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Budgeting in any industry can be overwhelming, let alone if you’re putting together a non-profit marketing budget. It can start to feel like everything is a priority as you sit down to plan. At the same time, it’s important to go into a new fiscal year being mindful of your spend. As you sit down to plan your overall finances for the year, setting up a non-profit marketing budget is key to achieving the goals and initiatives you’re working towards.

Establishing budgeting goals and marketing objectives doesn’t have to be a daunting task either. When executed properly, they can help you make objective decisions and lay down steps for future success. Below we’ll cover the importance of a marketing budget for your non-profit, tips for getting started, and ideas for managing your budget throughout your fiscal year.

Why Is A Non-Profit Marketing Budget Important?

So why exactly is a budget important for a non-profit institution specifically when it comes to your marketing? From a high-level view, it’s key to pre-planning your marketing initiatives and making sure you have the right resources behind them.

If you’re curious what the average marketing budget non-profits have in place is, research shows the general rule is roughly between 5-15% of your operating budget. However, one surprising study found that almost 20% of non-profits had no firm budget at all and simply played it by ear month to month. 

As a non-profit group, you likely put a lot of energy into impact initiatives like fundraising, donor relations, or event planning. But at the end of the day, marketing is an important piece to all of those activities. 

By establishing budgeting goals up front, it’s a lot easier to advocate for the day-to-day support you’ll need before you’re in the midst of marketing work. Plus, when it comes time to review the year with your board, it makes reporting on your marketing strategy’s ROI much easier to track.

4 Best Practices When Creating a Budget for Non-Profits

It’s best to start establishing your non-profit marketing budget roughly 2 ½ to 3 months ahead of your new fiscal year. This gives you and your team enough time to pull together different components. The average marketing budget for non-profits will need to account for cash flow, programs, advertising, and more. If you’re not sure where to begin, here are some great non-profit budgeting tools from the National Council of Nonprofits. 

Starting early will give you enough time to set up deadlines for internal and board approvals so you’re ready to get started when the fiscal year begins. Plus, it allows you to engage any outside vendors or marketing agencies that can offer extra support outside of your team’s scope. Here are the best practices that can be helpful as you’re putting it all together.

1. Set Your Strategy

To start, you’ll need to have an idea of the overarching objectives of your organization for the year. Marketing for brand awareness is great, but it’s not the only way you can use marketing to make a difference. Your marketing choices should be flexible enough to offer support in a variety of ways to different impact initiatives.

For example, marketing efforts to help raise a specific amount of donations vs. hosting a campaign to engage current volunteers would look very different. Pick those top non-profit-wide initiatives and then dig into how marketing will play a role in achieving them.

2. Determine Your Marketing Goals

Next, it’s time to look at marketing goals that will support those overall efforts you’ve identified in the first step. These should be clear and measurable. Some typical marketing goals non-profits set can include:

  • Quotas (for your events, email marketing list, social media, etc.)
  • Performance-based benchmarks
  • Boosting Leads
  • Increased donations or support
  • Driving qualified website traffic

As an example of how it all fits, consider a non-profit with an objective to find new volunteers. If there’s a sign-up area on the website, a great marketing goal could be to drive more qualified website traffic to the page. 

Increasing site traffic with visitors who have similar interests will give the organization greater visibility and help boost those volunteer numbers over time. Plus, as your site traffic grows over time, you’re likely to build your expertise, authority, and trust. This means you’ll perform better in search algorithms as well. Once goals like this (driving more traffic) are established, it’s time to consider the day-to-day marketing actions you can take to reach them.

3. Pick Your Tactics & Think One Step Ahead

Carrying on with the analogy above, if your marketing goal is to drive more traffic your tactics may include investing in a PPC campaign or focusing on a content marketing strategy. These are the efforts that will help you work towards those goals.

Identifying which tactics you’ll use and the costs associated with them will help you create those important estimates for your budget. And while you’re planning out your tactics, make sure that you’re including a good mix of both traditional and digital marketing efforts.

Some traditional marketing tactics to consider are: 

  • Print advertising
  • Direct mail campaigns
  • Radio messaging
  • Billboard messaging

And some effective digital marketing tactics you can pair with these include:

  • Social media advertising
  • Internet radio messaging
  • PPC / display advertising
  • Organic internet marketing
  • Website redesign or hosting and management updates

From there, decide how to allocate your budget, keeping those main goals in mind as well as any spending requirements. (For example, there may be minimum spend amounts needed to do advertising via radio or social media.)

If your non-profit marketing budget also needs to cover events, consider setting up buckets per event. You can include budgeting to cover each event’s postage, signage, security, rental fees, printing, design, and more. That way those hidden costs won’t be unaccounted for in your budget.

As an extra safety net, consider also setting up a miscellaneous fund so you can plan for the unexpected and field any last-second requests. This can also come in handy for items with larger costs like photography, videography, or traditional media placements like TV and radio.

Once you’ve settled on which tactics are most important to reaching your marketing goals, you can start to craft your best marketing budget. 

Two teammates work together to develop their non-profit marketing budget and marketing strategy.

4. Communicate with Your Non-Profit Team

Marketing for a non-profit typically has to cover a wide range of mission pillars. Your team will have a role in event planning, execution, follow-up, and plenty else that falls on your plate. The key here is to have your action steps planned ahead so you have enough resources to cover all these demands.

While putting together your budget, there may be necessary tactics that require clear communication to the board or fall outside the scope of your team. For example, redesigning your website to improve your branding might be a necessary tactic, but it is challenging if you don’t have the right dev and design support internally. Additionally, it will likely require cooperation from the profit’s top stakeholders.

As you start to present your marketing budget, communicate what’s needed for your marketing tactics to be successful and also advocate for the resources your team will need to accomplish them. Uniting expectations at the start will make the months ahead easier to navigate.

Managing Your Costs Throughout the Fiscal Year

Once your budget is in place the next hardest part can be sticking to it and managing it throughout the year. Here are some of our recommendations that can help, especially if you’re trying to maximize your dollars throughout the fiscal year.

Tap into Your Volunteer Network

It’s easy to think within the confines of what your team can do, but don’t forget there’s an entire community behind you that believes in your cause! Consider ways that organizations, volunteers, or other partners you have exposure to can help open the doors for growth and help you carry out marketing goals in a cost-effective manner.

Volunteers support their local non-profit by spending time packing and organizing boxes.

Look for Trade or Pro-Bono Relationships

Be vigilant for any opportunities to create a mutually beneficial relationship that also helps you stay on budget. This could include:

  • Trading venue fees for sponsorship highlights on event materials.
  • Trading a free, mission-driven in-office lunch and learn for event volunteers.
  • Trading board membership dues and seat for marketing support.

Don’t Just Think in the Present

And last but most important, don’t just stay in the moment with your marketing. Always keep an eye a month or two ahead, while evaluating the past months, to make any marketing budget adjustments and stay on track. 

It can be a slippery slope if your non-profit staff gets bogged down in fundraising or focuses on the event happening right now, with no preparation for what lies ahead. Doing this can potentially pinch planning for your next major impact initiative and steal away from its future success.

How An Agency Can Make The Most of Your Money

As you begin establishing budgeting goals and drawing conclusions for your marketing budget, remember that you are not alone. If you’re finding that there are certain marketing goals that fall outside what your team can support or are trying to navigate creating a well-rounded marketing plan, having an outside perspective can help.

You may find that working with an agency can generate creative ideas for expanding your mission awareness into new markets at a reasonable cost. Consolidating your outsourced support to one vendor instead of multiple can save money in the long run and provide a more cohesive support system when it comes to marketing execution and branding. 

Plus, the experience of an agency can go a long way when budgeting for marketing pieces you’re unfamiliar with. Their expertise can help you determine the best spend of your money for each marketing bucket so that your dollars make the best impact possible.

Looking for more advice on creating a non-profit marketing budget? Listen to our podcast for more great budgeting advice or reach out to our team to hear input from experienced non-profit marketing professionals.

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The world of email marketing has changed since the days of blindly blasting your email list with company updates and promotions. We’re learning to work smarter, not harder, by using new tools and customer data to make sure our messages get to the right people at the right time. 

This is where email drip campaigns come into play. These campaigns save you time and allow you to connect with your audience when it matters most. These campaigns do not have to be complicated and work for a variety of business sizes, industries, and marketing goals.

What is an Email Drip Campaign? 

Email drip campaigns (also known as automated email campaigns, lifecycle emails, autoresponders, and marketing automation) are email campaigns that go out on a schedule or deploy based on a trigger event or customer action. 

As a consumer yourself, you may have received a welcome email when you signed up for updates from a company or if you put an item in your virtual shopping cart and left the site before purchasing. Both are examples of drip campaigns in action. Others may include emails with specific information when you visit a website without taking action or follow-up emails after a purchase or event registration. 

How Are Drip Campaigns Different?

What sets these emails apart from campaigns of the past is the ability to send them at a point in time that matters most to your customers or prospects. Rather than manually sending an email to confirm a purchase, we can now set up an automated email that triggers when a purchase is made. 

Instead of scheduling time during your busy day to send a welcome email to all contacts who signed up in the past week, we can create a welcome series that starts as soon as the form is submitted. When your customers are thinking about you, you are getting a front-row seat in their inbox. 

Beyond the time savings and convenience, targeted emails can impact your ROI and overall email performance. Popular email platform Emma did research showing that relevant targeted emails produced 18 times more revenue than non-targeted, batch-and-blast emails. They also showed those who opened targeted emails are more likely to click links in them, with a 119% increase in click rate. 

When to Use a Drip Campaign? 

