How to build a bullet-proof marketing strategy for your business

Launching a business relies very heavily upon a sound digital marketing strategy. This might seem obvious to some but to others just getting going, having an understanding of the tools in your arsenal from the beginning can be incredibly helpful. Digital Marketing can often be an overwhelming and time-consuming aspect when you’re trying to focus on your product and your customers.

In preparation for your launch, there’s a number of different aspects you can audit in your business plan to ensure a successful launch. Some of the below aspects are more time consuming than others and you may want to contact agencies or freelancers to assist with certain aspects of your digital and marketing strategy.

First things first, let’s build a website.

You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to get a really nice-looking site that performs well for your business. If you are operating on a limited budget, take your time to research platforms that let you build your own site easily such as Squarespace, Wix or Shopify. These build it yourself platforms do have customisation limitations but for most startup businesses are perfect.

With any of the above platforms or if you decide to go down the path of a custom built website, pay close attention to hosting and maintenance costs. If you are planning on running an e-commerce business, then you should pay close attention to the fees you’ll be charged for your sales.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), what is it? How does it work?

Once your website is built and it’s at a point that you’re ready to start driving traffic, understanding how search engines generate leads is a key factor in your business’s success. Keywords are phrases that are used when a customer is looking for something through a search engine. What problem does your business solve for consumers? This question can often help define what keywords you want to be targeting.

For local businesses, these keywords will often include suburb or city names and then the service provided such as “Mechanic Geelong”. Building a search engine strategy takes time and you can’t expect an overnight surge in traffic. You’ll have to take time integrating these keywords into your content.

The more competition there is for the keywords, the harder it is going to be to achieve a first-page ranking position on Google. A blog and regular news content on your site are often a great way to improve search rankings and to keep your audience updated.

For online stores and retail businesses looking for a quick turnaround in leads from search traffic then running advertising through Google Adwords may be a better option. Adwords allows you to select specific keywords and pay money to target them so that your business appears in the rankings instantly.

Making the most of your social channels

Which ones do you want to use?

There’s an ever-growing list of platforms that you can use to promote your business but depending on your industry and audience, some are going to be more applicable than others. With a generally business-to-customer demographic, tools such as Instagram and Youtube can be incredibly valuable in your promotional activities.

For businesses that are more business-to-business focused, platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter may align more closely with your brand. By choosing the right platform for your brand, you’ll achieve faster growth, increased engagement and reduced advertising spend on sponsored content.

In the middle of both of the above platforms sits Facebook. Facebook has an incredibly versatile targeting system through their Facebook Business Manager that allows you to define audience niches and gain valuable insights into defining your customer profile. You’ll have the ability to define audiences by a huge range of criteria and refine campaigns based of segments that are performing or underperforming.

Email Marketing Strategy 

Having a large and engaged email database is incredibly valuable for a business. Not only does it give you a platform to communicate for free to your target audience, but it is one of the only channels where you’re able to prompt your audience with a notification to their phone or device.

This might seem like a simple and obvious benefit, but brands that are able to successfully leverage this opportunity with their customers can drive a very large volume of leads.

This is another aspect of the business where you should spend time researching what subject lines, content and call to action prompts resonate with your audience. If you’re sending content that your business isn’t interested in or sending to frequently, you will see your unsubscribe rates start climbing.

Choosing an email platform for your business is also very important, Mailchimp and Hubspot are both perfect platforms for building your database and can scale with your business needs.

Bringing it all together

Hopefully once you have taken the time to research all the above aspects of digital marketing, you’ll have a much more defined launch strategy for your brand or at the very least be able to recognise shortcomings in your strategy. Digital marketing isn’t an overnight implementation for your business, it takes time, refinement and careful planning to be succeed.

Pinstripe Media work with a huge range of businesses to define their digital marketing strategies and it is something we’re always happy to share our knowledge on. Don’t hesitate to reach out for more information.