Every business faces the ongoing challenge of creating the perfect marketing mix that attracts the right buyers to their brand. Whether you're thinking about marketing or digital marketing for the first time or you've been doing so for years, we all want to know - 'am I using the right channels to get the best bang for my marketing buck?'
It all starts with knowing your goals
Before we dive into picking what will be the right marketing channels, we must have a clear understanding of what we're setting out to achieve. So the process should always start with reviewing your business goals. Such as:
Business Goals:
- What % of growth is your business aiming for this year?
- How many sales are needed to achieve this growth?
- What proportion of your budget will you invest in marketing to achieve these sales?
- How much time are you able to dedicate to achieving this? Etc...
Marketing Goals:
Simultaneously, it's also essential to have a clear understanding or a refresher on what motivates your business. You're why, how and what. This is vital to help you define your business brand and then develop your messaging strategy.
- Why do we do what we do?
- How do we do it?
- What sets my business apart?
- What does my business stand for?
Target Market
The final piece of the puzzle is knowing your target market. Who is your ideal buyer? What traits define them demographically and psychographically. By creating a buyer persona, you'll be better placed to then pick channels that you think will best resonate with your ideal buyer.
So you now know, via this quick refresher, what you need to achieve, how much you're willing to invest of your money and time, the messaging you want to share and the customers you want to attract. Now it's time to decide on your marketing channels.
Picking The Right Marketing Channels
There are many angles with which to review each channel but one easy one is from the lens of investment. That is, free vs paid channels. Let's discuss the pros and cons of each below.
Free:
Organic Social
These are posts you share via your business page to social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Social media is a critical ingredient in a modern marketing mix, but it can be a bit of a time vortex. Whilst they are free to use, they are time-intensive to create and manage. So it's good to review these channels from the perspective of which channels will resonate best with your target market and your message. Also, how frequently are you willing to post?
Email
These are the marketing emails you send to your database. They are a great way of keeping your audience informed and engaged and a vital part of any marketing mix. These are free but time-intensive, so it pays to review your email frequency.
Website blog
This is the content you publish to your website and can be very powerful towards improving your organic search performance. If you go to the effort of producing great content, then we recommend leveraging this across your other organic channels so you can sweat the asset across all your channels.
Organic search
This is helped by the above, but it essentially the free search results you receive from Google based on search intent. It is enabled by having a great website and timely and relevant content.
Paid:
Paid Social:
These are the paid ads or boosted posts you run on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. We think it's good to include this in the mix for two reasons. Firstly, the targeting in these channels can be incredibly sophisticated, so they're an efficient way to spend marketing money and attract the right potential audience. Secondly, these channels work successfully based on audience size, the bigger, the better. So we like to supplement organic social posts with paid posts and ads to boost our content visibility and attract new followers.
Paid Search:
These are Google Ad campaigns and are based on search intent and highly sophisticated targeting. Whilst the conversions on Google ad campaigns can be low compared to other channels, they add value by rapidly increasing your reach and can deliver invaluable information such as the type of keywords that resonate or don't resonate with your target audience.
Paid TV/Radio and print
These channels are expensive but highly effective in expanding the reach of your message. However, they can be less effective at proving a direct correlation on your return on investment.
When it comes to picking your mix, it then becomes a matter of ruling out channels you think will be too costly or time prohibitive or fail to resonate with your target audience and ruling in channels that tick all your boxes.
Poignand Consulting is a strategic marketing and sales enablement consultancy that exists to unlock customer value for your business. We do this by helping enrich the customer experience at every point of contact – from the first seed of awareness to enquiry to opportunity, purchase, the post-sale relationship and repeat purchases.
If you would like help with your marketing and sales, please contact us.
