Execution Plans Archives - DigitalMarketer https://www.digitalmarketer.com/./execution-plans/ Tue, 28 Nov 2023 19:15:03 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.3.2 https://www.digitalmarketer.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/gearsNew-150x150.png Execution Plans Archives - DigitalMarketer https://www.digitalmarketer.com/./execution-plans/ 32 32 Mastering The Laws of Marketing in Madness https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/laws-of-marketing/ Mon, 27 Nov 2023 17:10:41 +0000 https://www.digitalmarketer.com/?p=166779 Navigating through the world of business can be chaotic. At the time of this publication in November 2023, global economic growth is expected to remain weak for an undefined amount of time.

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Navigating through the world of business can be chaotic. At the time of this publication in November 2023, global economic growth is expected to remain weak for an undefined amount of time.

However, certain rules of marketing remain steadfast to guide businesses towards success in any environment. These universal laws are the anchors that keep a business steady, helping it thrive amidst uncertainty and change.

In this guide, we’ll explore three laws that have proven to be the cornerstones of successful marketing. These are practical, tried-and-tested approaches that have empowered businesses to overcome challenges and flourish, regardless of external conditions. By mastering these principles, businesses can turn adversities into opportunities, ensuring growth and resilience in any market landscape. Let’s uncover these essential laws that pave the way to success in the unpredictable world of business marketing. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to integrate these insights into your career. Follow the implementation steps!

Law 1: Success in Marketing is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Navigating the tumultuous seas of digital marketing necessitates a steadfast ship, fortified by a strategic long-term vision. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Take Apple, for instance. The late ’90s saw them on the brink of bankruptcy. Instead of grasping at quick, temporary fixes, Apple anchored themselves in a long-term vision. A vision that didn’t just stop at survival, but aimed for revolutionary contributions, resulting in groundbreaking products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

In a landscape where immediate gains often allure businesses, it’s essential to remember that these are transient. A focus merely on the immediate returns leaves businesses scurrying on a hamster wheel, chasing after fleeting successes, but never really moving forward.

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A long-term vision, however, acts as the north star, guiding businesses through immediate challenges while ensuring sustainable success and consistent growth over time.

Consider This Analogy: 

Building a business is like growing a tree. Initially, it requires nurturing, patience, and consistent care. But with time, the tree grows, becoming strong and robust, offering shade and fruits—transforming the landscape. The same goes for business. A vision, perseverance, and a long-term strategy are the nutrients that allow it to flourish, creating a sustainable presence in the market.

Implementation Steps: 

  • Begin by planning a content calendar focused on delivering consistent value over the next six months. 
  • Ensure regular reviews and necessary adjustments to your long-term goals, keeping pace with evolving market trends and demands. 
  • And don’t forget the foundation—invest in robust systems and ongoing training, laying down strong roots for sustainable success in the ever-changing digital marketing landscape.

Law 2: Survey, Listen, and Serve

Effective marketing hinges on understanding and responding to the customer’s needs and preferences. A robust, customer-centric approach helps in shaping products and services that resonate with the audience, enhancing overall satisfaction and loyalty.

Take Netflix, for instance. Netflix’s evolution from a DVD rental company to a streaming giant is a compelling illustration of a customer-centric approach.

Their transition wasn’t just a technological upgrade; it was a strategic shift informed by attentively listening to customer preferences and viewing habits. Netflix succeeded, while competitors such a Blockbuster haid their blinders on.

Here are some keystone insights when considering how to Survey, Listen, and Serve…

Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty:

Surveying customers is essential for gauging their satisfaction. When customers feel heard and valued, it fosters loyalty, turning one-time buyers into repeat customers. Through customer surveys, businesses can receive direct feedback, helping to identify areas of improvement, enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

Engagement:

Engaging customers through surveys not only garners essential feedback but also makes customers feel valued and involved. It cultivates a relationship where customers feel that their opinions are appreciated and considered, enhancing their connection and engagement with the brand.

Product & Service Enhancement:

Surveys can unveil insightful customer feedback regarding products and services. This information is crucial for making necessary adjustments and innovations, ensuring that offerings remain aligned with customer needs and expectations.

Data Collection:

Surveys are instrumental in collecting demographic information. Understanding the demographic composition of a customer base is crucial for tailoring marketing strategies, ensuring they resonate well with the target audience.

Operational Efficiency:

Customer feedback can also shed light on a company’s operational aspects, such as customer service and website usability. Such insights are invaluable for making necessary enhancements, improving the overall customer experience.

Benchmarking:

Consistent surveying allows for effective benchmarking, enabling businesses to track performance over time, assess the impact of implemented changes, and make data-driven strategic decisions.

