The Marketing landscape has been forever changed since the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses are having to re-evaluate what once worked may not work today.
How do businesses develop a hybrid marketing plan for 2022 that allows their customers to connect both online and offline while building and growing a BOLD brand?
1. Define your customer: Creating a customer persona and identifying where those customers are, allows businesses to be more strategic when spending their marketing dollars and their resources. You have to meet your customers where they are.
Understanding your customers' demographics will allow you to access what marketing channels and digital platforms will be most effective.
Start with the WHY? Why would your customers need your products or services and what problem would it solve for them? This will help gauge your prospective customers and evaluate your current customer base to upsale. Don’t overlook your current customers.
2. Create a Plan: When looking at the complete journey of the customer, they usually have already interacted with your brand online or through social media. It’s important to make sure your brand has a consistent message and all contact information is correct across all platforms and touchpoints and the only way to do that is to have a plan in place.
Planning is key to having a successful marketing strategy. Creating a 90 day marketing plan that includes both digital and social media will help give you valuable insight to your customers' interaction with your brand and allow you to make adjustments as necessary to improve your ROI.
3. Convert lookers into buyers: With such an increased focus on customer service, understanding exactly what people think and do before making any major branding efforts and product placement choices is important. With the proper marketing strategies in place, impressions will become engagements and engagements will become sales.
Having a Call To Action (CTA) will help customers understand what action you would like for them to take.
4. Create Valuable Content: Does your content represent your company's culture? What is the tone and message of your content? Writing for social media gives your customer an opportunity to connect with your company and decide if it aligns with their values and beliefs. You're essentially selling an emotion and your brand's reputation. Creating valuable content can create connections with your audience and create a lasting impression.
Consider specific brand # hashtags & keywords that are relevant to your marketing campaign.
5. Know & Own Your Data: Tracking and measuring your data tells a story about your customers’ journey while giving valuable insights into your marketing efforts.
If you want more detailed information about how your customers behave then data analytics is going to be a key component of this process.
Most importantly, own your data and your customer database! Do not rely on a “Free” platform such as Facebook. Businesses spend time and resources building large followings or groups on these platforms only for them to turn around and require them to spend advertising dollars to access them over time.
Using platforms such as Google Analytics, Hootsuite, etc. can break down your data in a more detailed manner and offer you more insights into your customers and target market.
For the latest social media marketing trends and statics visit Search Engine Journal’s report of the Top 10 Media Sites and Platforms for 2021.