Creating a marketing video could be just the thing to bring your business to the next level. If done correctly, videos can be extremely effective marketing tools and ensure you’re getting the attention and revenue you deserve.
However, before you dive into creating a marketing video, you should be familiar with the different factors that will affect your professional video production costs. In this blog, we will break down what goes into video production and how you can plan a realistic video budget.
What are Marketing Videos?
The main purpose of marketing videos is to address your audience’s problem, propose how your product or service can fix it, and then explain why the audience should choose your company over your competitors.
There are many different names or types of marketing videos, like: explainer videos, corporate videos, and promotional videos. However, all of these short films are primarily used to highlight a company’s product, service, or business idea.
Your video may even be used to present your company’s financial results to stakeholders, highlight a new initiative your company is partaking in, or be used as a business introduction for potential clients.
No matter what topic your video is focusing on, in order for it to be successful, it should be high quality, represent your company’s brand identity well, and incorporate a strong call to action. Your videos should be compelling and well executed, leaving your target audience informed, as well as intrigued.
5 Major Stages of Marketing Video Production
Making a marketing video usually involves 5 stages. Below is an outline you can follow when going through your video production process.
1. Development
The development stage of video production is all about your concept and end goal. You’ll want to decide what you plan to get from this video and how you plan to achieve that.
This is also the stage where you can create a timeline and marketing budget for your project. (More on video marketing costs to follow below.) Understanding the purpose of your video is key, because it will serve as the foundation for the entire production process.
2. Pre-Production
The pre-production stage is where you begin to figure out the details of your video. Preparing a schedule will help you stay organized and on track as you work.
You’ll also need to finalize your video script, as well as hire any staff or actors you need for your production team. Make sure you gather whatever equipment you may need and decide on location(s) for your video to take place.
3. Production
The production stage is when filming happens. All of the raw footage and content that will be presented in your video is created. This includes any video, audio, B-roll, and/or cut-away shots. Depending on how long or complex your video is, production could take anywhere from one day to one week.
4. Post-Production
The post-production stage involves all the editing. This includes video editing, mixing audio and sound, adding sound effects, color grading, and/or adding any animation or motion graphics.
Another piece of this stage is video rendering and compression. These steps involve transferring your footage into an editing system, rendering it into a presentable format post editing, and eventually uploading it to wherever it will be hosted.
5. Marketing & Distribution
This stage should be where you share your final video to reach your target audience and the general public. Your end goal and overall purpose that you determined in the development stage should be fulfilled in your distribution of your video.
Professional Video Production Cost Breakdown
Professional video production cost can be broken down into different factors or categories. Not every element is necessary for every video, and depending on what type of video you’re creating, you may only have some of these expenses.
The prices for different services will also vary depending on what type of video production team you use. where your business is located. Below are the most common factors that will affect your professional video production cost.
Project Management and Project Coordination Expenses
Project managers or project coordinators are necessary to ensure your production costs don’t exceed your video production budget. In addition, these individuals help to manage the production timeline. When you’re on a schedule, you want to be sure that everyone is meeting their deadlines and staying on track.
Depending on who you hire for this role, you may spend anywhere from $25-$250 an hour. The experience of the project manager or project coordinator will be the deciding factor in how expensive their rate is.
Script Development Costs
This cost is only necessary if your video project requires a script. Hiring a professional script writer will help coordinate what your on-screen speakers will say. These prices will vary depending on the length of the script and the experience of the script writer.
If you choose to use an experienced script writer, you could spend anywhere from $50-$150 an hour. Many professional script writers will provide you with a video concept, storyboard, and script for your video project.
Cost of On-Screen Talent
On-screen talent is optional when it comes to video production. If you don’t want to be on screen, you’ll need to hire actors, models, or voice-over talent to be the face of the video.
The factors that go into these costs depend on their experience, as well as how much time they will be spending working on the project. In addition, the price for on-screen talent varies greatly depending on where you’re located.
Costs Associated with Visual Assets
Marketing videos often incorporate shots that supplement what’s being said on screen. In the video production industry, these are known as B-roll or cut-away shots.
These are visuals that can be used to describe a product or service in your video. Some of the most common types of supplemental visuals include:
Still images
Stock photos
Licensed photos
Custom photography
Video
Stock video
Licensed video
Custom video
Illustrations/3-D elements
Stock illustrations
Custom illustrations
Purchased 3-D models
The price of supplemental visuals will depend on the quality of the photos, videos, or illustrations, as well as the time needed to film the extra footage. Most often, cut-aways and B-roll shots make up about 15%-50% of your filming budget.
Costs to Add Special Effects
Depending on the type of video you’re producing, you may include special effects like animations, motion graphics, or title overlays. Using these elements will add to your overall video production budget. If you’re creating a brand video intended to sell a product or service, you may want to include a call to action with the help of special visual effects.
Some videos only require simple graphics, while others may be entirely animated. For basic special effects editing, you may spend anywhere from $65-$225 an hour. However, the cost of high-quality 3-D animation will depend on the complexity of the project and range anywhere from $95-$300 an hour.
Location Costs
The location of where you plan on shooting your video will also play a role in your production costs. There are multiple factors that will determine your video shoot location, such as:
Are you shooting indoors or outdoors?
Do you need a sound stage or studio?
Will you be filming in more than one location?
Are you shooting with a green screen?
Will you need to travel between locations?
Considering these questions will help you decide what you have to incorporate into your budget. Studio rental, fees and permits, travel fees, and building rentals may be required depending on where you’re shooting. You’ll also need to take into account the total time you’ll need at your designated location.
Music Licensing Fees
If you intend to have any special sound effects or music in your video, you’ll need to add certain music licensing fees to your budget. Some websites offer license-free music. Just make sure you read all of the fine print to ensure the music is legal to use. There are also other options you can use, such as:
Stock music (royalty-free)
Licensed music
Custom scores
Royalty free music could be anywhere from $11 for a 2-3 minute track. If you’re considering hiring an audio engineer, you could spend anywhere from $500-$1,000 or more depending on the ability, experience, and tools needed for the project.
Video Production Crew Costs
The size of your production crew will depend on the complexity of the project, the length of the video, and your budget. The people involved in the production of your video may include:
Director
Director of photography
Camera operator
Lighting professional
Sound professional
Grip professional
Makeup/hair artist
Video editor
Motion graphics artist/animator
The cost of hiring any of these personnel will depend on where you’re located, their experience, and the amount of time they will be working for you.
Overhead Costs of Video Production
The overhead costs include any equipment or insurance required for your video production. In terms of equipment, this may include cameras, lights, sound, computers, and software. When it comes to insurance, this covers liability and workers compensation. These costs will vary depending on what equipment you use and the quality of those products.
Takeaway: How Much Does Marketing Video Production Cost?
There is no simple answer to the question, how much does a marketing video production cost? because of the variables that go into creating a video production budget.
However, there are baseline costs which you can use as a starting point. According to most production companies, the average cost of video production is about $1,000-$5,000 per finished minute.
Video production can be a valuable marketing tool, no matter how you decide to create one. The most important thing to remember is to set a realistic budget that will allow you to accomplish your goals and stick to it.
Ready to take your business to the next level? Find out how our team can help execute your video project and achieve your marketing goals within your budget.
If you’re reading this blog, you probably already have a budget for marketing and a hunch that you need to find new ways to optimize your marketing budget. As an agency, we know that no matter the size of the budget, every dollar must bring value to the table.
But even after you’ve dotted your I’s and crossed your budget T’s, how can you stretch your marketing budget further? Here are some of our most practical tips for effectively using your marketing budget to get the best ROI on your investments.
1. Lay the Foundation for Your Optimal Marketing Budget
The key to any marketing budget is having a plan. You’ll want to analyze your company’s achievements, future goals, and areas for improvement. Asking these questions will help you lay a strategic foundation to effectively use your marketing budget.
This can be nuanced, so comparing past years’ budgets and results with future goals can help you paint a more realistic picture of the means you’ll need to achieve that growth.
Be S.M.A.R.T. About Your Goals
When talking with clients about their goals, we often hear the phrase, “I want to generate more leads” or “I want to increase revenue.” These are important goals, but on their own, they aren’t specific enough to your business to carry you through the day-to-day. Consider the S.M.A.R.T. goals you can make that lead to those wins.
As you paint your picture of success, consider including measurable goals – like gaining referrals, getting email signups, or increasing your organic web traffic each month. Now you know where to put the dollars in your budget.
How Will You Measure Your Goals?
In the words of Peter Drucker, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Sounds easy enough, right? But as marketers, we often find ourselves passionate about a new initiative or content strategy and not so passionate about the detailed measurement of all those initiatives after they launch. It’s easy to be excited about the next idea.
And it makes sense – analyzing marketing data can feel like a big hill to climb. When you use tracking (we’ll get to that later!), it can help illustrate the value of your investment and reduce marketing waste.
This is especially important if you need to stretch a tight marketing budget. Every business’ KPIs are different, but here are some to consider:
Visitor-to-lead conversion rate
Opportunities generated
Revenue generated
Website traffic to blogs
Clicks generated from paid advertising
Consider the Season
If you’re using the same amount of ad spend or duplicate initiatives throughout every month of the year, you’re not optimizing your marketing budget. A great example of this is the tax industry.
As you ramp up and prepare for the busy season, increasing your ad spend or awareness efforts at a higher level makes sense. But once you’re in the new year (when people need to have their taxes done), your spending probably doesn’t need to be quite as high.
This shouldn’t be guesswork, however, which is why it’s so important to make sure you’re tracking what you do year-over-year and forecasting your digital marketing efforts for the future.
2. Invest Spend In Your Brand Equity
In marketing, large ticket efforts like social media or billboard ads are often top of mind. But what about your brand? What’s your reputation in your industry? Brand equity is based on the consumer’s perception of and experiences with your brand. And it’s important that your marketing spend supports your brand equity development.
Expertise. Authoritativeness. Trustworthiness. These three elements are essential to not only building brand equity online but achieving a great SEO ranking down the line.
Rich content that contains valuable information and insights, such as optimized blog posts or case studies, shows a level of expertise. Authoritativeness is what happens as you develop a content library, by demonstrating your expertise above others in your industry. Trustworthiness comes from several factors, like how secure your site is or the number of positive vs. negative reviews.
Invest In the Right Quality and Quantity of Content
What defines quality content? Rather than giving us a step-by-step guide, Yoast tells us that “the easy answer is: your users.” But is that an easy answer? Yes and no. Various elements go into creating great content, but the end-user is always the key perspective to keep in mind.
You’ll recall earlier we mentioned that at least 50% of your marketing budget should go towards digital marketing. When it comes to content marketing, we recommend at least 25% of that digital marketing umbrella be used towards the content budget.
Content marketing is a form of organic internet marketing. While this strategy is a long-term commitment, it can be a cost-efficient digital marketing effort because the actual costs are relatively low compared to efforts like billboards or TV ads.