The versatility of drip campaigns makes them valuable for a variety of businesses ranging in size, industry, target audience, and goals. The following email drip campaign ideas may be applicable to your business. 

Welcome Series 

For some subscribers, their first interaction with your email marketing program could be through a drip campaign commonly referred to as a welcome series. This series introduces the new subscriber to your company, giving them more background on who you are and what you do. 

It can also help to validate their subscription, build your email reputation, and verify them as a strong, engaged contact. Typically, they are triggered by a user filling out a form on your website opting in to receive updates from your company. 

Lead Nurturing

Similar to the welcome series, a lead nurturing drip campaign can help introduce a potential prospect to your company, giving them useful information at different points in their decision-making process. 

A series like this is helpful for business-to-business applications where a potential client may request information about your company via an online form but maybe months away from making a commitment to work with your company. At key points along their journey, you can contact them with relevant information or prompt them to reach out to you to proceed with the next steps in the process. 

Cart Abandonment

If you have an online store, you may have run into this scenario before. Say someone is browsing the products on your site and finds one they like enough to add to their cart. Whether it’s an internal or external force, they leave your site, also leaving that product just sitting in their cart. 

A cart abandonment series is a powerful follow-up tool that reconnects with those potential customers. Messages could incentivize them to check out with a deal or coupon code, add urgency with an alert that the product is almost out of stock, or simply remind them of your brand and the awesome product that awaits them. 

Product or Content Recommendations

Marketing automation can be set up to keep in touch with your customers and recommend products, services, and content that may be of interest to them based on past purchases or site behavior. Emails in this series can be set up to deploy a certain amount of time after their last site visit or purchase date to help keep you in mind. 

Date-Based Touchpoints 

Want to wish your customers a happy birthday or mark an anniversary? Drip campaigns can be set up based on these dates when they are provided by the subscriber. This type of email can be sweetened with a coupon or promotional code to mark the occasion and encourage a purchase. 

Confirmation Emails 

When hosting an event or requiring customers to make a reservation, email drip campaigns can play a role in sending confirmation emails upon sign up. Much like a welcome series, these campaigns can work with website forms and deploy emails as soon as an event registration is placed. As the event approaches, automated emails can be sent with more event details and reminders. 

Reengagement Emails 

Subscriber habits change over time. There may be a time where a segment of your subscribers stops engaging with your messages. Their needs could have changed or content featured in your newsletters may not be relevant to their life at that moment.

Reengagement campaigns can help you reconnect with this segment of subscribers. These automated emails reintroduce you to that unengaged segment and can prompt them to either stay subscribed or unsubscribe. Encouraging people to unsubscribe may feel counterintuitive, but in the long run, this will help your list health and analytics. When you continue to send to inactive or unengaged contacts who continue to not open or click links in your emails, your open rates and click rates will fall. Sending to a smaller number of engaged contacts can result in increases in both open and click rates. 

Setting Up an Email Drip Campaign

Many email service providers, like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and Hubspot support automated campaigns. Each one may have a specific way to set up an automated campaign but across the board, it’s important to consider your goals and use a workflow to understand the steps needed to make your campaign successful. 

Before you get started, consider the following questions: 

  1. What is your goal?
  2. What action do you want your subscribers to take? 
  3. Who will you be targeting with this automation? 
  4. How does the user enter the automation? What is the trigger event? 
  5. How will users exit the automation? 

By addressing these questions, you will get a sense of how the automation will begin and how many emails to include in your drip campaign. It will help to shape the workflow by creating a starting point and an ending point. 
Using a flow chart like Lucidchart or simply sketching it out on paper can help you create the steps and logic needed to move subscribers from start to finish. A drip email campaign workflow may look like this:

This automation begins with an applicant submitting an online form. After they submit the form, an automated email is sent thanking them for their submission and asking if they would like to opt-in to receive more information. 

If they click the opt-in button in the email, they are added to the master email list and receive a tag designating their interest in “career” information. If they do not click the opt-in button, the system waits for three months, then unsubscribes them since they do not wish to receive information in the future. 

Measuring Email Drip Campaign Success

When measuring the success of email drip campaigns, many of the usual email marketing KPIs will also be relevant as key indicators of success. Tracking both open rate and click-to-open rate on the emails associated with your automation can give you a gauge of how effective your message is. 

Also selecting an email drip campaign KPI that aligns with your main campaign goal will help you gauge if the campaign is performing well. For example, a cart abandonment automation goal could be to capture a percentage of those abandoned carts through the customer following through with the purchase they started. 

Need help with your email drip campaign strategy? Learn more about our email marketing services to get started.

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If there’s anything that’s been learned in the wake of the pandemic, it’s the importance of having an up-to-date online presence that represents your brand just as well as a face-to-face meeting. Your brand is a lot more than just a logo and some copy. It should be an experience.

As a digital marketing agency, we help our clients explore new strategies to elevate their brand via web design, creative, content, and more every day. However, just as we encourage our clients to explore new ideas in their digital marketing, it’s only fair that we take our own advice.

While our brand refresh started in a seemingly “regular”  world, it certainly ended in a changed one. In early 2020, as we dove into redesigning our site, content, and digital assets, our team was suddenly scattered. On top of that, most (if not all) of our regular routines were paused. 

In spite of everything, we successfully elevated and reached our goals. Here’s the “why” and “how” behind our recent brand refresh and some tips you can apply to start your own along the way.

Rebranding vs. a Brand Refresh

Before digging in, it’s important to understand the key difference between a brand refresh and a rebranding project. The idea behind a brand refresh is that you’re reimagining the feeling of your brand using what you already have. It’s primarily a visual process where you adjust your assets to keep your business looking current.

Rebranding your company successfully is a much larger project where you get rid of everything you’ve done previously and start from scratch. This can include creating a completely new brand voice and tone, trying to break into new markets, and completely re-doing your company’s image.

Starting on the Ground Floor

Our previous website was from 2017 and was due for a redesign, knowing it’s optimal to update your site every 3 years. Plus, it was clear it didn’t match the direction our company had evolved into as well. However, the catalyst for updating your digital branding shouldn’t always just be an “older design.”

As soon as your online branding feels out of alignment with your business strategy or vision for the future, it’s an indication that it’s time for a refresh. Sometimes that can just be minor tweaks to what you have, while other times more drastic action is required.

For Tower, we saw a need to elevate our own branding to match the shifts we’d undergone in the past few years. While we didn’t need to do a complete overhaul, we found a lot of opportunities to push ourselves beyond what we had done in the past.

Why a Brand Refresh Matters for Your Business

Your business is making progress every day. As you move forward and scale your company, it’s important to also continue refining and evaluating your brand to keep it sharp. This doesn’t always require designing a completely new logo or color palette. Refreshing your brand can include updating content on your service pages or replacing old, outdated images.

There’s no set time frame for how often you should be doing a brand refresh. However, the industry you’re in can have a hand in how often you make these types of changes.

If you’re a brand rooted in history, stability, or security (like a financial institution or college) you shouldn’t have to refresh that frequently. However, if you’re in a fast-growth industry like tech, your business will likely need a brand refresh more often to compete in the digital landscape.

The Key to Re-Doing Online Branding in Digital Marketing

When it came time to approach this project, our team found it extremely helpful to establish some simple ground rules and then outline a process before digging in. Our ground rules throughout the whole process were to:

  1. Keep our signature green color
  2. Keep our current logo
  3. Keep Cabrito (our main typeface we created internally)

From there, we then completed a visual audit of all our materials including our website, business cards, previous campaigns, social media posts, and much more. Our team sorted various assets into two categories — one for assets that “work” and one for those that “don’t work.”

While this part of the process required a lot of back and forth between our broader team, it spurred useful conversation. This audit allowed us to pair down the elements we liked and the ideas behind them, as well as see what areas needed the most attention. From there our team got to work redesigning creative, strategizing SEO, experimenting with dev, and drafting new content to match our updated brand voice and tone.

Think Outside the Logo

For any business diving into these types of changes, the biggest pitfall is thinking your brand is just a logo. At Tower, we encourage you to take a holistic marketing approach. Ultimately, your business is conveyed through everything — fonts, type treatments, colors, patterns, layout compositions, photography, written content, and much more.

The goal is to make sure all these elements are cohesive to the point that even when viewed separately, they still clearly portray your brand in the same light. When you take the time to do this, the benefit is that your brand becomes recognizable for consumers. It sticks.

For Tower, we started by pinpointing the areas we wanted to change and then got to work fine-tuning every single element. In the end, our goal was to make sure everything fit that holistic approach.        

Finding Your Inspiration

Our office has a saying that first came to light when our team brainstormed for a campaign a few years ago — “elevate.” Over time, it became a crucial part of how we approach marketing for clients and, ultimately, ourselves. We took that concept and we ran further in terms of this brand refresh.

“Elevate” was behind every decision we made in the process. We went as far as taking pieces we thought were good and working to make them even better.

Anything that wasn’t working and had even become dated or cliche was scrapped altogether. The idea of “elevating” became our litmus test for all design, content, and development choices. 

Staying Inspired in the Unexpected 

While the state of our clients and our business had to rapidly evolve to respond to the pandemic, our team still continued pressing forward with our brand redesign. If anything, the pandemic opened up interesting opportunities to look at the idea of collaboration differently.

Collaboration is certainly the key to creating, however, there is also great value in having a chance to actually retreat from distraction and do the work itself. Being remote gave us a chance to become fully immersed in the project and our ideas without any interruption. Working in this hyper-focused manner was actually a huge benefit to developing the more difficult and complex elements.

However, our team also balanced working remotely by supplementing our progress with check-in meetings and plenty of video calls. Doing this allowed us to clearly communicate and stay on the same page. 

