Conversion Rate Optimisation
Creating a marketing plan for your business can seem a daunting task.
The web is saturated with self-proclaimed experts, sharing their ‘secrets’ for how to become a successful business owner. But the bottom line is that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all marketing plan. And every brand requires a tailored strategy.
But although the devil is in the details, the basics of any marketing plan are the same across the board. And having successfully implemented many marketing plans with our clients, Create Circus is perfectly positioned to share them.
Why Create a Marketing Plan?
Creating a marketing plan is vital because it allows you to allocate your resources (and direct your energy) with purpose. Having a plan helps you clarify your goals, establish who you are trying to reach, and work out how you’re going to reach them.
Before creating your marketing plan, you must carry out your market research, by gathering data on your competitors, analyzing the needs of your consumer, and working out in which digital locations they’re hanging out and having their conversations.
Once this is done, you should have a clearer idea about your niche, and where you fit in it.
What should your marketing plan include?
Every strong marketing plan should set out your messaging, target audience, goals, and strategies. Let’s break these down one by one.
Define Your Messaging
Your marketing plan should address and define the following details:
Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
This is your company’s cornerstone, your point of reference, a short, snappy paragraph that articulates the value you bring your customer and what makes your business stand out from your competitors.
Mission, Vision, and Values
Your Mission Statement, Brand Vision, and Core Values further help shape the identity of your brand and the image you’ll be projecting to the world.
- Your Mission Statement should briefly set out the objectives you wish to achieve. Like your Unique Value Proposition, it should serve as a point of reference for colleagues and consumers alike, so they know what to expect from your company.
- Your Brand Vision should address how you imagine your business to grow and how consumers will describe it in the future. It should consider the importance of the product or service you provide and how your offer addresses an existing problem among your consumers.
- Your Core Values should set out the qualities you value, both for your company and your consumer.
Point of View
Articulating a point of view is what gives your brand personality and authenticity. This might mean taking a position or contributing to conversations happening around contemporary issues like sustainability or social justice. Perhaps you are a fashion brand trying to redefine beauty standards or promote inclusivity. Share your vision and this will help narrow down your audience.
Calls to Action (CTA)
CTAs are communicative tools to convince your audience to take a particular form of action. The best calls to action combine psychology, creativity, and strong UX design. What type of calls to action will you use to convert customers? Buy Now? Claim Offer? Or something more creative?
Brand Personality
This is the visual representation of your brand. Many businesses create brand handbooks listing these details which they give marketers and designers during the onboarding process. They include:
- Logo
- Colour palettes
- Fonts
- Copywriting style guides
- Image style guides
In digital marketing, a brand’s success often boils down to its ability to use verbal and visual language that resonates with its target audience. Doing this face-to-face is easy; selling to people from behind a screen is hard. And though Shopify is clean, intuitive, and packed full of features, it still has the impersonal limitations of an e-commerce platform.
But if your language is clear, conversational, and couched in terms familiar to your reader, you stand a much better chance of converting readers into buyers.
This may take some trial and error, and you may have to try different messaging styles to find the tone that works. This is why step number three is so essential to defining your marketing plan.
Find Your Target Audience
You now have your Mission Statement and Brand Vision and you’ve outlined your Core Values. You have a clearer idea of who your target audience is, which pain points plague them, and how you’re going to resolve them. Now you need to find out where online your audience is hanging out.
The best marketing plan identifies which media its target audience consumes. Twitter? Instagram? TikTok? LinkedIn? Make a note of which sites and blogs your potential customers are visiting and which apps they’re using to drive their daily lives. Before long you’ll have found your target audience. And once you do, immerse yourself in their scene.
Spend among your target audience and you’ll get a feel for what they’re saying — the discussions, jokes, banter, and memes. This is their language, and if you’re spending enough time with them it’ll soon become yours too.
To really reach your audience, and address their pain in an engaging way, you need to be fluent in their language.
This might not sound easy. But you know what they say — the best way to learn a language is to live among people who speak it. Think of it like this: you’re treating yourself to an expense-free vacation.
Eventually, you’ll start to get a feel for the conversations your target audience keeps coming back to, the jokes they tell, and the memes they throw around. Learn the slang and the banter. Scan the comment sections until you get all the references and are in on all the jokes.
It won’t be long before you notice what’s missing in their conversation. This awareness will be crucial when it comes to presenting them with your solution.
Work out what websites they visit, which feeds they subscribe to, and which publications they engage with and respect. Think about people too. Find out which public figures, celebrities, and influencers they follow, and whose recommendations they take on board when they’re on the lookout for something new.
Then get actively involved. Comment on their posts, retweet their tweets; get chirpy, and show up in their timelines.
Become part of their conversation, and establish yourself within it.
Inhabiting the world of your target audience has never been easier. Spend a week among them on a research sabbatical and before long you’ll be able to identify their problems and target them with your solutions.
More importantly, consider how your language makes your audience feel: if you talk to them in a language they understand, it’ll go to their head; if you talk to them in their own language, it’ll go to their heart.
Tailor Your Marketing Plan to Your Target Audience
First, start by defining the problem your product is solving. It’s vital to know what problem your product solves for your audience before diving deeper into who your target audience is. Are you an apparel company that creates products for a niche interest? Do you sell dog bowls that can go in the dishwasher?
Only by understanding what gaps your product or service fills can you get an idea of who will benefit.
Next, you should break your target audience down into some specifics.
For example, if I’m pitching to “Women over 25 who like clothes”, I have no idea how to market my product in a way that’s unique and desirable to my customers.
But if I’m pitching to “Women between 25-30 that shop at New Look and love 90’s TV shows” then I can be far more specific. I know when I share a meme of a 90’s TV show, my customers will engage, and I also know a brand partnership with New Look would help drive new sales.
Dialing into a specific target audience can scare business owners away because they don’t want to scare away any possible customers. In reality, it is necessary in order to communicate with your audience well.
Just because you partner with New Look and share a Dawson’s Creek meme does not mean that folks who don’t like those things won’t find you; it just ensures that the ones who do will find you. And when they find you, they will delight in your content and become dedicated brand ambassadors.
Your Business Goals
Explicitly state the goals you want to achieve. Make short- and long-term goals for your business. Goals should be achievable and timebound. Then, once you make your goals, create success indicators for each one. Success indicators should not solely focus on results; instead, they should focus on detailing exactly what would make you feel successful.
For example:
Goal: This year, I want to grow my Instagram followers.
Success indicator: I will have succeeded in my goal to grow my Instagram account if I implement my chosen tactics and grow by at least 15% over the next 12 months.
Goal: I want to start an influencer program in the next 3 months.
Success indicator: I will have succeeded in my goal to start an influencer program if I make connections with at least 3 relevant influencers.
Strategies and tactics
Once you have a clear idea about where to focus your energy, you can start implementing your marketing strategy. Tactics can include paid advertising, email marketing, working with social media influencers, chatbots, brand collaborations, SEO, and a range of other topics.
Use the goals you set in step three to create a clear path forward for you and your business.
Maximise Your Marketing Strategy with Create Circus
Whatever aspect of your e-business you want to strengthen, from Brand Identity and SEO to Web Development and UX/UI Design, the team at Create Circus has the expertise to succeed.
Contact us today to book your free consultation call.
Written by
Dili
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