To see success, you need to generate a lot of content, but it also needs to be high quality.
Phase 1
As you look to get started, take it back to the basics and make sure you’re using those dollars to invest in a strong foundation. That means optimizing the content on your existing web pages first and foremost.
Phase 2
Only after you’ve optimized your existing website pages to include SEO keywords and a greater wealth of quality content should you begin shifting your resources to producing new, quality content.
What does the breakdown of all that quality and quantity content look like for your budget? We’re about to take a look.
Let’s say you have 50 hours budgeted for your team to spend on content per month. You might consider using this strategy:
25 hours, about 50% of that time, on blog writing and / or whitepapers
2.5 hours, about 5% of the time, optimizing or rewriting one page on your website
At least 12 hours, about 25% of the time, for email marketing
Starting with 7 hours, about 15% of the time, each month depending on the season
And lastly, 2.5 hours or about 5% of the time to plan your upcoming month’s content
Earlier in this post, we talked about setting up ways of measuring your marketing goals so that you can stretch your marketing budget. As you launch your efforts, you’ll also want to track, A/B test, and review what you find.
Track Organic & Paid Digital Marketing in Google Analytics
Thanks to tools like Google Analytics and integrated CRMs, certain ROI tracking is easy. Google Analytics will allow you to track the leads and conversions from a variety of paid and organic initiatives.
For example, tactfully tracking website visitors from your social media ad campaign and subsequent conversions helps put tangible value to your marketing spend.
Certain marketing initiatives, like a logo refresh or non-profit sponsorship, for example, are a little more difficult to track the ROI on.
Now, that’s not to say that those less trackable efforts are any less valuable – they’re very important. Nonetheless, some marketing efforts will never have a clear, trackable line, and that’s okay. It’s also one of the reasons why it’s so important to track the ones that do.
Ultimately, at the end of the year, you’ll likely be taking the analytics data and pairing it with your KPIs to present to your executive team, CEO, or CFO. Proof of ROI from the marketing budget will help advocate for your marketing budget to stay the same or even grow in the future.
A/B Test Your Advertising
New to A/B testing? Harvard Business Review has a great refresher on what this looks like. Essentially, it gives you room to be creative with your marketing and make small tweaks along the way that help you optimize your campaigns and spend your budget better. Here are some A/B testing examples:
If you run a social ad, consider testing different verbiage with the same image or vice versa.
In a PPC ad, consider the trends and test different keywords along with their subsequent combinations.
If you’re utilizing email marketing, send one variation of the campaign to a subset of your audience and another variation to the other subset. This will help you to see which performs better.
Invest Strategically
We know that ad time during March Madness might seem like a great and glamorous idea, and it very well may be. Nonetheless, investing a significant portion of your marketing dollars in a singular effort can be risky. That’s why it’s important to use testing, tracking, and measuring to inform your decisions and select the right mix of marketing tactics.
4. Don’t Underestimate Public Relations
To effectively use your marketing budget, a holistic approach is important. A mix of both paid and free public relations can complement your marketing efforts in calculated ways.
Positive Press
Launching a new product? Consider a press release to accompany your campaign. Have a team member who’s great at public speaking? Check with your local chamber about doing a presentation on an area of your business’ expertise.
On the other hand, consider using your existing resources creatively towards a local non-profit’s fundraising campaign or by participating in a benefit golf tournament.
There are four primary types of sponsorships to consider.
Financial Sponsorship: The business pays money in exchange for benefits outlined in the sponsor package.
In-kind Sponsorship: The business donates goods or services instead of a monetary amount.
Speaker Sponsor: The business pays the expense (travel/accommodations) for a speaker to present at an event.
Venue or Location Sponsor: The business covers the venue fee or allows the use of a venue they own/occupy.
These various options allow you to find the perfect match for your resources. By donating something you already have, like a few hours in your venue, to an event with attendees that are your ideal client, you’ve been able to stretch a tight marketing budget in a creative way.
Referrals
Since we already know that people talk to each other about their favorite – or not-so-favorite – products, brands, and experiences, why not ask your customers for a referral?
As you look at your budget, consider the cost per cold lead vs. the investment in rewarding your clients and the warm leads they refer. Is that reward a complimentary service? An upgrade? Make sure that whatever you choose has the potential to be good for you, your client, and the lead.
You might be fortunate enough to already see this happening organically, but if not, consider creating a referral program.
Awards and Recognition
If you need to stretch a tight marketing budget, awards and recognition within your community and industry can be a helpful complement to your traditional efforts. Consider checking with your local chamber of commerce, business journal, or reader’s choice awards for free entries while exploring industry awards for paid entries.
If you work with an agency or consultant, see if you can partner together on this initiative and share the entry fees.
Getting Started: Putting Your Budget In Place
Every business has different needs, strategies, and circumstances. This isn’t a hurdle, but a unique puzzle we as marketers get to pull out and put together. No marketing budget is one-size-fits-all, even a small marketing budget.
The ideas and strategies we just reviewed will help you consider your unique business needs and challenges so that you can save time, money, and produce results.
Not seeing the results you want or need to elevate your efforts? We can help with a free audit of your marketing budget. You’ll get an unbiased, third-party view on your spending and efforts, along with third-party pricing.
If you’ve ever compared marketing in-house vs. agency vs. freelancer, you know there are many important factors to consider. Making the right choice for your business starts with defining your marketing objectives and weighing them against your strengths and weaknesses. In this blog, we’ll review in-house, agency, and freelancer marketing models to help you make the best decisions.
What is In-House Marketing?
With an in-house model, the bulk of your company’s marketing is handled by your own employees. Most businesses with an in-house team don’t use freelancers or agencies to supplement their marketing. Building a strong in-house marketing department starts with identifying the most important roles and filling them with experienced professionals who know how to achieve your goals.
Your in-house marketing team should include a marketing manager/CMO, creative director, and specialists in:
Internet marketing: SEO, local SEO, PPC, content, email, and social media
Web: design, development, UX design, eCommerce, hosting, and maintenance
Creative: branding, strategy, and print media
You may choose to supplement a small in-house team with the expertise of a marketing agency, which can handle areas outside of your strengths. We’ll take a closer look at the most common in-house marketing models below.
Common In-House Marketing Models
There are three main in-house marketing models: full competency, traditional, and hybrid:
A full competency in-house team possesses comprehensive digital abilities and doesn’t require any external support.
A traditional in-house team handles the bulk of your marketing efforts and only occasionally seeks support from third parties.
A hybrid in-house team (or in-house marketing agency) is a separate in-house “agency” that works outside of your marketing team. They’re structured like a traditional agency, but their only client is your parent company. Hybrid teams typically take a more holistic look at overall marketing strategy and will occasionally outsource highly-specialized tasks to agencies.
Benefits of In-House Marketing
There are several pros of handling your marketing in-house vs. agency advertising. We’ll dig into each of these benefits in the following sections.
1. Brand, Product, & Service Knowledge
One of the biggest benefits of going in-house vs. agency is your existing employees’ familiarity with your products, services, and unique value proposition (UVP)/unique selling proposition (USP).
Your internal employees may also have a better grasp on your personas and where prospects and customers are in the buyer’s journey. With the right training, your in-house team can become resident experts who speak to your target audience using the most effective marketing channels.
2. Company Investment & Consistency
Your in-house marketing team is deeply invested in your success, as your fortune is also their own. Plus, rather than marketing several businesses, all of their attention is focused on your brand.
In-house designers vs. agency marketing can also help you ensure brand consistency and boost your team’s creativity. In fact, 56% of businesses feel they became more creative after consolidating their marketing under one roof.
3. Improved Communication & Flexibility
In most cases, marketing in-house vs. agency means faster communication and enhanced collaboration. Even if some of your team members are remote, you can connect instantly with them for important meetings and conversations.
More immediate communication allows you to make decisions quickly and respond to new trends. It also minimizes lengthy lead times because you can easily communicate with stakeholders. Additionally, you can make quick changes to time-sensitive assets and deliverables, rather than waiting on third parties.
4. Data Ownership & Transparency
Going in-house vs. agency can give you a better understanding of fundamental marketing data (like spend and results) to facilitate more informed decisions. And if you do choose to work with an agency from time to time, data ownership can help you select the right services since you know your strengths and weaknesses.
An awareness and clear understanding of your marketing data also promotes transparency across your organization. In fact, 59% of marketers feel bringing their advertising in-house contributed to increased transparency, better information/resource sharing, and enhanced communication.
Drawbacks of In-House Marketing
While there are benefits to marketing in-house vs. agency advertising, there are also several significant drawbacks to be aware of.
1. Creative Stagnancy & Routine
Focusing on the same topic(s) for extended periods of time can get old quickly, negatively impacting your marketers and creative team. This can make it more difficult to generate fresh ideas or get a solid grasp on what your competitors are doing. And if your team becomes too entrenched in routine, they may stop thinking outside the box.
2. Inexperience & Lack of Resources
Depending on how niche your industry is, new employees may not have the necessary experience and knowledge to produce high-quality work. Properly training new hires takes time and may end up diverting your focus from essential marketing duties. If you don’t have enough talent within your in-house team, you’ll want to hire a marketing agency to fill in the gaps.
3. HR Difficulties
Successful marketing requires a long-term strategy, so it’s very important to hire talent who will stay with your company. You’ll have to make strategic adjustments every time an employee leaves, which will slow down overall progress towards your goals.
Turnover also heightens pressure on remaining team members to pick up the slack, which can result in unsatisfactory work or cause other employees to leave. Plus, it takes much longer to hire and train new personnel than it does to partner with a marketing agency.
4. Pricey Software & Tools
Marketing and creative tools (e.g. SEMrush, HubSpot, ActiveCampaign, and Adobe Creative Cloud) are an expensive proposition for in-house teams with limited budgets. Plus, you’ll need to vet potential tools to determine which ones are right for your business, which can be very time consuming.
What is a Marketing Agency?
Marketing agencies employ specialists who work with you to achieve your business goals. Their staff are experts in a variety of areas, including web design/development, content, and SEO, among others. Depending on your bandwidth and needs, you can outsource some or all of your marketing to an agency (like Tower!)
Benefits of Hiring a Marketing Agency
There are many pros of working with an experienced digital marketing agency vs. in-house advertising. We’ll review the most significant benefits of working with a digital marketing agency vs. freelancers or an internal team below.
1. Immediate Results
Agencies employ seasoned marketing experts who can usually deliver results more quickly and effectively than an in-house team. They can also efficiently scale up or down with your needs, which means you won’t have to let go of internal employees if you want to pause your marketing efforts. And as we mentioned above, it takes more time and effort to hire new team members than it does to partner with an agency.
2. Fresh Viewpoints
Agencies hedge against creative stagnancy by providing an unbiased assessment of your marketing and innovative plans for improvement. They may suss out opportunities that you’ve overlooked because they’re not as immersed in the day-to-day operations of your business.