Ultimately, here’s the biggest takeaway — it’s important to build in pockets of time to collaborate on refreshing your brand with others, while also balancing it with uninterrupted time to work individually on it.

Staying One Step Ahead of Your Competition

With any brand refresh, it’s crucial that you’re aware of the competitor landscape. You want to make sure that, in the end, your outcome goes far beyond what they’ve done so you can carve your own unique spot in the industry.

Make sure that a part of your project includes investigating your competition. Ask yourself the following:

  • What are they doing?
  • What are they saying?
  • What is their user experience like?
  • What can you do better?

You want to avoid doing or saying the same message. Otherwise, you won’t stand out. You need to be refreshing your brand not not just to “look good” today, but to ensure you stay relevant in the months ahead.

Develop Your Unique Value Proposition

As you’re working, make sure you take time as a team to be introspective of your company. Clearly define what makes you different. In our case, it was the idea of “elevating.” However, that won’t be the differentiator for every company, and you’ll need to decide what makes yours unique.

It’s worth devoting the time to sort this part out during your brand refresh process. Knowing your unique value proposition as a business will keep your strategy clear and brand refresh work cohesive. Plus, that differentiator can even become the very hook that draws in your target audience to choose you over your competitors.

Know it’s time for a brand refresh, but need help executing it? Contact our team to learn how we can help you reach your next goals with our creative services.

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We hear from businesses all the time that are looking for a new logo. Perhaps they’re starting a new company or are looking to modernize their business. But what many of these businesses don’t realize is that creating a brand identity will provide far more value to their company than simply redesigning their logo.

If you’re not sure where to start when creating a brand for your company, here’s everything you should know before approaching a rebranding project.

What is a Brand Identity?

Simply speaking, a brand identity is the set of elements that establish your business visually and set it apart from your competitors. These elements likely include a logo, color palette, fonts, and key pieces of messaging. They must be consistent but flexible, and perhaps most importantly, they must be functional and easy to use.

But creating a brand identity is about much more than a handful of visual elements. Your brand is in everything you do. It’s the greeting you use when you answer the phone. It’s the decisions you make on packaging and materials. It’s how you react to a crisis. Your brand is what makes you, well… you.

Your Business’s First Brand vs. Rebranding

While the process for a first brand vs. a rebrand may look similar, there are a few key differences to keep in mind.

Your First Brand

If you’re a start-up or new company, you likely won’t have as much data on your customers as an established business. In this case, external research is especially crucial to make sure you have a clear picture of your potential customers. Doing this research will not only help you in creating a brand identity, but may also be of use in your business development strategies and your lead generation.

If you’re working with venture capital, a startup incubator, or any other investors, you’ll also need to keep them in mind. The buy-in of these key players is essential to a successful brand launch.

Before you engage with a logo designer or agency, outline the internal process for your team. Include a timeline, key players who will be involved at each stage, and a budget. This will ensure the brand is developed on time and on budget and will help your key stakeholders feel included in the process.

Rebranding

If you have an existing brand and are considering rebranding, you have a major advantage over new companies since you know far more about your customer than they do. The flipside is that it can be harder to separate yourself and your view of your company from how your customer sees you.

For example, you may have in your mind that you need to level up your brand into a more formal, professional space. However, your customers may love your approachability and lack of red tape. 

While pleasing higher-ups and stakeholders matters, your company’s success relies on your customers. Balancing the needs and desires of both groups will ensure that you develop a successful brand strategy.

Part One: Understanding Your Audience

While it can be tempting to put pen to paper and start sketching out logo ideas, it’s crucial that your brand begins with your audience.

Who Is Your Audience?

Understanding your audience is the first step toward creating a brand. You’ll need to get inside your customers’ heads to understand what they look for in a product or service, what drives them to make decisions, and how to make them choose you over your competitors.

Here are some methods and strategies to explore to find out more about your customers:

  • Conducting market research
  • Holding focus groups
  • Performing social listening to see what customers are saying
  • Asking customers to fill out surveys (online or in-person)
  • Developing a persona to better illustrate your typical customer
  • Diving into Google Analytics, social analytics data, or other information you may already own that can tell you more about your customers
  • Hiring an agency to create an audience intelligence document for your company

Once you’ve decided on your method, you may need to complete further research to understand how to leverage the method you’ve chosen. Fair research without bias or leading questions is your best chance at understanding your customers authentically.

Here are some questions to consider when researching your audience:

  • Are your customers consumers (B2C) or businesses (B2B)?
  • What is/are your main demographic(s) – age, gender, location, etc.?
  • What is their education level? Financial status? Marital status?
  • What drives them to choose you over your fiercest competitor?
  • What matters to them most? Price point? Quality? Convenience?

You’ll be far more successful in creating a brand identity once you have a solid understanding of your customers and know what makes them tick.

Part Two: Strategizing Against Your Competitors

In addition to researching your customers, you’ll also want to take a deeper look at your competition. You may have already gathered a list of competitors your customer mentioned in your former research, but don’t be afraid to include other competitors you know in the industry.

What do their brands look like? Do you want your brand identity to stand out from the crowd? Or would you rather blend in but do so with perfect execution? What do their brands do well and poorly?

Answering these questions as you engage with a brand designer will help you have a clearer vision of what you want. And, it will help guide conversations about your fonts, brand color palette, and brand voice down the line.

enwild logo on blue background
A logo we developed for outdoor gear retailer, Enwild.

Part Three: The Logo

Getting a new logo is exciting. It’s one of the most visual pieces of your brand and is an element you’ll likely interact with on a daily basis. Plus, it’s the face of your brand when it comes to customer interaction. Here are a few tips to make sure you get the most out of your new logo.

Put Your Customer First

It can be hard to distance yourself from your company’s brand, but remember that you are not your customer. When creating a brand identity, try to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Think about their demographic, the other brands they likely shop from, and how your brand can best appeal to them. Just because you don’t like brutalist design or the color orange doesn’t mean it isn’t a great option that your customers will love.

Provide Great Feedback

One of the areas where many companies struggle is in providing their logo designer with concrete, specific feedback. Keep these things in mind to make your revision rounds go as smoothly as possible:

  1. You won’t like every design option you receive, and that’s okay. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind truthfully. Your designer has heard it all before and would rather take the criticism and help you develop a logo you love.
  2. Incomplete or partial feedback wastes your valuable time and money. Provide complete feedback from all relevant stakeholders, and resolve any internal disagreements before the feedback is sent.
  3. Be specific and resolute. Take time to absorb the logo options you’ve been given before providing feedback. Try to pinpoint the elements you like and those you don’t to give your designer clear action items moving forward.

Ask for the Right Assets

The best logos are flexible and have different options to utilize depending on the situation. For example, you may want a single-color logo for embossing or an icon version of your logo for tiny applications.

Here are some of the variations you may want to consider requesting from your logo designer:

  • Horizontal and vertical options
  • Icon only/text only
  • Black and white/one color/two color
  • With and without copyright or trademark symbols
  • Optimized for embroidery or vinyl cutting
  • Transparent/vector/pixel-based files

Your logo needs to be flexible but consistent. Getting the assets you need upfront will help your brand be a success for years to come, even if you don’t have an ongoing relationship with your brand designer.

Part Four: Supporting Brand Elements

In addition to your logo, your brand should be defined by supporting elements like colors, fonts, textures, and messaging. While your logo may be the most recognizable visual, your brand is nothing without a complete suite of elements. 

Imagine Mcdonald’s without their signature red and yellow, or Amazon’s logo in a script font. Logos need the support of a full brand strategy to do their best work.

color palette of green and purple
A colorful but intentional color palette our design team created for Robertson Insurance.

Brand Color Palette

Color palettes can be a divisive topic within a brand. You may be tempted to call out your favorite color, or maybe you want to stay with your existing colors because they have worked thus far.

Here are four things to consider when choosing or approving a branding color scheme:

  1. Your color palette should reflect your brand, not your personal tastes. Just as red and black would never be appropriate for a daycare, there are likely colors that don’t make sense in your industry or your niche within your industry.
  1. Different colors evoke different emotions. There’s a reason the cereal aisle is full of red and orange boxes and that most luxury companies focus on black and white: because brand color psychology works. Your designer will be able to help you pinpoint which colors are best for your industry, but consider the emotions you want your brand to evoke. Respect? Excitement? Trustworthiness?
  2. Take a look at your competitors’ color palettes. Do you want to blend in or stand out? There’s no wrong answer, but knowing what your brand will look like amongst your competitors matters. The best brand colors are intentional and strategic.
  3. Consider contrast for readability and accessibility. Just like brick-and-mortar businesses need to offer accessibility in the form of wheelchair ramps and elevators, online businesses should consider accessibility in terms of their design. While it’s a bit more complicated than just choosing the right colors, keeping accessibility in mind during discussions about your brand color palette can save you trouble later.
A typography-focused logo for law firm Chieppor & Egner, LLC.

Fonts

Choosing a font for your brand is another discussion where everyone will have an opinion. What’s most important is to focus on your customer and your industry over your personal tastes. Check out our four top tips on how to choose fonts for your brand:

  1. Keep it simple. Your entire brand only needs one to three fonts. Choosing more than three fonts can make your brand look disconnected and hodge-podge.
  2. Prioritize legibility. Sure, a thin script font may be the perfect fit for your brand, but it loses its value if no one can read it. Consider various applications — from massive billboards to long-form documents — when choosing a font for your brand.
  3. Let your brand voice shine through. Your fonts should give customers a subconscious first impression of your company’s personality and values.