Implementation Steps:

  • Regularly incorporate customer feedback mechanisms like surveys and direct interactions to remain attuned to customer needs and preferences.
  • Continuously refine and adjust offerings based on customer feedback, ensuring products and services evolve in alignment with customer expectations.
  • In conclusion, adopting a customer-centric approach, symbolized by surveying, listening, and serving, is indispensable for nurturing customer relationships, driving loyalty, and ensuring sustained business success.

Law 3: Build Trust in Every Interaction

In a world cluttered with countless competitors vying for your prospects attention, standing out is about more than just having a great product or service. It’s about connecting authentically, building relationships rooted in trust and understanding. It’s this foundational trust that transforms casual customers into loyal advocates, ensuring that your business isn’t just seen, but it truly resonates and remains memorable.

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For instance, let’s talk about Oprah! Through vulnerability and honest connections, Oprah Winfrey didn’t just build an audience; she cultivated a community. Sharing, listening, and interacting genuinely, she created a media landscape where trust and respect flourished. Oprah was known to make her audience and even guests cry for the first time live. She had a natural ability to build instant trust.

Here are some keystone insights when considering how to develop and maintain trust…

The Unseen Fast-Track

Trust is an unseen accelerator. It simplifies decisions, clears doubts, and fast-forwards the customer journey, turning curiosity into conviction and interest into investment.

The Emotional Guardrail

Trust is like a safety net or a warm embrace, making customers feel valued, understood, and cared for. It nurtures a positive environment, encouraging customers to return, not out of necessity, but a genuine affinity towards the brand.

Implementation Steps:

  • Real Stories: Share testimonials and experiences, both shiny and shaded, to build credibility and show authenticity.
  • Open Conversation: Encourage and welcome customer feedback and discussions, facilitating a two-way conversation that fosters understanding and improvement.
  • Community Engagement: Actively participate and engage in community or industry events, align your brand with genuine causes and values, promoting real connections and trust.

Navigating through this law involves cultivating a space where authenticity leads, trust blossoms, and genuine relationships flourish, engraving a memorable brand story in the hearts and minds of the customers.

Guarantee Your Success With These Foundational Laws

Navigating through the world of business is a demanding odyssey that calls for more than just adaptability and innovation—it requires a solid foundation built on timeless principles. In our exploration, we have just unraveled three indispensable laws that stand as pillars supporting the edifice of sustained marketing success, enabling businesses to sail confidently through the ever-shifting seas of the marketplace.

Law 1: “Success in Marketing is a Marathon, Not a Sprint,” advocates for the cultivation of a long-term vision. It is about nurturing a resilient mindset focused on enduring success rather than transient achievements. Like a marathon runner who paces themselves for the long haul, businesses must strategize, persevere, and adapt, ensuring sustained growth and innovation. The embodiment of this law is seen in enterprises like Apple, whose evolutionary journey is a testament to the power of persistent vision and continual reinvention.

Law 2: “Survey, Listen, and Serve,” delineates the roadmap to a business model deeply intertwined with customer insights and responsiveness. This law emphasizes the essence of customer-centricity, urging businesses to align their strategies and offerings with the preferences and expectations of their audiences. It’s a call to attentively listen, actively engage, and meticulously tailor offerings to resonate with customer needs, forging paths to enhanced satisfaction and loyalty.

Law 3: “Build Trust in Every Interaction,” underscores the significance of building genuine, trust-laden relationships with customers. It champions the cultivation of a brand personality that resonates with authenticity, fostering connections marked by trust and mutual respect. This law navigates businesses towards establishing themselves as reliable entities that customers can resonate with, rely on, and return to, enriching the customer journey with consistency and sincerity.

These pivotal laws form the cornerstone upon which businesses can build strategies that withstand the tests of market volatility, competition, and evolution. They stand as unwavering beacons guiding enterprises towards avenues marked by not just profitability, but also a legacy of value, integrity, and impactful contributions to the marketplace. Armed with these foundational laws, businesses are empowered to navigate the multifaceted realms of the business landscape with confidence, clarity, and a strategic vision poised for lasting success and remarkable achievements.

Oh yeah! And do you know Newton’s Law?The law of inertia, also known as Newton’s first law of motion, states that an object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion… The choice is yours. Take action and integrate these laws. Get in motion!

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AI’s Impact on Video Marketing in 2023 & Beyond https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/ai-impacts-video-marketing/ Fri, 22 Sep 2023 21:08:58 +0000 https://www.digitalmarketer.com/?p=166562 By improving customer experiences increasing engagement and providing content AI is reshaping video marketing strategies both now and, in the future.

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In a world dominated by video marketing, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a role, in transforming the industry. By improving customer experiences increasing engagement and providing content AI is reshaping video marketing strategies both now and, in the future.

Let’s start with some overall stats,

In fact, 96% of marketers have already witnessed the positive return on investment (ROI) that AI-powered video marketing brings. In general, nowadays, 75.7% of marketers are using AI tools for work.

So, let’s dive into how AI is transforming the landscape of video marketing strategies and explore its exciting future.