If the agency you choose already has experience within your industry, they’ll probably have a solid grasp on what’s already been done and what’s trending. This frees up valuable time for you to focus on highly-specialized marketing that requires in-house levels of expertise.
3. Experience & Expertise
Agencies typically specialize in certain industries, so you’ll easily be able to find one with an in-depth understanding of your market’s challenges and opportunities. And because agency staff have experience across every area of marketing, there’s no need to build a large in-house team.
Most agencies also have established connections with trusted third-party vendors like photographers and videographers. Ultimately, partnering with an accomplished marketing agency helps ensure you get the best value and highest return on investment (ROI).
4. Lower Costs
Working with an agency is usually less of an upfront and ongoing investment than hiring and training a team of in-house marketers. You also won’t have to spend any time or money on training new internal employees. Plus, agencies already subscribe to the best marketing tools, so you won’t have to invest in pricey software.
Drawbacks of Hiring a Marketing Agency
There are many benefits of partnering with a digital marketing agency vs. in-house advertising, but there are also a few cons to keep in mind. However, these drawbacks can easily be negated by working with a client-focused agency that always keeps your best interests in mind.
1. Different Locations
If your marketing agency is located in a different time zone than your business, it may be difficult to schedule video meetings or phone calls that fit everyone’s schedules. You may also be unable to meet in person, which can be valuable at the beginning of a client-agency relationship.
2. Less Attention
You may end up feeling neglected and out of the loop if your agency isn’t completely client focused. If your account executive doesn’t function as an extension of your in-house marketing team, it’s time to find a new agency.
You’re not working under the same roof as your agency, so communication and decision making typically take a bit longer. Additionally, your agency may sometimes be slower to address your needs depending on their workload, priorities, and internal concerns.
3. Lack of Control
Working with an agency requires you to give up some control over your marketing, since they work best with the latitude and freedom to make strategic decisions. It’s very important to find an agency you can trust to always have your best interests in mind. Giving their experts the space they need to make strategic choices will net you the best results while also reducing roadblocks and bottlenecks.
What is Freelancer Marketing?
Freelancers are hired on a contract basis and provide specific marketing services to clients on a project-by-project basis. In some cases, freelance marketers also have full- or part-time jobs at other companies. You’ll find freelance marketers that specialize in every aspect of marketing, from content creation and web design to local SEO and social media advertising.
Tips for Hiring a Freelance Marketer
There are several important items to keep in mind when hiring a freelancer vs. agency advertising or building an in-house team:
Review their portfolio to gain a sense of their experience and skill level
Closely examine their LinkedIn profile, resume, and cover letter (if applicable)
Request referrals and testimonials from their previous clients
Choose a freelancer with knowledge of and experience with your industry
Interview multiple freelancers and compare them based on skills, experience, and rates
Benefits of Hiring a Freelance Marketer
If you’re considering hiring a freelance marketer, there are several important benefits to be aware of. We’ll take a closer look at each one below.
1. Inexpensive Option
If you don’t have the budget to hire a marketing agency or build an in-house team, freelancers are probably your best option. In fact, 40% of businesses prefer freelancers because they’re a flexible and affordable way to quickly scale up or down.
Since they aren’t full-time employees, freelancers save you money because you don’t have to provide them with benefits. There are also no long-term commitments, and you only pay for the marketing and creative work you need.
2. Enhanced Agility
If you employ in-house marketers, freelancers can quickly step in when your team is overworked and their productivity is flagging. Plus, freelancers usually don’t have to give two weeks notice to a current employer, so they can start immediately and hit the ground running. And because you aren’t confined only to people in your immediate area, you have access to a larger pool of talent.
Like agencies, experienced freelancers can bring a fresh perspective that revitalizes your marketing and helps you think outside the box. Marketing trends are always changing, so agility and adaptability are key to success.
3. Low Maintenance
As we alluded to above, freelancers are much easier to hire, manage, let go, and replace than full-time employees. They also require less of an emotional investment from you as an employer. It can be difficult to fire underperforming full-time employees due to legal protections, but this isn’t an issue with freelancers.
Drawbacks of Hiring a Freelance Marketer
There are multiple cons to consider before choosing a freelancer vs. agency marketing or an in-house team. Here are the most important drawbacks to be aware of.
1. Longer Timelines
You’re probably not your freelancer’s only client, so it’s important to prepare for longer turnaround periods and project timelines. It may also be difficult to integrate freelancers into your existing systems and procedures, which can slow down the onboarding process. These impactful delays can be especially problematic if you’re in the early stages of developing your company.
2. Disconnected Schedules
If your freelancer is extremely busy or lives in a different time zone, it may be difficult to schedule phone calls and coordinate meetings. Plus, the flexible working hours associated with freelancing means they may not always be available during the traditional workday, unlike agencies or full-time employees. Be sure to consider who will coordinate freelancer schedules, oversee/review their work, and set deadlines to keep them on schedule.
3. Variable Quality
Anyone can freelance, so properly vetting candidates is crucial to making a wise investment. Some freelancers may not have the skillset to handle multiple marketing functions, which means you’ll have to hire several people. And piecemealing your marketing often produces disjointed, lower quality work than you’d receive from an in-house team or agency.
Deciding between marketing in-house vs. agency vs. freelancer? We’d love to discuss your goals and challenges and explore how Tower Marketing can help you achieve your business objectives.
Digital marketing is a must for any business, but it’s a crowded and competitive space. But with the right plan in place, you can carve out a space for your business and find a worthy ROI for your efforts.
If you’re not sure how to create a marketing strategy, the best way to start is to break apart your tactics into marketing campaign phases. The RICE marketing strategy model can help you accomplish this by sorting your work into 4 phases of marketing that can guide your decision-making. That way you can easily identify which areas are the most effective to focus resources on.
The 4 Phases of Marketing: What Is RICE?
Put simply, RICE stands for reach, interact, convert, and engage. RICE itself originates from Hubspot’s inbound marketing model and is a popular variation that many marketers have coined and adapted for use in recent years.
While these marketing funnel stages sound simple, there’s a lot of room for creativity in what tactics you use within each step. If you’re newer to digital marketing it’s common to start in the reach phase and move through the phases in chronological order.
Why Does a Strategic Marketing Management Process Matter?
With careful execution in all the phases of this strategic marketing process, the goal is to see your marketing successfully repeat the RICE pattern with ease over time.
Or simply stated, you know what marketing works for you.
The ultimate goals of your marketing should be about more than just conversions. Your efforts need to work holistically to create a sustainable marketing model. When you achieve that, your marketing will efficiently and effectively support you to scale your business. Finding the tactics that work for you in each of these 4 phases of marketing earns you more than a sale. You earn a supportive and engaged community of brand ambassadors along the way. (Word of mouth is never dead after all, even in digital marketing.)
Phase 1: Reaching Your Audience
You already know that building a business and waiting for people to find you isn’t enough. So it’s logical that the first phase of a strategic marketing process focuses on a foundational step – figuring out if and how you can reach the right audience.
This stage is focused on being helpful and building your EAT (expertise, trust, and authority) online. It ensures you’re found in the right moments by the right target audience and leaves nothing to chance.
What Marketing Tactics are Used in the Reach Phase?
When it comes to digital marketing, here are the following tactics you need to have in place to solidify your reach:
Traffic sessions driven from each tactic (social ads, PPC, organic search, etc.)
You may be tempted to look at increasing impressions as an indicator of success, but it’s a vanity metric to view cautiously. If your audience targeting is off at the start, you may have a wide reach but an extremely low click-through rate because you’re not aiming for the right people.
On the flip side, you may reduce your audience size and pull back your reach you have but find a better, more relevant audience in this phase. That’s the better group to pursue and hopefully push through your RICE strategy.
Phase 2: Interacting with Your Audience
The goal here is to make your business accessible. In the 4 phases of marketing, this is the stage where if you don’t have the right infrastructure in place, you risk losing your audience.
What Marketing Tactics are Used in the Interact Phase?
This is the point where good design and user experience are key. Tactics in this phase include:
Lead submissions (both from organic or paid marketing)
Again you’ll want to match marketing tactics to the appropriate metric. For example, looking at email bounce rates holds a very different meaning than looking at website bounce rates.
By this stage, you’re likely already doing SEO and content creation (part of the reach setup) to help with your organic marketing in search. So look at pages per session to see how visitors are interacting with your site. Also, consider soft goal completions like downloading an item or signing up for emails.
Whereas if you’re running PPC and paid social advertising, measure form submissions on that page or engagement rate and shares (on social) to name a few.
Phase 3: Converting Your Audience
At last, comes the headline act everyone waits for — the conversion. But for marketers, we know that the time it takes between someone meeting your brand initially and converting can vary widely.
As a part of your marketing make sure you consider the sales funnel your business has built. It will ultimately affect your marketing strategy and how much time it takes to establish and repeat the 4 phases of marketing (RICE).
Some factors that influence the length of time to conversion are the 4Ps (product, place, price, and promotion.) Times to convert on selling a home improvement product for 30,000 will look different from selling $10 books.
Knowing the time it takes for your audience to decide will better help you make marketing decisions about where and how to reach and interact with them, to ultimately push them towards converting.
What Marketing Tactics are Used in the Convert Phase?
Some examples of marketing tactics include:
Advertising with limited/ exclusive offers
Marketing automation (to connect with visitors at the right moment)
While it’s tempting to consider marketing a success at the conversion and call it a day, what you do to engage your audience after the sale is what sets you apart. You’ll notice any successful strategic marketing management process accounts for this final step in the 4 phases of marketing.
You’ve set the stage in reaching and interacting with these customers that converted — now you want to make sure that if they (or a peer) are looking for a product or service, you come to mind again. But to stay helpful and relevant, you need to execute marketing tactics that engage people.
What Marketing Tactics are Used in the Engage Phase?
There will be some repeat tactics from earlier, but the primary difference is that your messaging through those outlets should be more focused on nurturing. Tactics we recommend include:
Email marketing and automation (follow-up surveys, updates, special messages)
Organic social media posts
Digital remarketing
What KPIs Should I Use in the Engage Phase?
As you reach this last step in RICE, it all boils down to this:
Engagement rate (on organic social media marketing)
Number of referrals or positive reviews
How to create a marketing strategy: Which Stage of RICE Are You In?
It’s easy to feel eager and want to skip ahead to the conversion stage, but as you work on assembling your marketing plan, audit your business through an unbiased lens. Ask yourself:
Am I reaching my desired audience in the right places?
Are people interacting with my business through the desired outlets?
Am I seeing the conversions I want from my digital marketing efforts (your website, social, PPC, etc.)
Am I seeing repeat business from those conversions?
If you’re getting interaction but not seeing conversions, you likely need to go back to the interact stage and do some foundational work. If you’re seeing conversions, but a lack of repeat business – then you need to work on the engagement phase. Or if you’re not even seeing interaction via your efforts, start with the reach phase and make sure you’re actually getting in front of the right people.