Messaging, Voice, and Tone

When it comes to brand messaging, what you say matters – but how you say it is just as important. No matter who is writing on behalf of your brand, the tone and voice must be the same. This presents a cohesive and professional front for your business that will earn customers’ trust and loyalty.

The voice and tone you choose should be consistent with the brand identity you’ve created. It might be exciting and fun-loving or determined and resolute. Whatever it is, it must be steady and present in all elements of your brand.

You’ll then need to convey your business’s new tone and voice to all employees who speak or write on behalf of the brand. Consider creating a brand standards guide that answers questions like:

  • How do I greet customers or clients?
  • What should I say when I answer the phone?
  • What person and tense do I write in?
  • How do we address (or not address) difficult subjects like religious holidays, social movements, and political events?
  • What is the elevator pitch for our business?
  • Are there any terms or industry jargon we want to avoid?
  • How do we react to crises in writing (both externally and internally)?

Part Five: Rolling Out Your Brand

Once you’re given your final logo and other brand assets, you may think the hard work of creating a brand identity is over. But the truth is, the way you present and roll out your brand to the rest of the world is just as crucial to its success.

Announcing Your New Brand Internally

Getting employee buy-in of your new brand is key. Whether you opt to include employees throughout the branding process or only notify them when the brand is complete, it’s important that you present your new brand in the right way. 

circular logo for NNBC
One of the logos our team developed for the National Novelty Brush Company.

Consider a presentation, offer free swag like t-shirts or water bottles, and include plenty of time for questions and answers. The way your brand is perceived internally will set the stage for how your employees convey your company to customers and business partners, so it’s imperative that they have a positive view of the new brand.

Announcing Your Brand Publicly

Perhaps even more important than presenting your brand to your internal team is announcing it to the world. If you’ve seen one of the many new branding flops over the years, you’ll know just how much first impressions can matter when creating a brand identity.

Depending on your industry and the size of your business, you may want to consider some of the following:

  • An event to celebrate the new brand reveal
  • A formal press release to share through PR outlets and on your website
  • A PPC campaign to clarify the change for users if your rebrand involved a name change
  • An email campaign to announce the change to your current customers or clients
  • A short statement to share on social media and your website
  • A letter and swag bag to send to key investors and stakeholders

Creating Consistent Ongoing Brand Collateral

Finally, you’ll need to set your new brand up for success so it can be used appropriately by your team for years to come. If you worked with an experienced agency, your new brand should come with brand standards and a brand style guide to share with the rest of your team.

booklet flipped open to show various Enwilid logos
A brand guide our team developed for Enwild.

These documents will show appropriate and inappropriate uses of the logo, as well as detail the fonts, brand color palette (in RGB, CMYK, HEX, and Pantone), and resources that are allowed within the brand. They will help your team stay true to the brand as the designer intended it and will give you a resource to turn to when in doubt. Everyone in the company, from the CEO to an intern, should feel comfortable using the brand and be able to identify inappropriate use.

If your agency didn’t include one, you may also want to create and circulate a tone and messaging document that explains any changes to the brand voice. This can be especially useful if you had no formal brand in place prior to your rebrand. 

Part Six: The Future of Your Brand

You’ve done it. You’ve created a brand identity that shows the world who you are and where you shine. So what next?

While you likely did some outreach during your initial brand launch, ongoing Internet marketing can help you continue to grow your brand awareness and bring traffic to your website. You may want to consider search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing, email marketing, or content marketing to engage new audiences and grow your business.

Above all else, stick to your brand standards, encourage your team to evolve your brand over time, and enjoy the process.

Considering rebranding your business? Creating a brand identity can be a rewarding and engaging experience with the help of a trusted brand designer.

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While you might think branding is more about your logo and other visual elements, content marketing plays an essential role in establishing your brand’s image too. Branding through content marketing allows you to tell your unique story, which can bring you closer to prospects and customers. In fact, research shows that 40% of brands stand out for memorable content, 33% for having a distinct personality, and 32% for compelling storytelling.

In this blog, we’ll explore the relationship between content marketing and branding to help you strengthen your relationships with customers and your overall brand identity.

Content Marketing vs. Branded Content

Let’s start by laying out the differences between content marketing and branded content.

Content Marketing

Simply put, content marketing refers to creating, publishing, and sharing educational content crafted specifically for your target audience. Producing high-quality content allows you to demonstrate your expertise, which positions you as an authority in your industry. Types of content marketing include:

  • Blogs and articles
  • On-page content
  • Whitepapers
  • Infographics
  • eBooks
  • Webinars
  • Videos

Depending on your objectives, you can use content marketing to achieve any of the goals below:

  • Grow brand awareness and expand your reach
  • Attract new prospects
  • Convert leads into sales
  • Nurture relationships with your existing customers
  • Cultivate brand loyalty

Consistently producing relevant content your target audience finds useful and informative helps you stand out from the competition. It also makes you more memorable, as readers will associate you with innovation and quality.

Branded Content

Branded content (and branding strategy) shares many of the same objectives of content marketing, like increasing brand awareness and engaging prospects. However, branded content focuses more on directly promoting your business’ products and services. It should still provide some kind of educational value for readers, though.

Because it helps you forge emotional connections with your audience, branded content allows you to demonstrate and connect with human feelings and values. And studies show that 71% of consumers are more likely to recommend brands with whom they have an emotional connection. Branded content is often humorous or entertaining, especially when it takes the form of videos, photos, surveys, and quizzes.

If you’re looking to quickly create a positive reaction within your audience that boosts brand loyalty, you should seriously consider branded content.

The Importance of Having a Brand Story

Every brand has a story. Customers want to know where you started, how you got to where you are, and what you believe in. Sharing your story helps humanize your brand and gives audiences a clear picture of the people behind the business.

Telling your brand story also allows you to relay what might otherwise be dry, uninteresting information in the form of an engaging narrative. At the end of the day, a compelling, relatable brand story plays a central role in customers choosing you over the competition. This can take the form of joining your email list, downloading a lead magnet, or making a purchase, among other actions.

How to Tell Your Brand Story with Content Marketing

While it isn’t as directly promotional and brand-focused as branded content, content marketing tactics can still help you tell your brand story. Here are a few ways you can tell your brand story by leveraging the relationship between content marketing and branding.

Tailor Your Content to the Buyer’s Journey

One of the pillars of strategic content marketing is producing useful content that’s relevant to users at their specific point in the buyer’s journey. For example, content in the awareness stage should educate users while gently introducing them to your brand. On the other hand, decision stage content should clinch the sale by concretely showing users what sets you apart from the competition.

Integrate Customers Into Your Brand Story

Producing helpful, relevant content starts with keeping users at the forefront of your mind (and brand story) at all times. Stay focused on your audience’s specific needs and pain points, and position your brand as the solution to their problems.

Doing so helps you build trust and makes them more likely to turn to you when they encounter similar obstacles in the future. In fact, 51% of consumers expect brands to create products and experiences they want before they even realize they need them.

Let Your Brand’s Passions Shine Through

A final effective way to establish branding through content marketing is to share your passion and excitement with users. Get them as excited as you are about your products, services, and the industry as a whole. This will humanize your brand by making you more relatable and positioning you as someone who understands their pain points.

How Your Voice, Tone, and Style Impact Brand Storytelling

Every brand has their own voice, tone, and style in both their spoken and written communication. Your company’s unique tone of voice encompasses how you speak to your audience and heavily influences how you’re perceived as a business. Your tone of voice also conveys your personality and values, both of which are key to branding strategy and content marketing.

A distinctive and memorable tone of voice allows audiences to recognize you without seeing your name or logo. It also helps you stand out from the competition because you stay top-of-mind with interested prospects.

Let’s take a closer look at the three most important technical elements of brand storytelling: voice, tone, and style.

Voice

Voice refers to the personality, rhythm, pace, and vocabulary behind how your brand speaks to the world. When creating written and spoken content, it’s crucial to remember that every choice you make impacts how your audience perceives you. Being thoughtful and intentional with your brand voice can be the difference between connecting with audiences emotionally or alienating them entirely.

As a general rule, you should avoid overly-technical language or industry jargon, unless it can be understood by most of your readers. Using simpler language also makes you feel more relatable and transparent. Don’t be too colloquial, though, as expressions change over time, making you seem dated.

Tone

Tone (also known as tone of voice) is the emotional inflection (or lack thereof) that guides your brand voice. In other words, it’s how you express your voice within the context of a specific situation. You’ll want to adjust your brand’s tone of voice based on who you’re talking to, your subject matter, and your medium. However, your overall brand voice should remain consistent across every interaction you have with your audience.

Your brand’s tone of voice is composed of four main dimensions:

  • Funny vs. serious
  • Formal vs. casual
  • Respectful vs. irreverent
  • Enthusiastic vs. matter-of-fact

How you leverage these dimensions and blend them together to create your brand’s tone of voice is entirely up to you. But when developing and refining your tone of voice, you should pay close attention to:

  • The way your writing sounds when you read it out loud.
  • The etymology of your writing and which words are best suited for different situations.
  • The syntax of how your words are arranged within sentences.

Most importantly, remember that creating a trustworthy and authentic tone of voice is one of the most important facets of strategic content marketing for brands.

Style

The final piece of the puzzle when it comes to telling your brand story, style refers to what your writing looks like. Essentially, it’s the way your messaging is written and includes things like capitalization, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary.

Your style signals to readers what you’re about and gives them a preview of your brand voice when they start reading your content. Make sure your style aligns with each person’s position in the buyer’s journey to maximize your relatability.

