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September 2020

marketing in a recession

Marketing in a recession

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marketing in a recession
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Marketing in a recession

There’s a lot going on right now. A lot. In fact, let’s not even delve into the shitstorm that has been 2020. There’s a trend of uncertainty, which does make us all feel more conscious of where and how we’re spending our money (professionally and personally). Now more than ever, we’re striving for quality and maximising our budgets.

First things first…

Yes, we all want to get the best possible price, no one wants to be overcharged. But keep in mind that:

good + cheap = slow

good + fast = expensive

fast + cheap = more often than not, crap

good fast cheap

We’re more present, especially online

One minute we’re all at the pub or having a BBQ with family and friends… the next we are cringing at the return of Zoom quizzes, as we strive for any kind of social interaction outside of our own four walls. One thing’s for sure right now: we’re online more than ever before.

While saying “take advantage of it” seems tasteless, it’s true. Your audience are in theory easier to reach than usual. But word to the wise, it’s essential to get your messaging on point. Be sensitive to the current climate and national mood.

The people want guidance!

It’s time to step up and present yourself as a leader in your industry. Your customers want guidance on how they can work smarter, not harder. And marketing is your best way to execute that.

At this time, some businesses are dubious about marketing. You often need to spend money to make money, whether that’s through resource or advertising (or experts that can cover projects out of your remit).

“It may seem like a paradox, but recessionary periods actually provide fertile grounds for marketers to grow their brand’s market share if they’re prepared to think long-term.”

(M. Riston, 2020, Marketing Week)

These are words to live by. We’ve survived recessions before now, and while this one looks a little different, we can make it out of this one too. But to do so, we need to be present, and marketing is how we keep our business present.

Marketing is not a switch; it’s an engine

If you read our blogs, you’ll know we love analogies. They’re great explainers. Here’s a great one for this very situation. Marketing is an engine. It becomes more efficient the more we harness it, and harness it well. If it’s stop-start constantly, it’ll haemorrhage money.

Where to spend and why

Your focal areas will very much depend on what you do already, where your ideal customers tend to discover you, and of course, you budget. So let’s have a look:

Your SEO strategy

Regardless of what you do, as a company and your marketing strategy (or lack thereof), SEO is top of the list of priorities. After all, if you’re not being discovered online, what’s the point?

SEO, or search engine optimisation, in a nutshell is making sure you are visible on Google. It’s a combination of knowing what keywords your website visitors are using to find you, and creating content to answer those queries and build a reputation.

The key to note, is that it’s an ongoing process that includes a mezze of ingredients to cook up a recipe for success (see, I said we love an analogy):

  • content creation (which is a role in itself…)
  • link building
  • an active social media presence (yep, another person to the team)
  • technical stuff like site speed, scripts… (and throw in a developer for good measure)

You get the idea, there’s a lot that goes into it. It can seem daunting if you don’t have a team with the experience in these areas, but that’s where agencies like us can help. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

Whether you want to tackle some of it yourself, or just brush up on your understanding, here are two (hopefully) helpful guides:

#1 A best practice introduction to SEO

#2 How to develop a winning SEO strategy

Content creation

Next up is content creation. And no, you don’t have to be replicating dance videos on TikTok or be an expert in animation to do this (but if that’s your bag, go wild).

Firstly, fresh content feeds into your SEO rankings. Google loves it. Whether that’s creating brand new articles, portfolio pieces etc., or refreshing older pages.

Secondly, good quality content helps position you as a leader in your area of expertise. Talk about what you do, how you can make your customers and leads lives easier, show off how you have remedied your customers woes. You get it.

Your website

It’s no longer the passive shop window to your business. If optimised to it’s full potential, your website can be your best performing salesperson, servicing your business 24/7. But to achieve that, you need to invest resource and budget.

Consider, does you website need a refresh or redesign?

A refresh includes looking at the functionality, user journey, user experience and subtle tweaks where necessary to your branding. This could be through the use of colours, fonts and imagery.

An entire redesign would also look at rebranding. A complete overhaul of your company’s look and feel, messaging, personas, tone of voice. The whole shebang.

Both can feel equally daunting, particularly if you or your stakeholders are attached to how things look at the moment. But it’s important to consider if it’s working for you. Consider:

  • are you generating quality leads?
  • what’s the typical user journey on your website?
  • what keywords are you ranking for, and are they relevant?
  • is anything broken on your website?grayce mobile optimised website

Find out how we helped Grayce refresh their website.

What are you doing with your website leads?

It’s all well and good to get plenty of website visitors, but what happens next?

A well planned out inbound marketing strategy is crucial to converting leads into paying customers. Mapping out the process from website visit through to activation may take some time, but it’s worth doing.

When broken down into steps, you’ll want to identify the following:

  • your ideal customer personas
  • the content channels that they engage best with
  • how to nurture them from prospects to hot leads, ready to convert

What about inbound marketing vs. paid advertising? Both have their pros and cons, and a successful digital marketing strategy will use a balance of the two. For instance, inbound or organic content is a great foundation to building consideration.

Whereas paid (or ads) are great for driving awareness and boosting conversion. They do this by reaching targeted leads who are further down the sales funnel, ready to make a decision.

Mum&You social media advertising facebook

Find out how we helped Mum&You with their digital ad strategy.

Social media

Let’s not forget social media. An extension of your website, focussed on the community that follows it, social media is top of the league when it comes to raising awareness, driving consideration, and boosting engagement. But only when it’s done well.

Again, a strategy is paramount. You’ll need to consider if your tone of voice needs adapting to fit the audience who use that particular channel (think how you might choose to be more professional on LinkedIn vs. the more accepted colloquialisms on Instagram).