Need some help figuring out where to start with digital marketing? Contact our team for expert advice in crafting an effective B2B or B2C marketing plan to navigate the digital landscape.
Many retail business owners focus on their brand voice and what they want to share about their business in their paid Google ads. Few business owners, however, optimize this wording to be what their customers are actuallysearching for on Google.
Neglecting to understand this intent can be devastating to your marketing because you’ll waste your ad money by paying for clicks of people who aren’t looking to buy right now. So, how do you understand your customers’ intent to meet their needs effectively?
In this blog post, we’ll learn how to speak your customers’ language using Google Ads and identify practical market research tips to effectively meet your users’ intent.
A big part of understanding your users’ intent is understanding where they’re at in the marketing funnel. Are they ready to buy the item right now, or are they just looking for more information? The top three stages of the marketing funnel are what we’ll focus on in this blog post: awareness, consideration, and conversion.
Informational: The user is looking for information to answer a question.
i.e. “How to make chocolate cream pie;” “Is it supposed to rain today?”
Commercial: The user may be looking to buy something soon, but isn’t quite ready yet.
i.e. “Best toys for children;” “Nike shoes vs. New Balance shoes”
Transactional: The user is ready to buy and that’s a clear purpose of their search.
i.e. “Coffee makers for sale;” “Where can I buy Legos?”
If your business goal is to sell a product, you’re going to want to optimize your product pages for more of the commercial/transactional intent searches, since those customers are specifically looking to buy something.
However, if your business goal is to establish yourself as an authority in your field, you might optimize your blog posts for informational searches. By answering their questions, you can position your brand as credible, knowledgeable, and helpful.
Why Is User Intent Important To My Business?
Let’s look at a practical example of this: If you are a retail business that sells professional clothing (blazers, tailored suits, etc.), you could waste a lot of money trying to rank your product pages in Google search results for phrases like, “what is considered business professional attire?” or “how to tailor a suit.” While these are relevant to what your business offers, users who are searching for these aren’t ready to buy yet. Their intent is informational, and they just want an answer to their question.
Someone searching for “black blazers for sale” or “tailored suits near me,” however, is ready to buy and looking specifically for that item at this exact time. Their intent is transactional. Focus on optimizing your product page ads for transactional intent to ensure you’re not wasting your ad money on people who aren’t ready to buy yet.
Using Google’s Natural Language API
Understanding user intent is so important that even the search engines are trying to do it! One way that Google discovers user intent is by using its Natural Language API to uncover the true meaning of a word or phrase. Try using it with a few sentences that are related to your business!
How To Understand Consumer Preferences In Google Searches: Be The Solution They’re Searching For
What Are Consumer Preferences?
Consumer preferences are the user’s choices and opinions that influence what they search for in Google (color, size, style, brand, etc.). Consumer preferences can be hard to understand because when users go to type an item into the Google search bar, they might refine their search several times before identifying what they’re looking for. That’s why just simply looking at the search queries can be misleading.
Example Of A Consumer Preference
A user types in the following search queries, each time refining their search to be more specific in order to find what they’re looking for:
Water Bottle
Reusable Water Bottle
Reusable Water Bottle For Women
Reusable Sports Water Bottle For Women
Light Blue Reusable Sports Water Bottle For Women
With the first search query of “water bottle,” we weren’t sure exactly what kind of water bottle they were looking for or what their preferences were, which is why it can be challenging at times to understand consumer preferences.
Why Are Consumer Preferences Important To Understand For My Business?
Consumer preferences are important to understand because they lay the foundation for the creation of your ads, helping you relate more to your users and meet their needs more accurately.
How To Identify Consumer Preferences Online
It will benefit you more to choose keywords that are very specific, such as the final search in the example above (“Light Blue Reusable Sports Water Bottle For Women”).
This is because there will be a lot of competition for a generic term like “water bottle” and you may be spending money for clicks of people who are searching for cases of plastic water bottles or any other type of water bottle, rather than a specific, reusable one. By choosing specific keywords that have less competition (known as long-tail keywords), your business will benefit because you will have a greater chance of being exactly what your customer is looking for.
If users aren’t interacting with your Google ads, it doesn’t necessarily mean people aren’t interested; you might just not be using the correct language.
For example, if you’re creating ads for the real estate field, are customers searching for the words “house,” “residence,” “apartment,” “home,” or something else? Do they use any abbreviations? Are you targeting an audience in another part of the world who may refer to an apartment as a “flat?” All of these are important factors to consider when optimizing your ads to be sure you’re using the terms they’re using.
Why Are My Customers Searching For This?
In addition to understanding the exact words your customers are using, you should also understand why they’re searching for it. Is it something they need, or just simply an item they want? Identifying their needs and wants can help you understand what other topics they might be interested in regarding that item.
Putting It Into Practice: Practical Tools For Easy Market Research
More specific targeting of the correct users who are ready to buy.
A higher click-through rate for your ads, because it’s relevant to what they’re searching for.
More relevant traffic to your site, which could lead to more people buying your products.
Failing to do accurate research can cause your business to waste money showing irrelevant ads to people who are searching for something completely different.
Using Google Autocomplete for Market Research:
Start typing one of the products or services your business offers into the search bar of Google and see a list of the suggested searches that pop up (this feature is called “Google Autocomplete”). Then, use this language/wording in your ads. This is a quick and easy way to ensure you’re speaking your customers’ language.
Using Google Trends For Market Research:
Another helpful tool to understand user preferences is called “Google Trends.”
This tool will give you insights into what users search for. Simply enter a topic into the search bar and you’ll see specific data such as:
Location
Category
A graph of the keyword’s search volume over a specific time frame
You can narrow down your search even further by indicating:
Image search
News Search
Web Search
Google Shopping
Youtube Search
Explore related topics/search queries and compare the data to the past year (or several years) to identify searches that consistently do well, not just ones that perform well during certain times of the year.
Let’s put this tool into practice with an example: Engagement Rings (white, rose, and yellow gold). Are most people searching for a classic yellow gold engagement ring, or do they prefer a more trendy color like rose gold?
As you can see in the screenshot below, I’ve compared white, rose, and yellow gold engagement ring search queries from 2004-2021. You can see that the number of searches for “rose gold engagement ring” has massively increased within the past few years. This proves Google Trends can give you valuable insights into what your specific customers are searching for and how your business can adapt to those preferences.
Examples Of Businesses Understanding Their Customers Well
L.L.Bean – High School Backpacks: The first thing that Google Autocomplete recommends when you type “best school backpacks for” is “best school backpacks for high school.” Although L.L.Bean has only one high school backpack style on their website, their ad is the top choice on Google for this search. They even crafted their ad to match this search by saying, “High School Backpacks | School Backpacks at L.L.Bean.” This is a great example of recognizing what users are searching for and then adapting your ads to fit it.
The Hershey Company – Reese’s Big Cup With Potato Chips: The recent development of this new product was a result of their market research with their customers, finding a trend in people desiring a mid-morning snack that was more substantial than a candy bar. To respond to this customer desire, Hershey developed a Snack Cake in 2020, and will soon release a Reese’s cup with potato chips. According to Food Business News, Hershey is “constantly researching and staying in touch with consumers.” This understanding of their customers’ needs and wants has allowed them to stay on top of trends and create products and ads that align with their customers’ desires.
American Eagle Outfitters – Trends of jeans: As you can see in the screenshot from Google Trends, there has been a huge increase in searches within the past few years of “mom jeans.” American Eagle has seen this trend and has adapted to it by having a specific section on their website for “mom jeans” and by using this term in their ads.
Examples Of Businesses NOT Understanding Their Customers Well
Bolthouse Farms Baby Carrots: The other day, I was at the grocery store looking to buy sweet potatoes, and I picked up a bag of orange vegetables that I thought said “sweet potatoes.” After taking a second look, however, I saw that it was actually a bag of carrots that said, “sweet petites.”
If this were to have happened in a Google Search, the customer wouldn’t know to type in “sweet petites” when looking for carrots, and therefore, the company would not be meeting the needs of their customers.
This is a great example of misunderstanding what customers are looking for. Be clear and straightforward in your ads and tell users exactly what they’re going to get. Imagine how disappointed customers will be if they go to make a recipe that calls for sweet potatoes and they realize they actually bought carrots instead!
Lenovo: When doing a very generic search in Google for “mouse,” immediately I see a lot of Lenovo computer mice for sale. My intent in searching for that might just have been to see a picture of an animal, but it was hard for Google to understand my intent behind that. It would have been better for Lenovo to focus on a long-tail keyword, such as “Lenovo wireless computer mouse.”
Amazon: When I type “what is a gardening spade” into Google, I am in the informational category of intent. I’m not looking to buy anything, I am just looking for a description of a gardening spade. However, the first result that comes up shows a 5-piece gardening set for sale on Amazon. Amazon would benefit more by showing that ad to someone searching for “gardening tools for sale” because they would be in the transactional category of intent.
Conclusion: How Can I Implement User Intent, Consumer Preferences, And Market Research For My Business?
As a retail business owner, you have an obligation to stay on top of what your target audience is searching for in order to meet their needs effectively with Google Ads. Without this knowledge, your advertising dollars will be wasted because you’ll be targeting the wrong audience, at the wrong stage of the marketing funnel, with the wrong ads.
Steps for Getting Started
To reiterate, here are some practical steps that will help you speak your customers’ language and understand them better:
Evaluate your intent and make sure it aligns with your customers’ intent.
Where are your customers in terms of the marketing funnel (awareness, consideration, conversion)?
Which category of intent (informational, commercial, or transactional) are they indicating in their searches?
Use Google’s Natural Language API to evaluate the semantics behind the words you’re using on your website and in your ads.
Address your user’s preferences using long-tail keywords when possible.
Perform market research to understand how to speak your customers’ language.
Type products into Google to see what Google Autocomplete suggests.
Use Google Trends to identify opportunities for your marketing.
Create ads that meet your customers’ needs and help them find exactly what they’re looking for.
Additional Resources
Need some extra help? Here are some additional resources that can help you understand how to meet your customers’ needs better using Google Ads:
Whether you listen to Christmas music year-round or dread the holiday rush, there’s no denying that the holidays are the most profitable time of year for many businesses. In fact, estimates from the National Retail Foundation attributed between $755.3 to $766.7 billion in sales last holiday season alone.
In order to capitalize on some of the biggest shopping days of the year, here are a few of our favorite holiday marketing ideas and advertising tips.
General Tips for Holiday Advertising
Before we dig into the tactics that can help boost your business during the holiday season, it’s important to understand the bigger picture of marketing during the holidays. Here are five goals to keep in mind when planning your holiday marketing campaigns.
1. Be Timely
It’s never too early to start planning your holiday marketing ideas and initiatives. Pages can take up to 45 days to rank, so we recommend moving any web-based tactics live no later than mid-October. While Christmas isn’t until the end of December, many people start shopping in early- to mid-November, well before Black Friday deals hit.