Look to Your Audience When Developing Voice, Tone, and Style

The most effective way to develop your brand’s voice, tone, and style is to closely analyze your target audience. Ask yourself questions like:

  • What communication channels does my audience prefer?
  • What social media platforms are they most active on?
  • How do they communicate with one another?
  • What brands do they engage with on social media?
  • What do they “like” and “dislike” on social media?

You’ll also want to create a unique persona for each of your target audiences that includes criteria like gender, marital status, educational background, income level, and interests. Personas help you better understand your ideal customers (and the differences between them), so you can produce relevant content that achieves your goals within each stage of the buyer’s journey.

When you’re intimately familiar with your customers’ wants and needs, you can also adopt their language and work it into your messaging. This makes you much more relatable, while also helping you build trust and demonstrate empathy.

Ready to use content marketing and branding to enhance your storytelling? Our team of content marketing specialists is ready to help you achieve your marketing goals.

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Marketing budget plans can be intimidating to nail down. With so many mediums to invest in, especially in the digital world, finding the right balance can take time and insight. How much should you be putting into traditional mediums vs. digital mediums? How do you decide what mediums belong in your digital marketing budget?

While your business is different from the business next door, we’ll break down some things that are helpful for all companies to consider while building your digital marketing and advertising budget.

Establishing Your Digital Marketing Budget Plan

To get started, consider your overall business goals and strategy for the year. Once you have an idea of what you want your business to achieve in the next 12 months, you’ll be able to narrow down the tactics you can use to get there, along with the money needed to carry them out. 

Your strategy and goals will also help guide you as you consider what mediums to pay for advertising on, and which ones to use organically. Tried and true mediums should have more money behind them, while new mediums can be tested with smaller investments or built organically before being backed with your hard earned marketing budget. 

When establishing your strategy, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Where are you in your marketing journey? Are you just starting out or do you already have a physical and / or digital presence? 
  • What are your goals and how will you know if you’ve achieved them? 
  • What messaging will you focus on at what time? Is there seasonality of your business to consider?
  • Who is your target audience? 
  • What actions do you want your target audience to take? 
  • What has worked for you in the past? What hasn’t? 

Without a strategy to guide you, you won’t know what’s working and whether or not your money is being spent in the right places. It’s also recommended that you focus on 1-2 main goals for the year and you allocate marketing dollars to help achieve those goals. If you have too many goals you’re looking to achieve, chances are that you’ll spread your marketing spend too thin across many different platforms, and some may not provide you with the best ROI.

Traditional vs. Digital 

Once your strategy is established, your overall marketing budget and goals can help you break down a healthy split between traditional mediums (TV, traditional radio, out-of-home, print) and digital mediums (SEO, PPC, social, email, internet radio / streaming). With digital audiences growing rapidly, about 50% of your marketing budget should be allocated to digital channels, if those tactics strongly align with your business goals. 

Digital marketing tactics have significant advantages, including: 

  • The ability to track users through their digital journey 
  • Data and reporting options that give insights into ad performance
  • Smaller investments than with some traditional mediums 
  • Audience targeting that helps your message reach qualified customers 
  • Flexibility to change messaging and creative frequently to test and react to results 

While there are advantages to both traditional and digital mediums, striking a balance between the two can reach your potential customers at different points throughout their daily life and throughout the customer journey.

Agency vs. In-House

While crafting your marketing and advertising budget and selecting the right medium for your company, a big question that will come into play will be “who will do the work?” Your team’s workload and capabilities can determine what you keep in house and what you outsource to a marketing agency, which will in turn affect how much you need to budget towards each medium. 

Keeping It In-House 

For marketing teams with a robust set of skills and experience, keeping work in-house may be the ideal solution. In-house teams often know your brand best, and can craft messages that match your voice without the time and research needed by an agency. They are also close by for quick communication. 

However, rarely do in-house teams cover every skill set. Someone may dabble in SEO or social media, but they may also be your graphic designer. Time can be spread thin, with shifting projects and priorities depending on the day. 

If your team can handle aspects of your marketing strategy, it can be more budget-friendly than hiring an agency. However, adding more marketing employees to your team just to handle specific aspects of your marketing span can be more expensive, after factoring in salary, benefits, and technology needs.

Working with a Trusted Marketing Agency

Marketing agencies are often made up of experts, specialized in different digital marketing fields. They can work as an extension of your team and lend their expertise to guide your marketing strategies. 

Not only do marketing agencies have specialized teams to help power your marketing efforts, they also have key software and tools that may be too expensive for your company to utilize on your own. Since agencies work with a plethora of clients, they’re able to use the tools across multiple accounts and pass the benefits along to the companies they work with. 

Agency fees are pre-set and can be discussed prior to the work being completed. You’ll know what to expect and can set expectations with the agency you are working with. They’ll make the most of the budgets you give them, and have more buying power than small businesses themselves. When working with an agency, be sure to budget for any fees and labor costs that they have.

Finding the Right Mediums For You

The right mix of mediums is unique to your business and industry. Knowing your target audience can be a big factor in deciding the platforms that are best for you. Where does your audience go for entertainment and information? How does their media consumption align with your business? With your goals and audience in mind, consider each of these tactics for your digital marketing budget. 

SEO

Search engine optimization can help increase the quality and quantity of your web traffic organically by tailoring your website content and keywords to answer the questions people are searching for. Increasing traffic can help boost leads and sales over time. 

The main costs associated with SEO revolve around the cost of labor and any platform or tools you need to work with.

Content

Content can also help bring people to your website organically and through paid distribution. Like SEO, content helps answer the questions people are searching for. It can educate or entertain potential customers while increasing their awareness of your brand and building your reputation. 

The costs associated with content marketing are the cost of someone writing content for your company. Once you have shiny, new content, you can also pay to distribute it on social media platforms via social advertising, which is relatively inexpensive. 

PPC – Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay-per-click advertising helps bring people to your website with strategically-written ads, typically on search engines. Companies are charged for their ads based on the number of clicks they receive, making it a cost-effective way to bring people to your site. All things considered, it’s a great way to increase traffic in a shorter amount of time than it would for more organic, long-lasting marketing methods.

PPC also has advantages associated with audience building and refining with in-platform tools. This helps to deliver your ads to those who may be most interested and likely to act, based on specific interests, demographics, and locations. 

The costs associated with PPC can vary, and can be based on the marketing and advertising budget you allow for this tactic and the keywords you choose to advertise for.

Social Media

Social media marketing can be a powerful tool for content distribution and advertising. Different platforms connect with different audiences. Audiences can be refined further with in-platform tools that make it possible to serve ads to people with specific interests or demographics, or in specified locations. 

Understanding the capabilities and general user profile of each platform is key to picking the right ones for your company: 

  • Facebook is the most popular platform based on usership, with 183 million users in the United States. The majority of its users are over the age of 18. Facebook gives advertisers the ability to refine their audience by a large variety of factors, making it a strong advertising platform. 
  • Instagram is an extremely visual platform that is popular with a younger demographic than Facebook, with the majority of its users falling under 49 years old. While it’s less widely used than Facebook, it still boasts 116 million users in the U.S. Since it’s owned by Facebook, Instagram also allows advertisers to serve their ads to specific audiences based on a number of factors. 
  • Pinterest focuses on inspirational visual content, and is popular across all age groups. It’s U.S. usership is smaller at 87 million. Pinterest allows you to target specific age groups, locations and genders, along with popular user interests and keywords users search. 
  • LinkedIn is a professional social media network that is popular with people over 30 years old. Its focus on business and networking makes it a strong platform for B2B advertising. Advertisers are able to target their ads to people based on industry, job title, location, seniority, and education, and receive advanced reporting and data on who is viewing and clicking on your ads. 
    • If you are starting off LinkedIn advertising and don’t know where to start, our helpful LinkedIn ads guide covers everything you need to know to grow your email list.

Social media ad costs also vary by platform, but are generally flexible. Working with an agency is helpful in establishing how to get the most out of your social media spend. 

Email Marketing

Email marketing helps your business connect with customers, future and current, through newsletters and automated email messages based on customer behavior. It’s a great way to stay in touch with people interested in your brand.

Automated email messages connect with your audience at the right time during their customer journey, from when they sign up to receive emails to after they purchase. They help keep your brand top of mind and capture your customer’s attention at key moments. 

The main cost associated with email marketing is the cost of the platform you are using to send emails. Many platforms work on a monthly subscription basis.  

Internet Radio

As more people listen to music through digital streaming services and less through their car radios, the bigger role internet radio plays in the digital marketing world. Internet radio allows you to target specific audiences, geographic areas, and industries with brand awareness messages that encourage action. What separates internet radio from traditional radio is the ability to direct people to specific landing pages through accompanying banner ads. This helps provide data for tracking and analyzing your efforts. 

Costs to keep in mind are the ad placements themselves with prices varying depending on location and audience size, and the cost to produce the ad. 

Miscellaneous

The world of digital marketing is always changing and growing. Consider setting aside money to test the waters or take advantage of an opportunity that pops up throughout the year. Opportunities may include press release distribution for an important event or announcement, video creation, and ad placement on virtual platforms.

Balancing Your Digital Marketing Budget

Balancing the Digital Marketing Budget 

Finally, with strategy, goals, total budget, and mediums in mind, you can begin to allocate funds to their respective tactics. This is where you should also look at what has worked for you in the past versus what you want to try. 

Most of your digital marketing budget should be invested in the tactics that worked best for you in the past and align with your goals. These will be the strongest for you moving into the new year. 

A smaller portion of your digital marketing budget can be allocated for tactics you want to try. These tactics should also align with your goals, but may be new to the marketing world or to your company. Be sure to keep an eye on these campaigns as you run them to gauge success and make adjustments. 