It’s so much more than just sticking a few links on Facebook. If you want to be successful, it’s an entire role, filled by an experienced marketeer. You’ll need to understand how algorithms work to maximise organic reach, how to manage a community (think crisis management) and of course, an always on approach.

And that’s not even scratching the surface of what you can achieve if you put budget behind it…

PPC

Last, but by no means least, is PPC (pay per click). Ideal for quick results, paid campaigns give your website visitors a boost by directing highly targeted leads. You can run your ads across a range of platforms including:

  • Google
  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • Bing

…and more!

While it does seem to be a magic wand to generate leads, you need to make sure your marketing ecosystem is healthy. Directing engaged leads who have intention to a website with poor content, broken links and a rubbish journey is a recipe for disaster.

Ultimately, it’s down to your analytics

There’s a great divide between data driven marketers and those who are… well, less excited by numbers, shall we say. Regardless of your stance, it’s absolutely necessary to keep track of performance. Not only because it’s good to have an idea of what’s really going on with your marketing, but also as it helps you to understand what to do to plug the gaps and convert more leads!

Do you need a helping hand?

From time to time we could all do with an extra pair of hands on a project. Whether it’s that you don’t have the expertise, resource or simply enough hours in the day! We can help you. Whether it is content creation, marketing automation, website design, digital advertising, print design… you name it, we’ve got an expert for that!

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The ideal marketing eco-system to bolster your success

The ideal marketing ecosystem to bolster your success

By Blog posts
The ideal marketing eco-system to bolster your success
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The ideal marketing ecosystem to bolster your success

As an agency, our clients often ask us what should I focus my marketing efforts on? As predicted, the answer is not as clear cut as that. It depends heavily on what you’re already doing, what’s working out well and where you need to plug the gaps.

An ecosystem for marketing, you say?

There absolutely is a marketing ecosystem. You need to nurture ground-level work before you can ascend to tall forests… Or something similar. It’s about getting the balance right. Mastering some basics. Walk before you can run type of stuff. But what does that even mean?

Marketing Qualified Leads = Sales Qualified Leads

Most of us are familiar with sales funnels, but what about the marketing channels that power the leads through them. This great diagram from The Marketing Blender simplifies the process into two stages: marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs), and the content silos that are most effective at driving success.

marketing qualified leads > sales qualified leads

Let’s get planning!

When your website was built, chances are you worked on a user journey through the content. But over time this can become cluttered and need a bit of TLC. If your website is particularly old, you might want to consider refreshing it to bolster your lead generation and nurture processes.

MQLs need to be directed to your website before they can qualify as SQLs. But we’d urge you to work backwards on this process.

#1 Identify your service clusters

Of course you know what you sell, but have you identified the product/service clusters? There are likely to be areas that fit into groups. For example, our clusters are: web, digital and creative.

Once you’ve identified these, it’s time to work through your website. And essentially tag the pages that are most relevant to each.

#2 Journey planning

So you know your service clusters, and you’ve tagged your pages to fit into each. It’s now time to think about the content journey:

  • Intrigue (blogs, videos, hints and tips)
  • Discover (whitepapers, guides, resources)
  • Consider (product features, case studies)
  • Decide (pricing, demos, sales interactions)

You can read more about the content structure for lead nurture processes in depth here.

#3 Is your content up to scratch?

Analyse your pages and look at your conversion and bounce rates. How are those stats in particular looking? Chances are, if your conversion rate is low, and your bounce rate high, you need to address the content. Working with a UX specialist and content marketing specialist may help you identify what needs to change.

#4 Are you ready to start driving traffic?

If you’re happy with your service clusters, content mapping and journey plans, you’re ready to begin. If you’re not happy with these, don’t worry – we can help!

What are my options?

Once you’ve ticked everything off the list above, it’s time to start looking at your options to drive leads:

SEO is the foundation of your website, so this should always be high up on your list of priorities. Along with fresh content, it provides consistent, long-term results.

Social media and press releases will feed into your traffic, bolstering your efforts consistently, provided you maintain an active presence. You’ll need to identify a strategy behind these in order to get the best success.

Lastly, PPC will likely give you the quickest results. That said, you must be sure that you’ve set up your ads correctly, otherwise it’ll fall flat.

marketing channels effectiveness over time

How should I prioritise these?

Your marketing ecosystem needs strong roots to weather storms. It also needs a strong base in order for you to fully optimise it to reach your nirvana state.

  • Content & SEO are the key drivers, without these, your campaigns are gutless.
  • Social media (and PR to an extent) only work if you sustain the input. It’s no good to be super active for a month and then let it all go. You need to build trust, reliability and consistency.
  • PPC is great when you need a boost. So long as you have a goal in mind, you’re golden. But you’ll need quality content to get more bang for your buck. Remember, Google assigns a quality score to campaigns. This is based on the relevance of your ads keywords, the landing page content and user experience (e.g. bounce rates and conversions).

But wait, there’s more!

Oh, there’s always more. This diagram helps break down the activities even further. Once you’ve mastered the basics, consider this checklist as the next steps:

marketing ecosystem: seo, content, social media, targetted

I don’t have the time!

It’s a delicate balance making sure that your marketing ecosystem is optimised for success. Yet most of us are time poor when it comes to starting additional projects at the moment. Whether it’s additional resource or expertise, we’ve got you covered. Working with a digital marketing agency need not feel like you’re treading on anyone’s toes or replacing anyone. We like to think of ourselves as an extension of your team.

Have a chat with us to see how and where we can help you achieve marketing excellence.

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