2. Be Brief
With advertising competition at an all-time high, attention spans are short. Keep your messaging short, sweet, and impactful for the best results.
3. Stay Focused
Online noise and increased ad costs mean that your holiday advertising ideas have to be sharply focused to make an impact. If you have a limited budget, focus on a few key days of sales based on historical data from years past.
If you’re looking for the strongest return possible on a small budget, remarketing is another great option, as you’re likely to see a higher conversion rate by advertising to former and current customers.
4. Respect Your Brand
Just because it’s the holiday season doesn’t mean that your blue brand has to transform to red and green! Consider what the holidays look like visually for your business, and allow your foundational brand to shine through in every marketing initiative you undertake.
Here are some holiday angles to consider:
Feel-good, charitable, emotional, and grateful
Exciting, flashy, and full of great deals
Fun, bright, and family-focused
Non-denominational, winter-focused, or inclusive of all winter holidays
When choosing a direction for your holiday marketing ideas, always consider your business’s brand, tone, and overall marketing goals. Slapping a graphic Santa Claus on your year-round advertising simply doesn’t cut it.
5. Be Truly Competitive
Don’t expect to own the market and see a massive boost in sales if you’re only willing to offer 10% off and free shipping. In order to succeed at marketing during the holidays, you’ll need to be generous with your sales and special offers, especially to loyal customers who have waited all year to make a big purchase and get a great deal.
If you’re a service-based company, consider offering vouchers or pre-orders that customers can buy now and use later. Not only does this create urgency and encourage sales, but it allows you to pre-schedule and guarantee your next year of business ahead of time.
Holiday Search Optimization
In order to rank during the competitive holiday season, you’ll need to foster strategic search engine optimization (SEO) on your website year round. That being said, here are a few considerations to keep top-of-mind to expand your optimization during the holidays.
Holiday SEO & PPC Strategies
SEO and PPC should be a major focus when it comes to holiday marketing ideas. Making timely gift guide landing pages for holiday search terms is one of the best ways to capitalize on the busy shopping season.
Fill these pages not only with best-selling products but thoughtful content that will help customers who are unfamiliar with your business make a quick and easy purchase. And, be sure to focus on internal linking and all of the usual SEO-boosting suspects to get your pages ranking.
Keep in mind that like with any paid medium during the holidays, you’ll pay more per click than you do during other times of the year. The heavy competition can be discouraging when deploying your holiday marketing ideas through PPC, but it can pay off big if you are strategic in your keywords and bids.
The Merits of Google My Business
An often-overlooked element of your website’s search engine optimization is your Google My Business (GMB) profile. This panel allows customers to view your company’s store hours, reviews, and updates without even having to click through to your website.
Be sure to complete your GMB profile before the holiday season begins, and revisit it frequently to ensure your hours, contact info, and other store details stay up to date.
The holiday season is one of the best times to grow your email list organically. The trick? Offering direct, valuable savings to customers to encourage them to sign up. Once you have a customer hooked, here are a few tricks to prevent them from unsubscribing:
Use subject lines to create urgency around sales and deals
Create email automations for abandoned carts
Offer valuable content like gift guides and product tips
Inboxes are especially cluttered this time of year, so be sure that each email you send has a true purpose and won’t simply frustrate your customer to the point of unsubscribing.
Holiday Social Advertising Strategies
With high costs and oversaturated platforms, social advertising during the holidays can be incredibly competitive. You’ll have to be at the top of your game if you want to stand out among the crowd.
Giveaways, contests, and other content that encourages audience engagement can be particularly helpful in breaking through the noise. While you have limited space to get your message across, try to think about your audience and speak directly to them in a novel and creative way to grab their attention. At the end of the day, authentic ads that showcase great deals will do far more than screaming at users with all caps and bright flashing signs.
Writing Content for the Holiday Season
When it comes to holiday marketing ideas, content is everything. Here are three tips to keep your content thriving and bringing in new customers.
1. Be Timely
We can’t stress enough the importance of timeliness when it comes to seasonal content. It can take weeks or months for your content to be indexed and served to users. And, many users start researching holiday decorations, gifts, and more up to two months before the big day.
That means any search-driven content you have planned needs to go live no later than October. It may feel strange working on holiday copy before fall has even arrived, but it will pay off big time come the holiday season.
2. Consider Your Unique Holiday Customers
During the holidays, millions of people shop for gifts at stores they’re unfamiliar with. One of the best ways to earn a new customer is to make sure they have everything they need to make a decision (and a purchase), even if they’re unfamiliar with your industry.
Consider building out your product pages further to aid in product comparison and streamline decision-making. Product guides that go over sizing, features, and the differences between product models can also make online shopping a breeze for those unfamiliar with your store.
3. Utilize Internal Linking
Internal linking is one of the top ways that Google understands the architecture and content relationships on your website. This means that high-quality internal linking can help your holiday-themed blogs gain traction faster when every day counts.
Use links with purpose. No reader wants a constant bombardment of product links without any explanation to help them make a decision. Be sure to include plenty of helpful and educational content links, as well.
Breaking the Mold with Creative Holiday Campaigns
With so much noise online, you’ll need to think differently when brainstorming holiday marketing ideas if you want to stand out in your customers’ eyes. Consider the go-to marketing tactics of competitors and industry leaders, and then brainstorm adjacent or opposing ideas to get started.
One of our favorite innovative holiday marketing strategies over the years was a digital holiday card we created for local law firm Barley Snyder. They wanted a unique and memorable way to wish their clients and colleagues a happy holiday season. We planned, designed, and animated a custom digital greeting card that was equal parts meaningful and charming.
Whether you work with a digital marketing agency or an in-house marketing team, you’ve probably received reports that have a lot of information you don’t fully understand.
In this blog, we’ll explore the key performance indicators (KPIs) you should pay attention to, regardless of your industry. We’ll also review how you can analyze your digital marketing performance metrics and explain what your spend is going towards.
What Are Internet Marketing Metrics?
There are two buzzwords you’ll hear when talking about digital marketing: analytics and data.
Not sure what these terms mean in the context of Internet marketing? Simply put, analytics help us see the data that’s being processed to provide us with the valuable performance metrics we use to make informed business decisions.
That raises yet another question: what are marketing metrics, and which ones should I be paying attention to?
Marketing metrics are the measurable, quantifiable insights you or your agency use to measure the success of campaigns and projects. They’re the most important indicators you should pay attention to because they help you determine exactly where your money is going.
We’ve established that you need data to make informed decisions. But which metrics should you pay attention to on your report?
Digital Marketing KPIs: What They Are, Why They Matter, & How to Analyze Them
While there are hundreds of metrics to consider, we’re going to review the most important digital marketing KPIs for each marketing channel. Each of these metrics are important, but you can’t draw a single conclusion without looking at the bigger picture.
Overall Digital Marketing KPIs
The KPIs below apply to every channel and are fairly universal across digital marketing.
Impressions
What It Is
Impressions are how many times your content is shown to a user.
Why It Matters
Impressions matter for many reasons. The most important reason is that they reveal how many people are seeing your content, whether it’s an ad in a PPC campaign or an Instagram post.
How to Analyze It
For a brand exposure campaign, higher impressions are great. But for a lead generation campaign, impressions may not be as important as conversions.
Clicks
What Is It
Clicks are how many people click on your content.
Why It Matters
Clicks are when a user takes the action you want them to. This could be clicking on a sale link in an email, reading news from a social media post, or clicking on a video ad.
How to Analyze It
You should analyze clicks for every campaign you run online. If you see low clicks, be sure to dive into the issue. It could be a simple spelling mistake on your ad copy, or it could mean you’re targeting the wrong audience.
If you see an abundant amount of clicks on your content, make note of this and document exactly what you think is working.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
What It Is
Click-through rate is the number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.
What It Means
You can use CTR to determine which campaigns are successful and which ones need improvement. For example, if you received 1,000 clicks on an ad that had 5,000 impressions, you would have a 20% CTR.
How to Analyze It
First things first: there is no “good” click-through rate. Every campaign, industry, and business has different benchmarks for CTRs. Google Ads campaigns have much lower click-through rates than Instagram ads, but this doesn’t mean one is working better than the other.
If you see a dip or increase in your CTR, always question it within the bigger picture. Was there a change in the wording on a button? Was there an engaging picture?
Engagement Rate
What It Is
According to Hootsuite, “engagement rate is a formula that measures the amount of interaction social content earns relative to reach or other audience figures. This can include reactions, likes, comments, shares, saves, direct messages, mentions, click-throughs, and more (depending on the social network).”
Engagement rate can be a critical deciding factor when allocating more marketing spend. If you see that videos are driving traffic to your site and experiencing a long retention period, you should consider spending more on videos. The same goes for a low engagement rate. If you see that videos are not performing well, you may decide to reduce your video budget.
Conversions
What It Is
Conversions are actions that users complete on your site.
What It Means
If you’re a service-based company, one conversion is lead generation. On the other hand, an eCommerce website’s conversion could be purchasing a product. Simply put, a conversion is a final action a user completes on your site.
How to Analyze It
In most cases, conversions mean nothing without a business goal. If you find you’re exceeding or underperforming your conversion goals, it may be time to:
Reevaluate your objectives.
Ask your marketing agency what they’re seeing on their end
Conversion Rate
What It Is
Conversion rates are the percentage of website visitors that complete a conversion. This is calculated simply by taking the number of conversions divided by users, or impressions.
What It Means
Conversion rate should be one of the first metrics you look at when checking your reports. This is because it’s a simple way to determine if your digital marketing is working or not.
How to Analyze It
A high conversion rate can indicate a successful campaign, and a low conversion rate signals something isn’t quite working.
Cost Per Conversion
What It Is
Cost per conversion is the total cost of the traffic (or impressions) by the number of conversions.
What It Means
In other words, cost per conversion is the actual spend it took to obtain a customer.
How to Analyze It
Cost per conversion is the easiest way for you to answer, “how much did it cost me in advertising to get my customer to do action X.”
You should use cost per conversion to evaluate your online advertising success. Don’t be alarmed if your cost per conversion is high when you first start digital marketing. It should decrease over time, and if it doesn’t, contact your marketing agency to solve this problem.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
What It Is
While cost per acquisition is often confused with cost per conversion, cost per acquisition is the total cost of a campaign divided by the number of conversions.
What It Means
Just like cost per conversion, this is an easy way for you to examine the dollars and cents that went into your acquisitions.
For example, if your total budget was $1,000 and you received 50 conversions, you paid $20 per acquisition.
How to Analyze It
Like most KPIs, there is no “good” CPA. Every online business has different factors – such as margin and prices – that make up a “good” CPA. As you analyze your CPA, ask yourself, “is the cost of acquiring the new customer worth it?”
Customer Lifetime Value
What It Is
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a metric you can use to determine the total revenue of a customer throughout their relationship with your business.
