of your marketing strategy on a
refresh.
Your website is visually engaging and compelling
to visitors, in addition to strategically
following search engine optimization (SEO) best
practices.
Making your site appealing to search engines
like Google helps users discover your website
(more than 50 percent of traffic comes from
search engines!), and designing effective content
for the visitor ensures they stick around to
learn about your business.
Is it mobile friendly?
It needs to be! According to Blue Corona, up to 70
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percent of web traffic happens on a mobile
device and 69 percent of smartphone users say
they are more likely to buy from companies with
mobile sites that easily address their questions
or concerns.
How quickly does it load?
Blue Corona reveals that nearly half (47 percent)
of web users expect a page to load in 2 seconds
or less, and 39 percent of users will stop
engaging with a website if the images wont load
or take too long to load.
Is it visually attractive?
Studies from Blue Corona show that a business
has 10 seconds to leave an impression on a
website visitor.
Nearly half (48 percent) of visitors will
determine how credible a company is based on the
websites designs and more than a third (38
percent) will stop
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engaging with a website if its unattractive.
Is the copy compelling?
As visitors browse your website, do your words
grab their attention and keep them wanting
more? According to Conversion XL, users spend
about 5.59 seconds reading your websites written
content. In addition to making it easy to digest,
if you capture their attention effectively,
theyll stay for longer than six seconds, too.
Is it optimized for search engines?
You want to design your website for your
target audience, but if users cant find it, they
cant be wowed by it.
By folding in SEO best practices, like frontend
and backend SEO, meta descriptions and more,
youll
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make it that much easier for potential customers
to find your website.
Should you invest in a chatbot?
This can be a helpful way to connect with
your websites visitors. As Three Girls Marketing
PR Specialist Anna Izenman explains in this
post about how chatbots boost customer engagement.
These digital tools improve customer
service, streamline the shopping process,
personalize communication, improve response rate
and automate repetitive tasks.
Dedicate Resources To Consistent Blogging
If one of your marketing strategys goals is
to increase website traffic, blogging needs to be
a
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priority in your 2020 plan. According to
recent research ? Having a blog as part of
your companys website increases
your chances of ranking higher in search
engine results by 434 percent! ? Theres a
direct correlation between the number of blog
posts on a website and its traffic companies
that published 21-54 articles saw an increase in
traffic of 30 percent.
Infiltrate Inboxes Regularly
With Email Newsletters Not sure
if email marketing is worth the investment for
? Email marketing
2020s marketing strategy?
has an average return on investment of 3,800
? 81 percent of online shoppers who
percent
receive emails based
on past shopping habits
? 72 percent of
consider another purchase
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consumers prefer to receive promotional
If you
content through email than social media
integrate email newsletters into your marketing
strategy carefully, it can be an
incredibly cost-effective way to reach consumers
while making the most of other content youve
already created. These types of messages are a
fantastic place to share your blog posts as
well as any videos, graphics or other designs you
craft for your brand. Create An Engaging Social
Media Presence With literally billions of
users spending time on social media
platforms around the world, its well worth the
investment to foster an engaging presence on
Facebook,
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Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Pinterest.
You dont need to invest in every platform in
fact, I recommend against it. Research your
audience to determine which social media networks
they use, and then wrap those channels into your
marketing strategy. Invest In Targeted Advertising
Thanks to social media algorithms making it
harder for organic content to stand out, its
more important than ever to include advertising
in your marketing strategy.
Plan on at least a modest ad campaign to
increase your visibility on your top
platforms. Review Analytics And Refine
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Your Marketing Strategy
Specifically look at how your readers and
followers are responding to your content.
While you want to give your marketing strategy
time before you drop a tactic or reallocate your
funds, reviewing these insights can help you
fine-tune your approach.
By looking at the analytics, you can listen to
what theyre saying through their reactions,
comments, shares, clicks, amount of time spent on
a page, etc.