Having some flexibility in your digital marketing budget can also be helpful. If one of those new tactics works well, you can invest more money over the year. You may also be faced with a new opportunity to promote an event or sale that wasn’t planned at the beginning of the year. That flexibility will prevent you from feeling stretched or stressed by tactics that may need funds down the line. 

Learning and Growing

Your first (or even your fifth) digital marketing budget might not be perfect, but with time and attention to detail, you’ll be able to tweak and refine your budgeting skills. As you evaluate tactics throughout the year, make notes of what is working and any fund shifts to make next year’s budgeting season smoother than the last. 

Online Sales – Who Is Responsible?

When it comes to sales and marketing, the overlap can be confusing — not just for professionals in the field, but also for clients. Which is more important, marketing or sales? Where should I invest my budget? Who is responsible for generating sales? Is it the marketing team, sales team, or both?

I work for a digital marketing agency and a lot of times clients hold us accountable for online sales. When this happens, those clients are sometimes disappointed when online sales are not the immediate outcome of their digital marketing. The reality is, our team works as marketers first, not salespeople. Our efforts are to attract, educate, and then funnel users on to the sales team to close the deal.

What I do as a marketer can’t be defined just within sales. It encompasses much more than that. But again, in the context of online business, what is the difference between marketing and sales. Are they separate departments? Should they be working more closely together?

I started writing this post for clarity on the matter. Plus, I wanted a better understanding of both sales and marketing in order to understand the advantages of each and to figure out how they can better work together to benefit the business.

This blog is my attempt at ending the tension between sales and marketing.

By defining the roles of each, business leaders may just find that they can eliminate tension caused by the uncertainty of who is responsible for what. Plus, with this clarity, the business can get better results all around from both sales and marketing efforts.

The Sales vs. Marketing Conundrum

How do I get sales on my website? That is usually the first question clients ask when we meet. While marketers can certainly do a great job presenting products or services in a way to attract buyers, there are some other key components that will dictate whether their efforts are successful. The product they market needs to:

  • Offer significant value to its market
  • Be a product or service that’s in demand
  • Account for the competitive landscape

No matter how good the marketing surrounding a product or service is, people won’t buy something they don’t value or understand. So it’s crucial to take time to develop a product or service that consumers will value first before passing the work of marketing and selling it along to your teams.

Businesses Need to Earn Revenue

I get it, clients want to know their ROI and I can admit it is harder for marketing to show that in some cases. The timeline of marketing can take a long time in some cases. Brand awareness and engagement don’t necessarily turn into cold hard cash straight away. This can sometimes make it difficult to quantify marketing.

On the flip side, when a business sells something like a teapot online, it’s much easier to quantify in reporting. This is where my conundrum starts. Both marketing and sales have value, but with eCommerce, it’s difficult to not lump marketing and sales together. The issue is that sometimes my efforts as a marketer are being fused with becoming responsible for eCommerce sales. But digital marketing is about more than just revenue returns. Right? Or is this just an excuse that I was making to not be held responsible? I thought maybe I was looking at the relationship between sales and marketing all wrong myself.

I went back to basics to understand the roles of marketing and sales, studying each of their processes. I wanted to figure out how they worked together so I could avoid feeling like there is a sales vs. marketing conundrum.

A Quick Overview of Marketing and Sales Management

What do sales and marketing do? I have a grasp on the marketing side, but I was still a bit fuzzy on sales.

  • Do sales act as a function of marketing management?
  • Should marketing and sales be seen as different departments or not?
  • Does marketing occur before sales or after?

I like this definition, as explained by Philip Kotler (A.K.A. the godfather of marketing).

“Marketing and sales deal with the exploration and understanding of customer needs, with the response to them through the development, production, and sales of goods and services (including innovation implementation). It also deals with the impact on customers’ needs in accordance with the strategic purposes of the organization.” (Source)

What Is The Role of Sales?

Inbound and outbound sales, insider sales, and business development — there is a lot to define that goes into sales. However, I found this definition to be quite succinct: “Sales planning involves strategy, setting profit-based sales targets, quotas, sales forecasting, demand management, and the execution of a sales plan.”

This definition looks at sales holistically. And if you’re digging deep into defining what sales are, there are plenty of people asking great questions on Quora with some great explanations.

Types of Sales

To fully understand the value of sales, it is important to identify the different types of sales channels:

  • Online sales (using eCommerce)
  • Business development
  • Inside sales
  • Outside Sales / traditional sales
  • Sales support
  • Consultative selling
  • B2B sales
  • B2C sales

I’ll be focusing more on online sales because they have a large overlap with digital marketing.

How Have Sales Changed?

Selling Ice to Eskimos

Over the last several decades, sales have changed. Sales professionals are sometimes stereotyped as being aggressive to push sales and earn their commission. There were old sayings that “they could sell ice to Eskimos” that represent how some people felt about salespeople. Not that all salesmen are this way, mind you. But early on, that was a more common approach. And the problem that surfaced with this model is that the end-user didn’t feel they were receiving any value beyond just being another number on paper to the salesman. Thankfully, the sales process has evolved for the better.

Relationship Driven Sales

Obviously, that old way of doing sales had to change. People were aware they were being “sold to” and that process wasn’t working to earn their trust. The modern approach to selling focuses on offering value and building a relationship. Salespeople are knowledgeable about their products and concentrated on building trust and rapport with the client. They are now seen as helpers and they can even create a positive brand relationship for the consumer. And in many cases, the website now acts as the point of sale (POS) in a buyer’s journey.

The Internet’s Effect on Sales

Sales were forced to change due to the Internet. It gave businesses the ability to sell and obtain leads through their own websites. And sales reps were starting to find their old role replaced by product pages, blogs, or instructional videos. This is where the sales vs. marketing conundrum possibly sparked.  Are websites replacing salespeople? Are digital marketers, who promote the website, the ones responsible for sales?

What Is Marketing and What Is Its Role?

AMA describes marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” Words like “partnership” and “value” are key here. Just like sales, marketing has also changed due to the Internet. There is a shift in demand away from traditional marketing such as print, billboards, television, and radio. Modern marketing uses the Internet and everything connected to it. This includes your website, social media, and online advertising, etc. Digital marketing has the ability to be super personalized in a way that traditional marketing is not able to be.

How Has Marketing Changed?

The ability to measure and track have given marketers the data to make educated decisions on where to target and what messaging to use. Through digital marketing, we can easily see data such as:

  • New or returning users
  • Online interests
  • Demographic data
  • Behavioral trends
  • Channels that lead to sales

A billboard can’t offer you that insight. The same can be said for TV and print. That’s why more budget is being allocated to digital marketing mediums. According to the Washington Post, eMarketer expects companies to spend nearly $130 billion on digital ads, compared with about $110 billion on traditional advertisements (54.2% of the ad market vs. 46.8%, respectively).

What Is The Difference Between Sales and Marketing?

Now that we have an idea of the roles of each department, we can see how marketing and sales differ.

The Difference According to Kotler

Philip Kotler explains the difference between sales and marketing with an example. “Sales departments tend to believe that marketers are out of touch with what’s really going on with customers. Marketing believes the sales force is myopic — too focused on individual customer experiences, insufficiently aware of the larger market, and blind to the future. In short, each group often undervalues the other’s contributions.”

This example really resonated with me, because I’ve seen this happen and I’ve been guilty of it myself. But again, I think it’s time to understand each role so it can receive the appreciation it deserves.

The Difference According to Mike Shaw

The differences between the roles of marketing and selling are tied to the business strategy and maturity of the product. For instance, how you sell or market a brand-new product would be different than if you were focusing on a product that was well-known and established.

However, in most cases, you can also look at it this way — the main differentiating factors between marketing and sales are their objectives.

Marketing Objectives vs. Selling Objectives

The objectives and functions of the sales department change during the course of a product’s life cycle. The size of your business can also impact what degree you market your products or services.

Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy and we can assume that not all have clearly defined roles for marketing or sales. This can be due to a lack of budget or internal infrastructure.

I honestly think this is where the confusion set in, with one person becoming responsible for many tasks. In most cases, a salesperson is told to manage the business’s marketing. So, eventually, businesses just started assuming the two are the same since it was all handled by that same employee.

However, after dissecting the role of each above, it’s clear they both have different goals, even if the same person is managing them. Let’s look at the specific objectives that marketing and sales work to accomplish.

Marketing Objectives: The 4P’s of Marketing

The marketing mix is a well-known concept that helps businesses in aligning their marketing goals.  Specifically, the marketing mix focuses on four key elements:

  1. Product: Making people aware of the product or service you are offering.
  2. Price: Establishing the value of your product or service.
  3. Place: Utilizing distribution channels to get in front of potential clients.
  4. Promotion: Creating brand awareness, segmenting, positioning targeting.

Some of these elements can take time to establish, like brand awareness or segmenting. But over time, they can hold a lot of value for more than just what you’re selling. They can lead to increasing brand awareness or boosting the relationship customers have with your business, even when they’re not buying from you.

Sales Objectives

The objectives of the sales department are to generate revenue, which requires:

  • Building customer relationships
  • Increasing sales volume
  • Reaching sales quotas
  • Exceeding revenue goals
  • Growing and nurturing lead generation
  • Managing inventory
  • Upselling and cross-selling
  • Retaining clients so that repeat purchases occur

Sales are never just one-time events. They can occur often over a period of time and the salesperson is responsible for managing everything around that process.