What It Means
You can use this metric to determine how much you can expect to make from one single customer. If you own a car dealership, you might see a high CLV, as a new car will need to be serviced often. If you own a service-based business that offers a one-time setup, you can expect a lower CLV.
How to Analyze It
Analyzing your CLV can be tough, as it may remain stagnant. However, this can be a valuable opportunity for you. If you can figure out ways to improve your CLV – such as loyalty programs and offering more services – you can greatly benefit from analyzing this metric.
Email Marketing KPIs
List Growth Rate
What It Is
List growth rate allows you to calculate whether your email list is growing. You can calculate the list growth rate by subtracting the number of unsubscribers from the number of new subscribers and dividing that by the number of email addresses in your list.
What It Means
List growth rate is an easy way to determine if your email list is growing or declining.
How to Analyze It
You can use list growth rate to evaluate whether you should increase or cut back on your email marketing efforts.
Click-to-Open Rate (CTOR)
What It Is
Click-to-open rate, according to Active Campaign, is the percentage of people who open an email campaign and also click on a link within that campaign.
What It Means
Looking at your CTOR is a great and simple way to measure your campaign’s effectiveness.
How to Analyze It
Analyzing CTOR is often better than measuring your open rate on your email. Open rate calculates the amount of subscribers who opened your email while CTOR also looks at those subscribers who opened the email, which ones also clicked on the links.
Looking at your click-to-open rate will give you a better idea of who is engaging with your emails the most and if they are not, should you segment that list to further hone the strategy.
Unsubscribe Rate
What It Is
Unsubscribe rate is the opposite of list growth rate, as it shows you the percentage of users who opted out of your mailing list after a campaign.
What It Means
Looking at your unsubscribe rate tells you which types of emails are working for you.
How to Analyze It
Analyzing your unsubscribe rate may be counterintuitive at first, as you may think, “my emails aren’t working” and move on. But a high unsubscribe rate may be a good thing. Everybody wants bigger email lists, but there is value in only sending emails to only the most willing and engaged recipients.
On the other hand, your unsubscribe rate may be a bad metric to look at because it may mean your emails have no value and that people on your list want out. Or, it could be a signal that you’re sending too many emails.
SEO KPIs
Backlinks
What It Is
Backlinks are links from other websites directing users to your website.
What It Means
The number of backlinks you have is important for a multitude of reasons. Essentially, backlinks act like votes for a search engine. The more backlinks your website has, the more a search engine sees you as a trustworthy site.
How to Analyze It
When analyzing the number of backlinks you have, you should look at whether the number is increasing or decreasing when compared to another period.
If your number of quality backlinks is increasing, you should continue to invest in SEO. If you see a low number of backlinks, you should probably still invest more in SEO to get “votes” for your site.
Keywords
What It Is
Keywords are specific phrases, questions, or ideas that define what your content is about.
What It Means
The number of keywords or “search queries” you have on your site is essential to a high-ranking website. The goal is to drive users to your site through your content, which should have keywords that users are searching for. The more keywords you have, the better chance you have of driving organic traffic to your website.
For example, when you Google “what is the best coffee grinder for under $100?”, the keyword is “Best Coffee Grinder For Under $100”.
How to Analyze It
When analyzing keyword queries on your report, take note of ones that are outperforming other queries on your site. This will give you a better understanding of your customers and how they got to your site.
For example, if you see an increase in traffic on your site for product X, it may be worth investing in more content explaining the benefits of that item. You could also create search ads around that product, as you know people are searching for it
Visibility Percentage (%)
What It Is
According to SEMrush, “visibility % is based on click-through rate (CTR) that shows a website’s progress in Google’s top 100 for keywords from the current tracking campaign.” In layman’s terms, visibility percentage is how often your website is found by users.
What It Means
You can use visibility percentage to determine whether your website is being shown to users. A higher visibility percentage means you have a better chance of bringing in new users through your site.
How to Analyze It
You can use visibility percentage as a baseline metric to help you measure your overall SEO efforts. If you’re seeing a growth in visibility percentage, that means your SEO is generally performing better. On the other hand, a drop in visibility percentage may be caused by outside factors, such as algorithm changes.
Indexed Pages
What It Is
Indexed pages are specific pages on your site that a search engine contains within its database.
What It Means
It’s important to consider the number of indexed pages on your site that a search engine has in its database. Pages that have been successfully indexed can be found by users through keywords and relatable content.
It’s also important to look at your non-indexed pages, which are pages you don’t want users to find via a search engine, but still have some sort of value to you. These could be thank you pages sent to eCommerce customers after they purchase an item.
How to Analyze It
Looking at indexed pages is a quick and easy way to see if the content on your website can be found by potential customers. If you see your number of indexed pages increasing, you know more people can find your content, visit your page, and possibly convert.
Domain Authority
What It Is
According to MOZ, “Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). Domain Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to greater likelihood of ranking.”
What It Means
Domain authority is an SEO KPI, but it is not a Google ranking factor. Instead, it’s an AI-based ranking developed by MOZ to predict how well your site will rank compared to your competitors.
How to Analyze It
Generally speaking, a higher Domain Authority score means your business will show up higher in search results than your competitors. Conversely, a lower Domain Authority often means you’ll be ranked lower than the competition. If you see that your DA is increasing, that means your investment in SEO is working.
How Customers Search For Your Business
What It Is
How Customers Search For Your Business is a local SEO metric found within Google My Business (GMB). This metric is actually a combination of three metrics: direct, discovery, and branded searches.
Google defines these three metrics as:
Direct. People who find your business profile by searching for your business name or address.
Discovery. People who find your business profile by searching for a category, product, or service.
Branded. Customers who find your listing by searching for a brand related to your business.
What It Means
Looking at this metric allows you to determine how people are finding your business profile on Google. If you know what users are searching for, you or your agency can optimize your content to match those trending metrics.
How to Analyze It
When analyzing this metric, be sure to look at the three metrics included in How Customers Search For Your Business. If you see that your search is lacking direct traffic, you may want to optimize your web pages to include your brand name in the page titles.
Pay Per Click (PPC) KPIs (Google Ads & Facebook)
In this section, we’ll review PPC KPIs, which include both Google Ads and Facebook. Most people do not realize that Facebook ads are technically PPC, even though it’s a social media channel.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
What It Is
Return on ad spend measures the amount of revenue your business earns for each dollar you spend on PPC advertising.
What It Means
At the most basic level, ROAS measures how effectively you’re spending your advertising dollars.
How to Analyze It
When looking at ROAS, it’s important to remember that the higher the number, the better. For example, let’s say your ROAS is 10:1. This means that for every dollar you’re spending, you’re making $10.
ROAS is often confused with ROI. However, ROAS looks specifically at the campaign level, while ROI looks at the overall investment.
Social Media Marketing KPIs
Likes/Followers
What It Is
Likes and/or followers on a social media channel are the number of people who are following your page.
What It Means
Depending on the social media platform you’re tracking, likes and/or followers are an indication of how many people are using your channels.
How to Analyze It
When looking at your follower count, you can analyze several things. Ask yourself questions like, “is it worth continuing to push our social media if we’re not seeing any engagement?,” “should I run a campaign to boost my followers?”, and “should I hire someone to optimize my campaign if I see value in it?”
It’s important to think of your social media channels as another website for your business with the goal of being a 24/7 sales tool.
Top Posts
What It Is
Top posts on your social media channels are your top-performing posts during a given period of time.
What It Means
Looking at top posts helps you determine exactly what type of content is working for you. You should consider factors like the subject, content type (images, videos, and links), the time you posted, etc.
How to Analyze It
When looking at top posts, you should be able to draw several conclusions and make decisions accordingly. If you see that all of your top posts in a given month were videos, you should probably invest more spend into videos.
How Metrics Can Be Used (and Misused)
Data-based decision-making is often at the core of digital marketing and what makes digital marketing so special. You can pinpoint where every cent you spend goes and whether it’s effective.
If you compare a traditional marketing campaign to a digital marketing one promoting the same product, there’s often ambiguity with the former. Do you know how many people saw your billboard on the side of the highway? You may have an estimate, but with digital marketing, you can measure exactly how many people saw it.
Metrics Are Often Misused
While there’s often an emphasis on metric-based decisions, it’s important to remember that, in the end, they’re just numbers and percentages. It may be a tough pill to swallow, but you may be misusing your metrics.
Let’s look at an example from two different points of view: Person A and Person B.
Let’s say you are running a Google Ads campaign that’s spending $5,000 a month to drive traffic to a particular product. Your click-through rate and impressions are higher than normal, but your conversions are zero.
Person A stops the campaign completely because they spent all of that money and didn’t get a single sale.
Person B looks at the same campaign and sees an issue. The ads are working, but something on the actual product page may be broken. They determine that there’s no purchase button on the page, which led to zero conversions.
This is a simple example of how metrics can be used or misinterpreted. Both people were looking at the same metric, but one saw it as an issue, while the other saw it as a signal that something else was wrong.
Collecting and analyzing your digital marketing performance metrics is only valuable if you take the time to consider what they mean to your original investment.
Common Ways That Metrics Are Misused
Collecting the wrong information. If you collect the wrong information, how can you make smart decisions based on that data? You can imagine the trickle-down effect this might have.
Looking at vanity metrics.Vanity metrics are important, but they’re not necessarily the best figures to use when making decisions. Impressions are a great example of this. You may have a ton of impressions, but if they aren’t achieving the goals you’ve set, does it really matter? This is why looking at the bigger picture is so important.
Never changing metrics. Business goals change all the time, and so should your metrics. How can you determine ROI if you’re measuring the wrong things?
Having too many metrics. There are thousands of metrics you can collect and analyze, so picking the most important ones for your business may be difficult. Choosing the wrong metrics can lead you down the wrong path.
Tips for Explaining Reports To Other Stakeholders
You’ve learned the various digital marketing performance metrics that make up each channel. Now, it’s time to learn how to explain your reports. Here are four tips to keep in mind when explaining your digital marketing reports to other people:
Explain each metric in the simplest terms possible. The key to explaining your marketing report to anyone is to explain it in Layman’s terms. The best way to explain your ROI is to put it simply. Let’s say you spent $2,000 on a PPC campaign that earned 10 goal conversions on a product that costs $500. You may know this, but if you explain what this means to a five-year-old, you would say, “We spent $2,000 and got 10 people interested in our $500 product, meaning we potentially have $5,000 in sales. This means we’ve potentially made $3,000 on this campaign.”
Avoid vanity metrics and focus primarily on data involving investments. The truth is that not every digital marketing performance metric carries the same weight. Does a social media follower increase mean more than the average CPC on your social media campaign? Probably not. At Tower, we only include the most important metrics that our clients care about, but not every agency will do this. You’ll see every single metric available, even though you may only need to pay attention to dollar amounts. We encourage you to sit down with your agency and figure out which metrics mean the most to you.
If you have older reports to draw on, compare the numbers. If you happen to keep all of your old reports, reference them. If you don’t have them, ask your agency to pull the numbers again. How can you know what’s working and what isn’t if you don’t compare last month’s reports to the previous month or the previous year? This is one of the best ways to explain whether your investment is or isn’t working.
Look at everything together. This is ultimately what each report is for. While every digital marketing channel looks different, they’re all smaller pieces that make up the greater part of your business. Don’t just take one part of your report and look at it as a positive if there are negative aspects, too. Seeing the bigger picture is the best way to gauge the success of your digital marketing efforts.
What’s Next?
Now that you’re an expert – or at least better informed – regarding your digital marketing report, you should be able to analyze your return on your digital marketing investment.
Need help digging further into your digital marketing reporting? We do all the analysis for you so you can focus on what matters most. Work with our Internet marketing specialists to ensure you’re getting the most out of your online efforts.
When it comes to any type of success, you need a plan or a road map to help you get there. For B2B companies, creating a marketing strategy is a step that shouldn’t be ignored, especially if you have big goals for your company.
While marketing strategy development for B2B can take a lot of thought and effort upfront, it will ultimately help pave the way for your business’s future growth in things such as brand awareness, digital visibility in search, and potential sales. In this blog, we’ll dive into the fundamentals of a marketing strategy, and then unveil how to create one.
What is a Marketing Strategy?
To put it simply, a marketing strategy for any type of business, whether B2B or B2C, is the compilation of all goals and tactics into a long-term comprehensive plan. Its purpose is to help you weave marketing tactics and insights into a format that allows you to view and execute strategic marketing initiatives in a holistic fashion.
By looking at the bigger picture, you can better see and understand how all of the components of your marketing fit together, whether it be timing, topic, or tactic.
Types of Marketing Strategies & Marketing Techniques
Marketing strategies and techniques are usually unique to your specific business and industry. For example, if pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is incredibly expensive and competitive in your industry, you may opt to not use that method of marketing unless you have a large amount of funding set aside for it.
Alternatively, if PPC ads aren’t being utilized properly by your competition and you find there is an opportunity, you may opt to put a bulk of your marketing strategy into PPC. It comes down to the research you do before laying out your entire marketing strategy.
Additionally, it’s important to consider whether your plan should include only digital tactics, only traditional tactics, or a mix of both. This is usually dependent on your business’s industry, competition, and audience.
If you’re creating a marketing strategy with no previous marketing exposure, it may be best to test the waters in both digital and traditional tactics to get the best reach. This will allow you to experiment and gather better metrics on what worked and what didn’t for future marketing campaigns.
Digital strategies and tactics to take into consideration include:
Content Marketing & Visual Content Marketing – A vital component of marketing, the copy and the types of content for your website or other campaigns is crucial to your success. You’ll want to make sure it’s written in a way that reads seamlessly to your customers. Helpful visuals that correspond with your copy may also be included in this (infographics, animated videos, photos to add visual interest, etc.). For a full overview of this marketing strategy tactic, take a look at this blog.
Social Media Advertising– The success of organic social media posting for businesses has slowly depleted over the years due to social platforms de-prioritizing business page content in user feeds. However, that is not the case for business social media ads. While organic posting for businesses is mostly seen as a way to ensure your page appears active, advertising on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, and Pinterest has been proven successful in generating brand awareness and lead generation.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)– Not only does SEO ensure better search engine visibility for your website, but it also allows you to create a more solid foundation for long-term marketing strategy success. By implementing fundamental SEO tactics on your website and local pack listings (Local SEO), your site will begin to see higher quantities of quality traffic and new users over time. This means you’ll be bringing in users who didn’t necessarily know about your company before, which can contribute to an increase in new sales leads.
PPC Advertising – This tactic, if set up and executed correctly, is a great way to see ROI and generate leads in a shorter period. PPC allows you to target your audience down to the smallest details, while also filtering out unwanted search queries. This allows your PPC ads to become more successful over time.
Email Marketing & Automation– This tactic can be used in a few different ways. Traditional email marketing calls for sending regular newsletters, company updates, and product or service highlights to your audience via email. Email automation allows you to set up workflows that send specific emails to subsets of your email list audience as they complete a certain set of events. For example, you could send a product-related email or helpful guide to a user who visited a specific product page multiple times (showing their interest).
Influencer Marketing– Over the years, this marketing tactic has grown rapidly as more and more users have begun to trust the people they watch or follow on YouTube and Instagram. By partnering with key influencers, you can promote your brand, products, and services more gently. When it comes as a recommendation from people your audience trusts, they may be more likely to purchase or use services from your company.
Video Marketing– Some audiences respond better to visual cues, such as a video about your business, products, or services. Videos can aid in showcasing your unique value propositions and allowing your audience to get a better understanding of what you have to offer. Whether it’s a general video about your company or demos of products you sell, videos can be a great way to elevate your brand and connect with users.
Internet Radio Advertising – Does your audience utilize modern music platforms like Spotify and Pandora? While internet radio audience targeting isn’t usually as sophisticated as targeting used for social media platforms and PPC, it is still a useful tool to get your name and message in the ears of potential customers. It helps you reach potential customers across different channels and increases the chance they’ll recall your product or service.
PR and Outreach – This tactic can start out digital and bleed into more traditional marketing. By creating items like press releases and partnering with other businesses and media outlets, you can increase your brand awareness and audience reach.
Traditional marketing strategies and tactics to take into consideration include:
Billboards – Target travelers in key areas around busy roads and highways with billboards. They can be a great avenue for advertising events and promotions, as well as generating overall brand awareness. While tracking the success of your billboard runs isn’t typically as straightforward as a digital campaign, if you tie your billboard ad to a website page, you can more easily see how it performs.
Traditional Radio – Like internet radio advertising, traditional radio advertising places your name and message in your audiences’ ears. However, traditional radio generally has a larger footprint with less targeting. This may be a good avenue to test for general brand awareness and widespread event marketing.
Guerrilla Marketing – This tactic forces you to think outside of the box. Guerrilla marketing makes a statement, whether it’s controversial, funny, or more professional. It allows you to capture your audiences’ attention by putting something in front of them that is out of the norm.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing – Referral marketing is a great strategy that relies on your current or previous customer base to refer new customers to your business. If you’re lucky, you may already see some of this organically. However, if you don’t have a solid referral network or you want to enhance the one you have, you may think about creating a referral program for your customers.
Event Marketing – If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, you may want to come up with a few events a year that bring in new customers. If a majority of your business is digital, you may want to think about partnering with local events and sponsoring them to get your name out there physically in the community.
Thinking holistically, you can also look into combining marketing strategies with a new brand or website redesign. Before you can market yourself effectively, you’ll need to make sure your branding is strong, your logo is identifiable, and your website is attractive and user-friendly. Those elements are the supporting hub for a lot of marketing tactics.
The Benefits of Outlining a Business Marketing Plan
If you’ve been researching how to get started with a business marketing plan, chances are you’re already aware of some of the benefits that come with it. However, some may surprise you!
Benefit #1: Becoming an Authority & Resource in Your Industry
By planning and executing a well-thought-out marketing strategy, your business will begin to grow authority and become a resource for your audience by association. Becoming an authority and resource in your industry is important for a variety of reasons, but can be summed up in the following:
If you are the go-to authority or resource, users are more likely to flock to your business first before considering other companies.
If you are continuously providing useful information and tools, users will view your business as an expert in the industry and will be more likely to trust your products and services and purchase or use them.
Google bases some of its search quality guidelines on E-A-T, defined as expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Your rating on this may impact how well you rank in Google search engine result pages (SERPs).
Benefit #2: Growing Your Company & Towering Over Competition
Growing your company doesn’t happen overnight and you may be worried about strong competitors in the industry. By actively taking the time to research and audit not only your own business but your competitors’ marketing strategies, you will be able to discover opportunities for improvement.
This research usually is done before marketing strategy development for B2B companies actually commences, so you can build your plan based on the opportunities you see. Note what competitors are doing well and what they’re not, and use it to your advantage.
Benefit #3: Free Time to Focus on Other Important Areas of the Business
Once your marketing strategy is in place and you’ve begun working on executing it, a lot of the legwork will be done already. From there, depending on seasonality and initiatives in your strategy, you’ll need to monitor, tweak, and complete some set-up of delayed strategies.
Because you won’t have to reinvent the wheel every month to keep marketing running, you will have more free time to focus on other parts of your business that need attention. You’ll be able to be proactive instead of reactive, which is a crucial element of successful marketing.
Benefit #4: Better Budgeting & Forecasting
In terms of budget, some companies lack an independent set of funds for marketing. We highly recommend making sure your business has at least some budget set aside for marketing tactics, and then that funding can grow over time as your business grows.
Once you have a budget, you can make sure to allocate ad spend and dollars to specific marketing tactics and plan for any seasonality in business. Not only is this beneficial for you to look back on and see what worked and what didn’t to make tweaks to your year-over-year planning, but it also helps to minimize any unforeseen budgetary needs to keep you on track.
When the first year of your marketing strategy is complete, you can review what was spent, make adjustments as necessary, and start to forecast how much you’ll need for future years of marketing. This will allow you to get a rough forecast of budget even 2 to 5 years into the future.
Benefit #5: Gather Better Data for Future Marketing & Decision-Making
When it comes to business, you already know that informed decisions are the best decisions and ultimately result in better outcomes. If you have a marketing strategy written down and laid out, you will be able to pinpoint any turn of events, successes, or downfalls in the plan. This is also helpful for any future decision making, since you’ll be able to see what worked and what didn’t.
How to Create a Marketing Plan for B2B
Ready to get started? Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you create a marketing strategy for your business.
Research and audit your company and your competitors. Define:
What your company does well
What your company does not
What your competitors do well
What your competitors do not
Where the areas of growth and opportunity are
Define all your goals, including ones that do not seem like they are marketing goals. You can align your marketing tactics to help meet those goals, regardless of whether they are considered “marketing goals.” Consider objectives such as:
Creating better brand awareness
Promoting specific sales, products, or services
Increasing event attendance by X%
Generating X% more traffic to your website
Generating X% more leads (or sales) for the year
Identify your audience(s). To create an effective marketing strategy, you need to be able to talk directly to your main audience and target them. Depending on your business, you may have one or more target personas.
Ensure your branding is solidified. Consider the following questions:
Do you have a brand voice, complete with consistent messaging and tone?
Do you have a style guide for any creative you’ll need to make to ensure everything is cohesive and on-brand?
Is your logo consistent and recognizable across all platforms?
Layout your marketing benchmarks. Collect current data so you have something to compare it to a year down the line to accurately prove success. Identify your KPIs so you know what to look for as you evaluate success.
Consider what phase of marketing you’re in. Does your company have any history of marketing? If not, start with the basics. If you’ve been marketing for years and are more established, creating a more complex marketing plan will be your best bet. We recommend following RICE or RACE, which details the marketing phases known as Reach, Influence / Act, Convert, and Engage.