Sales and marketing funnel diagram

The Marketing Funnel vs. The Sales Funnel = The Purchasing Funnel

The Overlap Between Marketing and Sales

Since eCommerce websites are able to sell directly to the user, the responsibility of the salesperson has changed. But so has the role of the marketer. As a result, digital marketing is also having to own more responsibility for sales. Below is an image showing how marketing is impacting the purchasing funnel. In terms of the purchasing funnel, marketing, and sales processes come in at different stages, based on their objectives.

Modern Marketing Usually Focuses On:

Whereas The Modern Sales Process Is More Focused On:

  • Evaluation: Is this what I want? Is it the right fit? Will it do what I need it to?
  • Purchase: Taking the next step towards purchasing the chosen product.

The Relationship Between Marketing and Sales

I like how Neil Rackham explains the typical relationship between marketing and sales.

“All too often, organizations find that they have a marketing function inside sales, and a sales function inside marketing.”

This resembles the majority of businesses. Departments overreach because they don’t trust or think the other is capable or willing to fulfill their responsibilities. It is not efficient and it causes great confusion.

I am not a huge Gary Vee fan, but I do like his explanation of how sales and marketing score at different times. Keeping this in mind, the sales and marketing departments should get to know each other’s processes intimately. That way they can understand where the user is in the purchasing funnel and create a seamless transition between their departments.

The Future of Marketing and Sales

Marketers should be held more accountable for sales. I can admit that.

While there is a difference between marketing and sales, the Internet has shifted more of the sales responsibility to the marketer. The marketer has control over the website and the medium driving users to the website in a way the salesman does not.

However, I think it’s important that in light of how the Internet has evolved sales and marketing, businesses take the time to define the focuses of both teams to ensure expectations are clear and doable. Understanding what digital marketers vs. salespeople have control over and how it can affect revenue is what will enable both teams to produce better results.

I don’t think that sales and marketing should be one department, but they should definitely be working closer together than in the past.  Each service comes in at different points of the purchase cycle and has an important role in ensuring that revenue is created.  Ultimately, both are responsible.

Interested in learning how digital marketing can help benefit your sales team’s work? Learn how our digital marketing services can help your business’ sales process.

Explore Our Services

You’ve probably heard of the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey, and we all move through it on a near-daily basis. But have you taken the time to think about the important role it plays in the experience you provide for your customers?

The consideration stage sits in the middle of the buyer’s journey and plays a crucial role in positioning you as a viable option for prospects. It’s the point in their journey where they’ve identified their problem and are ready to explore every potential solution.

In this blog, we’ll explore the consideration stage and the vital role content marketing plays during this period. You can take what you learn to improve your middle of funnel content and position yourself as a strong competitor moving into the decision stage.Have you read our blog about creating effective content for the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey? It provides an overview of the buyer’s journey, buyer personas, and what you need to know about awareness stage content. Check it out!

What is the Consideration Stage?

Prospects enter the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey when they’ve pinpointed a specific problem. In the awareness stage, they realized there was something in their life they wanted to change. Now, they’re ready to learn about all of the possible solutions to solving that problem. Many buyers take the time to review several options in depth before moving on to the decision stage.

It’s important to remember that consideration stage prospects are focused on finding potential solutions, rather than making a purchase. If you want them to seriously consider you as a potential solution, demonstrate empathy by showing them that you understand their problem.

Person typing on laptop

Why is Content Marketing Important In the Consideration Stage?

The best way to demonstrate empathy to prospective customers is through strategic content marketing. Don’t push your brand prematurely or go for the hard sell with invasive, aggressive advertising. Instead, provide educational content that explores all of the potential solutions to their problem. Ultimately, your goal is to make the short list of options they’re considering as they move into the decision stage.

How to Create Effective Consideration Stage Content

You know that your consideration stage content should impartially educate prospects on potential solutions to their problem. But how can you go about creating that content? It all begins with understanding your audience.

Start by thinking through all of the different options your prospects might consider as the solution to their problem. Can they solve it on their own, or do they need outside help? Is the solution sold off-the-shelf, or is it customized to their specific needs? Try to put yourself in their shoes. Which questions are they asking? What are their most pressing concerns? What are their deal breakers?

Identifying the questions that prospects ask themselves in the consideration stage can help you stick out in their minds moving into the decision stage. You’ll be able to create messaging that speaks directly to their concerns and narrow your target audience to qualified leads who can actually use the solution you have to offer.

Questions to Ask Yourself As You Create Consideration Stage Content

It’s important to be thoughtful and deliberate when creating content for the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey. Your goal is to provide prospects with as much detailed information as possible about each of their options. To do so, ask yourself the following questions about your prospects’ problem:

  • Which specific solutions are they researching?
  • How do they go about researching these solutions?
  • How will they decide which solution is right for them?

Answering these questions helps you nurture relationships with qualified prospects who are most likely to buy from you. And research shows companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. Ultimately, focusing on your prospects’ pain points allows you to subtly position yourself as the best solution moving forward.

What to Avoid When Creating Consideration Stage Content

The most important thing to avoid in the consideration stage is being pushy or salesy. Instead, nurture prospects strategically and consider the long game. Provide them with relevant information at the right time to stay top-of-mind as they move towards the decision stage. Here are a few things to avoid as you create consideration stage content:

  • Producing content that sounds like an infomercial
  • Overselling or underselling your brand
  • Overtly promoting yourself as the best solution
  • Creating content that’s too general to provide value

What Content is Most Effective During the Consideration Stage?

There are a variety of types of content you can leverage to your advantage during the consideration stage. We’ll take a closer look at a few consideration stage content examples below.

Live Webinars / Product Demonstrations

Webinars and product demos provide a valuable opportunity to show prospects how your offerings work and benefit their lives. And because they’re online, webinars are accessible to everyone, not just those who can travel to an in-person seminar.

Downloadable Resources

These include things like Ebooks, original research, how-to guides, tip sheets, templates, checklists, and slideshares. Providing valuable information free of charge not only helps you educate prospects, but presents you as a trustworthy authority that has their best interests in mind.

Videos

Videos can be a concise, visual way to explain your products or services. And in some cases, they’re a more effective way to tell your story than blog posts, articles, or case studies.

Testimonials / Customer Reviews

Testimonials provide valuable social proof from people who have actually used your product or service. And studies show that a whopping 90% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase. Prospects are more likely to listen to their peers than aggressive marketing pitches, making customer reviews the perfect way to establish trust.

Case Studies

Case studies are a great way to showcase your past successes to prospects. They’ll be able to see exactly how your product or service benefitted a past customer, helping you build credibility. Proving your worth also helps improve your reputation and grow brand awareness within your industry.

Free Trials

If possible, offer qualified prospects a free trial of your product or services. This demonstrates goodwill and positions you as a trustworthy candidate in their search for the solution to their problem.

Ready to create consideration stage content marketing for your business? Our team of content marketing specialists is here to help.

Reach Out

In the fall of 2019, we had a local children’s author, Hillary Daecher, reach out to us seeking help in developing a social media marketing strategy. Hillary had no prior experience of any kind with any social media platforms so we dug in to create a social media strategy from scratch.

This project was Hillary’s first step into the social media world. While I had more experience with social media in general, this was my first time creating a social media strategy. Throughout this process I had to determine what to include in the plan, who to target, which platforms to use, and how to organize it all into simple, actionable steps.

Getting Started With Social Media Strategy

Maybe you are in a similar situation. There are a million different ways you can set up a social media plan and it can seem overwhelming if you’re new to the game. But it’s not as difficult as it seems. As you follow the steps I’ve outlined, you will narrow your focus down to just the essentials. And, you’ll end up with a manageable plan centered around only the most important, relevant information. 

Are you looking to create a social media strategy for someone else or for your business? Or maybe you’re a freelancer / one-man team. If you’re a beginner when it comes to creating social media strategies like I was, then this blog is for you. Trust me, you can do this, too! No prior experience necessary!

What is a Social Media Strategy?

A social media strategy is a marketing plan that is created to successfully utilize relevant social media platforms to reach your goals. Strategies and plans will vary greatly depending on a number of factors:

  • Audience
  • Product / service
  • Industry
  • Budget
  • Competition

Think of social media strategy as a road map. The purpose of the plan is to help you reach your goals (the end-point). The process of creating the strategy is like routing the best path from where you are to where you want to be. It will vary greatly depending on your specific start and end points.

One audience/platform may be right for someone else but not for you. Creating a plan will determine what roads you should take. Just like traveling from point A to point B, it is a linear process. You can’t skip ahead when traveling (unless you’ve figured out teleportation, in which case please fill me in), just like you can’t engage an audience before you build one.

How Do you Create & Implement a Social Media Strategy

There is no one-size-fits-all social media marketing plan. Everyone has a different point A and B. Luckily, there is an abundance of platforms and tools to choose from, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. There are best practices that everyone can follow, but the intricacies of a plan will depend largely on the factors above. I will run through the process we completed for our client as an example of how to create a fully customized social media plan.

Why Create a Social Media Strategy?

Social media marketing has become a necessity to individuals and businesses looking to grow. Social media platforms enable people to connect with massive audiences they wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Social media platforms are tools for businesses, enabling them to reach their goals by targeting their audience by demographics, geography, interests, and more.

Why not create a social media strategy? Social media platforms are largely free! These massive platforms allow you to connect with your audience on a very personal level, in a way you traditionally can’t through other mediums such as: email, organic search, website traffic, or referrals. These mediums are tremendously important, but social media taps into a different type of connection with your audience to complement your overall marketing strategy.

There are a vast amount of platforms to choose from, so there is something for everyone. Seriously! Here are the top 75 social media platforms to know for 2020. There are also many goals that can be accomplished through the use of social media, including:

  • Brand awareness
  • Visibility
  • Website traffic
  • Lead generation
  • Signups
  • Sales
  • Engagement
  • Building a community
  • Promotion of events

First Step: Define Goals

Goals can vary greatly depending on the business / individual. Take some time to write down and solidify your goals as a first step. Gather information, determine what your current position is, where you want to go, what you have to offer, and who you want to serve.

In this case our client desired to:

  • Build brand recognition
  • Increase visibility
  • Build connections
  • Engage her audience
  • Promote visits & book readings
  • Sell books

Who Will Your Social Media Plan Be Focused On?

Once you have your goals clearly defined, you will need to determine who you will be connecting with. Who is your customer? Who are your biggest fans? Who does your product / service serve? If you are unsure, you can start broad and narrow down as you go, adjusting your strategy to the metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) discussed later in this post.

Second Step: Define Your Audience

Hillary’s soon-to-be published children’s book is about overcoming fears and obstacles. In this case, the audience was:

  • Parents with young children (Pre-K to 2nd grade)
  • Child counselors
  • Child therapists
  • Children’s book authors
  • Independent authors
  • Booksellers
  • Librarians / libraries
  • Child care facilitators / facilities
  • Hummingbird groups / festivals

I determined this audience through an interview my co-workers conducted with Hillary. If you’re developing a plan for someone else, talk to them about who their audience is. Do research. If possible, get the decision-maker involved! Ask them questions. Ask who they serve, who is the product/service made for? Here is a list of questions to ask your client or yourself to define your audience!

Data Sources for Defining Your Audience

Other tools to gather data about your audience include Google Analytics and the Census (if you’re in the United States). Using these resources will help you gather demographic and geographic data, and learn about interests and behaviors. Here is a useful guide to using Google Analytics audience data. Don’t guess who your audience is, use the data available to you.

Once you have your target audience narrowed down, use your gathered information to create a persona. A persona is a fictional character you create to represent your target audience. Learn how to create a persona here. Next, you will determine where your audience is!

What Social Media Platforms to Use?

Third Step: Choose Your Platforms

There are a vast number of different social media platforms to choose from, so it’s important to determine which platforms are the most relevant to your business, and focus on them first. Ideally you only start with a few to avoid becoming overwhelmed, unless you hire a social media marketing team to manage the workload.

Some of the largest social media platforms include:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Youtube
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest

Do industry-specific research to find any other smaller, niche social media platforms relevant to your business. In Hillary’s case, Facebook, Instagram, and Goodreads were determined to be the most important platforms to begin with:

  • Facebook has the largest user platform and is one of the most widely-used platforms in terms of demographics. This would be used for information-based content.
  • Instagram was chosen to use as a visual / moment-based platform, focusing more on photos and videos regarding Hillary’s book and process.
  • Goodreads was chosen to reach her niche audience. Goodreads is a great social media platform for authors to network with readers and book lovers.

Do some research on your industry and the different types of platforms out there to determine what social media platform to use. Hootsuite does a great job categorizing channels into 10 different types of social media platforms.

If you want to learn more about LinkedIn advertising, our guide to LinkedIn ads goes over everything you need to run a successful campaign.

When Should You Be Active on Social Media?

Social media marketing is an ongoing process that requires frequent posts and engagement. This can vary by industry but a general rule of thumb is to post at least once a day. Inactivity has been shown to decrease visibility, leading to less engagement, which leads to even less visibility.

While posts should be frequent, it is important that it’s not a bombardment of posts trying to sell people on things. People are not on social media to be sold to. People trust people, not businesses. As a business, you’ll want to be personable, interact with people, and focus on building relationships and community.

The number of posts should be frequent regardless of industry, but how frequent can be determined by some basic competitor research. The audience for certain industries is more / less active than other audiences. Take some time to look into the activity of the industry leaders and the community and match the activity levels.

Implementation

There are certain best practices we will recommend in implementing your plan, like useful tools that can schedule posts if you have windows of time to work on your strategy. Another option is hiring social media specialists to manage your accounts. The time of day matters for posts as well. Experiment and see what works best for your audience, but here is some data on the best times to post on social media.

Scheduling

There are scheduling features built into some platforms (e.g: Facebook) but others may not have these capabilities. You likely don’t have the time to constantly be working on the social media strategy, so scheduling can help you make the best use of the time you have available.

Set aside a few hours and create a social media calendar. Decide what useful, helpful, relevant content you’re going to create and share, and plan when it will be shared. Third-party tools like Hootsuite, SocialOomph, and SEMrush can help you automate deployment. Here is a list of some more of the top social media scheduling tools.

Combine your research on the industry, your competitors, your audience, and the best times to post. Then set up a strategic schedule using these resources!

How to Organize Your Social Media Plan

Fourth Step: Organize Your Plan

As you do your research to determine your goals, audience, and platforms, write everything down! Write out all your thoughts and potential plans. It’s okay to be messy at first. We can clean it up later! I recommend creating a mind map.

Early notes from Hillary's social strategy.

This is the first draft of the mind map I made for Hillary.

Start from the center, and branch out with the goals you determined. Match potential platforms with the goals they can serve, and then extend the audience you can serve from those platforms. This practice can help visualize how things will work together, and how the system operates as a whole.

Once you start to narrow things down, you can organize your data using the mind mapping tool, Mindmeister. Here you can see I broke down the plan into five goals, and six potential platforms with ideas of what purposes they can serve.

First draft of Hillary's social plan

But six platforms is a lot to handle, especially for one person! So we took this information and narrowed it down even further. We selected the three most vital platforms for her to get off the ground. Once we had our goals, audience, and platforms defined, it was time to break down our goals into steps and phases.

A later version of the social media plan.

Each goal is now numbered in succession. Think about the logical process that needs to occur in order for your goals to work. Each phase is an ongoing process and will take time to develop.

Phase One

Since our client was starting from scratch first we needed to increase her visibility and her brand. This became phase one. We can not create connections, engage, acquire visit opportunities, or sell books without having visibility. This phase included reaching out to groups, inviting contacts to like her pages, creating content, and building out her platforms.

Phase Two

Once we increase visibility and brand awareness, we will be able to create connections. This includes cultivating relationships in groups, posting in discussions, leaving reviews, participating in Q & As, and connecting with new people within Hillary’s circles. This must be done before focusing on engagement.

Phase Three

Once visibility has grown, and connections have been established, the next goal is to engage with your community! Just like any social act, you are looking to cultivate these relationships. Post relevant content that your community will be interested in. Share content, ask questions, and have conversations!

Phase Four

The fourth phase is based around finding and promoting book readings and visits down the road. Having built connections with her audience, she may be able to find new opportunities for events and increase attendance to scheduled events.

Phase Five

The fifth and final phase is based around selling her books. A lot of people make the mistake of trying to set up shop on social media solely to sell things. This misses the point completely. Social media is about community and connection with others, not, “look at me! Buy my stuff.”

Obviously, as a business, you will have a service / product you would like to sell, but the main purpose is to cultivate relationships. If you build successful relationships, you will be able to provide a product / service that aligns with your customers needs and wants, and they will happily support you.

Basic Principles for ANY Person on ANY Platform

  • SOCIAL media is a SOCIAL act. Engage with your community!
  • Post high-quality content.
  • Post frequently.
  • Engage with followers.
  • Be authentic.
  • Ask questions.
  • Include visuals when possible.
  • Know your audience and write to them.

How to Know If It’s Successful

Track it to hack it! Fortunately, most platforms provide a lot of data regarding the performance of your account. The specific metrics you will want to focus on will vary depending on your goals, but there are plenty of commonly tracked metrics across industries/goals.

Some metrics to track for organic (non-paid) efforts:

  • Engagement
  • Reach
  • Impressions
  • Referral traffic to your website
  • Likes / followers
  • Comments
  • Ratings / reviews

For example, the Facebook Insights tab hosts the majority of these metrics all in one place! Keep an eye on the metrics listed above. Experiment. Make notes of what changes you make and see what affects these metrics for the better or worse.

Some metrics to track for ads / paid efforts:

  • Click-through-rate (CTR)
  • Cost-per-click (CPC)
  • Cost-per-action (CPA)
  • Conversions
  • Ad frequency

Facebook provides all of this data and more. The most important thing to do is to use the data you have available to you. Watch for changes in these metrics and take advantage of these insights!

Data from social advertising

Social advertising is a beast in itself, but can be a very effective and cost-efficient way to increase your reach and leads.

Resources

Different platforms work best with different image sizes. Use this always-up-to-date guide to social media image sizes to ensure your content is optimized for the selected channel.

If you need content ideas, browse Google Trends or Exploding Topics.

Another way to utilize social media is by optimizing your website for social media.

Some of the software we use to run and create social media strategies includes Google Analytics, SEMrush, and Facebook Ads. Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful tool for determining who your audience is. Here is a guide on how to use Google Analytics to evaluate your audience.

So What’s Next?

Building out this social media strategy, I learned a lot of valuable information and found the whole process rewarding. Hillary followed the plan and has seen a lot of success come from it, and I couldn’t have been happier to hear that. Creating this strategy and this road map kept us accountable and on track, and served as an actionable guide to reach the goals we set.

I know this can be difficult and I know it’s a lot! But I promise you it’s worth the effort. Time to create your social media strategy. Please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn and ask for help or to share your story. I’d love to hear from you! Building and implementing a social media strategy can be time-consuming but it can also be very rewarding. Human beings are social creatures, we thrive on communicating with others and that is how social media has become such a huge part of our lives.

If you’re looking to build your brand, engage your audience, and reach potential customers, it’s time to embrace the tools available to you. Our specialists can help you get more out of your social media efforts.

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