Pick and choose the marketing strategies and tactics that are best suited to meet your goals. This could be any combination of the strategies and tactics discussed earlier in this blog. Thoughtfully choosing your tactics is crucial, because it will dictate your next year or years of marketing.
Consider timing and topics, laying out your strategies and any budget that goes along with it. It may be a good idea to use a month-by-month format, especially if you plan on presenting your marketing strategy to leadership. While timing is usually a factor when it comes to business seasonality, topics are really determined by your overall marketing goals.
Flesh out the details. Answer the following:
What resources (software, expertise, and talent) do you have available?
Who will be working on each marketing piece and how will you ensure it gets done?
Do you need to outsource to a third party?
Do you need any additional dollars to complete your entire strategy?
How will each marketing tactic work in tandem to meet your goals?
Get approval and begin executing!
Evaluate periodically. We recommend reviewing your data monthly to ensure you know what’s working and what’s not, so you can make some tweaks as you go.
Tips For Developing Your Business’s Marketing Approach
Become Inspired by Other Businesses
Creating a marketing strategy from scratch can prove to be difficult. Sometimes, it’s best to look at examples of other B2B marketing strategies for inspiration! Here are a few companies that we’ve worked with across multiple industries that have created and executed a marketing strategy with Tower:
If you know convincing leadership to invest in marketing is a hurdle to overcome, it may be best to start considering your presentation early in the process. How will you frame your marketing strategy in a way that they will understand its importance and accomplish both their goals and yours?
This may be a great opportunity to partner with a third-party marketing company like Tower. Not only is outsourcing a great investment in a long-term partnership, but it also allows you to have expertise on your side. Agencies can provide you with all the knowledge and proven results you need to make sure your marketing presentation is both accurate and convincing.
Know Your Limits
In that same vein, outsourcing is a great option if you don’t have a large marketing department (or any marketing department at all) to help you execute the marketing tactics you have in mind. An agency can become an extension of your business and team without having to recruit or find staffing of your own, saving you time and money in the long run.
You can also able to pick and choose what your agency assists you with. If you can complete some of the marketing tactics in mind, but you need assistance with X, Y, and Z, an agency can take care of that for you to supplement any limited resources or knowledge.
Need a marketing strategy developed for your business? Tower has created a variety of successful marketing plans that have proven to elevate businesses digitally and achieve their goals.
Working in a digital marketing agency (or really any company in any industry), you come to understand that the success of a project lives or dies by the quality of your project management.
Project management methodologies offer a clear roadmap that will keep you on track and under budget. That way your team can deliver a project not only successfully, but efficiently.
There are different types of project management methodologies you can choose from that will ensure your digital marketing project stays on track. Keep reading to learn more about which project management approach may work best for you.
What is Project Management?
Project management provides a framework for delivering completed projects. It is the planning, performing, and finishing of certain tasks and goals for a campaign or project.
The main objectives of project management are producing specific outputs, called deliverables. The work is divided into project management phases, which allow for easier collaboration, better coordination, and more efficient delivery of project work.
For example, within our agency project management is used to manage multiple marketing activities and campaigns, including:
For project management to be successful, there must be a project manager to lead in planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing out projects. The project manager is responsible for the entire scope of the project, the project team and resources, as well as the project budget and timeline.
Every project manager takes control of a project differently. Depending on their unique qualities, they will select a style and a project management methodology that suits their personality and the personality of their team.
Every successful project management process depends heavily on the strength of the project manager, and learning how to be a good project manager starts with knowing which type you are.
The 4 Types of Project Managers
Wondering what type of project manager you are? There are 4 main types of project managers that all work differently to accomplish goals. Each type has its strengths and weaknesses, but all types work efficiently in their own unique way to launch a successful project. Let’s explore each one further.
1. Technical Project Manager
The technical project manager has complete command over all project management practices. Technical project managers have great attention to detail, analytical and problem-solving skills, as well as, critical thinking and decision-making capabilities. A technical project manager is successful because their team trusts their expertise and looks to them as an authority.
2. Adventurous Project Manager
Adventurous project managers are those that believe the bigger the risk, the higher the reward. They are always looking for new opportunities and ground-breaking ideas. However, while they take risks, they still stay inside strategic boundaries. An adventurous project manager is successful because they are able to see and share the bigger picture and get the team to buy into the excitement.
3. Expert Project Manager
Expert project managers are experienced and knowledgeable. These managers focus on reliable data and are masters of executing different project management methodologies to perfection. They turn business opportunities into financial results thanks to their years of experience and hard work. The expert project manager is successful because the team can depend on their in-depth knowledge and experience to guide them through the process as well as learn from their expertise in project management.
4. Supportive Project Manager
The supportive project manager believes in motivation and delegation. They focus on uninterrupted communication, smooth team collaboration, and boosting morale. Working closely with team members, they ensure everyone has a role to play. The supportive project manager is successful because they are able to get everyone involved and working together, which leads to the entire team gaining experience and skills.
Agile – This methodology is collaborative, quick, and open to data-driven change. It involves short phases of work with frequent testing, reassessment, and adaptation throughout the process.
Scrum – This methodology splits work into short cycles (often called sprints) which usually last 1-2 weeks. Each small team is led by a Scrum master, which is different from the project manager.
Kanban – This methodology visually represents tasks on a Kanban board. Each column on the board represents a stage in the process, and tasks are shown as they progress through columns.
Six Sigma – This methodology puts an emphasis on ensuring consistency in output and impeccable quality. It aims to eliminate defects and reduce variation.
Waterfall – Waterfall is considered the traditional project management methodology. The tasks and phases are completed in a linear, sequential order. Each stage must be completed before moving on to the next one.
Lean – This methodology applies lean business principles to project management methods. This maximizes value and minimizes waste. The 3Ms (Muda or waste, Mura or unevenness, and Muri or overburden), represent waste in this method.
XP – This methodology is designed for software development and emphasizes teamwork and collaboration among managers, customers, and developers. It consists of a set of rules based on its five values.
Which one is best? Choosing the right approach can be difficult because of the wide variety of types of project management approaches.
And while all methods have advantages and disadvantages, we have found that the Waterfall method is best when it comes to digital marketing project management because of its structure and extensive documentation.
The Best Project Management System for Marketing: The Waterfall Approach
The waterfall method is a sequential, linear process that consists of several discrete phases. No phase can begin until the prior phase is complete. In addition, each phase’s completion is terminal. This means you cannot return to a previous phase once you have moved on to the next one.
The Pros of Waterfall Project Management
The Waterfall project management approach has many advantages. First and foremost, it is easy to manage and understand. Extensive documentation allows you to see progress clearly.
The documentation also means that knowledge stays in the organization and makes training simple. You don’t have to try and infer what someone was going to do next, it is already written out for you.
The Waterfall approach also allows team members to better plan their time, so they know what they need to do and when they need to do it. Lastly, it benefits the person receiving the results, because they will know exactly what to expect.
Using the Waterfall project management approach, you can segment your marketing projects into easy-to-execute project management phases.
Putting It Into Practice: Creating Project Management Phases
Project management phases are key to creating a successful project. Understanding and following these phases will help you to stay on track and successfully accomplish your goals. When choosing the Waterfall approach, there are six phases to progress through:
Discovery / Scope – The scope of a project outlines all aspects of the project in detail. This includes activities, resources, timelines, and deliverables. The scope also covers the key stakeholders, processes, assumptions, and constraints.
Design – The design phase of a project is usually broken up into two subphases: logical design and physical design. The logical design consists of brainstorming and theorizing possible solutions. In terms of deliverables, the logical phase typically takes the form of a mood board. The physical design puts those theoretical concepts into concrete practices and provides additional deliverables like design compositions
Development – The development of the project happens when programmers incorporate the requirements and specifications that were created in the design phase into actual code. This includes building out the structure as well as the functionalities required by the project, including adding in content marketing and SEO strategies.
Test – The test phase is used to evaluate the final version of the developed project. During this phase, the documentation from all the previous phases is finalized to align with the delivered project. This is also where the project manager and team will decide if the project is ready to be launched.
Launch – The launch phase occurs when the project team is ready to set the project into motion and share it with the client or the world
Review – The review phase includes the project managers comparing the actual project budget, timeline, and goals to their original projections. Depending on the results, project managers may choose to adjust schedules or adjust processes to keep future projects on track.
The Cons of Waterfall Project Management
While there are many advantages to the Waterfall approach, there are also disadvantages. The main con to this approach is that there is no going back; the completion of a phase is terminal.
In addition, there’s the pressure of making the final deadline. Since the timeline is so strict, falling behind on one task means falling behind on every task. There isn’t much flexibility or room for error.
Since there are some disadvantages to the Waterfall method, we recommend creating your own hybrid project management approach and adding agility. Doing this allows for more flexibility than a strict Waterfall approach, but still benefits you with that clear structure and documentation of expectations.
It’s not uncommon for organizations to adopt a standard project management methodology based on the unique way their team operates. Or, even more likely, they will combine several methodologies to create a hybrid concept.
A disadvantage of the Waterfall approach is that it can be too rigid and not quickly adaptable. This rigidity can be a drawback when working in digital marketing where scope revisions can come at any time. For that reason, it’s key to develop a Waterfall / Agile hybrid of methodologies.
The key to figuring out how to be a good project manager is learning how to cater to the needs of all stakeholders and knowing when that means being flexible and stepping outside of the Waterfall model. Being flexible gives freedom to make adjustments that are needed for unique requests or scenarios.
Agile methods focus on adding, testing, and tweaking the functionalities of a project. This means you can explore potential changes as development progresses, instead of being tied down to one plan.
All features go through a testing and revision process in weekly or bi-weekly “sprints”. These sprints allow constant collaboration and continuous improvement at every stage of the project.
Putting Your Project Management Approach Into Practice
Once you’ve decided what type of project management approach is best for you and your team, you can begin putting it into practice. When setting up your project management strategy, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Creating an agile waterfall project management strategy can seem overwhelming, but with the right guidelines, it can feel less daunting. Following these guidelines will help ensure your project runs smoothly and is delivered successfully:
Have a unique scope created for every project. Do not depend on cookie-cutter project scopes. Get creative and develop a new scope for each of your projects to ensure you are determining the best course of action for that specific scenario. A well-thought-out, tailored scope is your best chance at sticking to your timeline, budget, and expectations.
Create flexible hours for completing the work. Every web redesign marketing project is different. Some may be heavier on design, while others may focus more on development. The same can be said about internet marketing projects – some will need more time spent on SEO, while others need attention on social media efforts. Your hours should reflect your priorities and marketing goals.
Incorporate project reports. Evaluating every project at the end of each phase or month will help you to measure your progress and avoid issues that can build up over time. You can then make any necessary adjustments to your project to keep it on course.
Putting different types of project management methodologies into practice is hard, but not impossible, especially when you have someone on the outside to help. With the right research, planning, and structure, you can create a project that will no doubt be successful.
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