What is Video Marketing?

Video marketing is a tactic that companies employ to connect with their desired audiences showcase their offerings and transform viewers into customers. This approach encompasses the creation and dissemination of captivating videos, on platforms to convey messages and establish brand awareness.

The Impact of Video Marketing is Undeniable

Heightened Brand Awareness: Research reveals that video marketing contributes significantly to enhancing brand awareness, with 64% of marketers acknowledging its effectiveness.

Videos are dominating the content marketing industry!

Videos possess a unique power to captivate attention, narrate a brand’s story, and leave an enduring imprint on viewers. By leveraging visual and auditory elements, videos enable brands to stand out amidst fierce market competition.

Amplified Conversions: Valuable consumer insights from 2022 demonstrate the ability of video marketing to bolster conversion rates. Videos have the power to inspire and prompt viewers into action be it making a purchase subscribing to a newsletter or establishing a connection, with a company.

However, that depends on the production quality,

By showcasing products or services in action and addressing customer pain points, videos become a persuasive catalyst for driving conversions.

Elevated Engagement: videos, be short form or long, have the most power to keep audacious captivated for a long time. People spend an amount of time on social media watching videos, which demonstrates the appeal and effectiveness of this medium. Videos provide an experience by combining visuals, audio, and storytelling making it more engaging and interactive.

People spend an amount of time on social media watching videos, which demonstrates the appeal and effectiveness of this medium. Videos provide an experience by combining visuals, audio, and storytelling making it more engaging and interactive.

Unforgettable Brand Recall: Videos leave a lasting imprint in viewers’ minds, significantly enhancing brand recall. Compared to text or images alone, videos exhibit a higher recall rate.

Videos create a lasting impression, on viewers by using captivating visuals, storytelling techniques, and emotional connections. This ensures that the brand stays at the forefront of their minds when making purchasing decisions.

Heightened Social Media Activity: The pandemic has amplified the significance of video marketing, leading to a surge in social media activity. As social media platforms prioritize video content, consumer behavior has shifted accordingly.

Nowadays, it seems social media is treated as a marketplace,

Businesses have adeptly capitalized on this trend by crafting compelling videos that resonate deeply with their target audience, fostering stronger connections and interactions across social media platforms.

So we can say video marketing serves as a dynamic and immersive medium that enables businesses to artfully narrate their stories, showcase their offerings, and forge authentic connections with their target market! Its ability to evoke emotions, deliver captivating narratives, and provide valuable information sets video marketing apart as a pivotal strategy in today’s digital landscape.

How is AI Changing Video Marketing Strategies?

As we step into 2023, AI is paving the way for transformative changes in video marketing strategies. Here are eight key ways AI is reshaping the landscape of video marketing:

AI-Powered Video Editing for Efficiency & Quality

AI-powered video editing tools automate tasks such as shot selection, transitions, color grading, and sound mixing, saving time and improving video quality. AI enables marketers to concentrate on developing engaging content and providing seamless user experiences by streamlining the editing process.

With AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data and learn from patterns, it can even suggest the most effective editing techniques and styles based on audience preferences and industry trends, ensuring that every video is optimized for maximum impact.

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Some of the Best AI-Powered Video Creators and Editors

Let’s mention some of the interesting AI-powered platforms that help to create and edit marketing videos for marketing purposes.

  1. DeepBrain AI: It’s an innovative AI platform that provides a one-of-a-kind solution for making AI Avatar videos in a matter of minutes. DeepBrain AI generates natural-sounding speech with various accents and tones, resulting in a realistic and engaging user experience.
  1. Pictory: Pictory is one of the best AI-powered video creation tools, with plenty of interesting features. The platform is popular among marketers, including YouTubers, bloggers, course creators, and agency owners.
  1. Elai: Elai is an ideal video marketing solution for digital marketers who want to generate interesting videos. The AI-powered system can produce accompanying text from the inputted audio, making it easy to add subtitles, voiceovers, and other features.

AI Voiceovers and Animation: Enhancing Visual Appeal

AI advancements in voiceovers and animation bring a new dimension to video content, enhancing visual appeal and increasing audience engagement. AI-generated voiceovers can provide seamless narration that matches the tone and style of the video, creating a more immersive and professional viewing experience. 

Additionally, AI-powered animation tools enable marketers to bring complex ideas to life with visually stunning graphics and effects. By leveraging AI in voiceovers and animation, brands can elevate their storytelling capabilities, grab viewers’ attention, and effectively convey their messages.

Some of the Best AI-Powered Voice-Over Generators

So, nowadays a lot of marketers create marketing videos without recording themself. AI makes it too easy to create voice-overs, so marketers just need to write their script and these AI platforms generate interesting voice-overs for their videos.

  1. Lovo: It’s a professional content production tool that generates high-quality voice-overs and synthetic speech using Generative AI and text to speech technology. The platform is intended for marketers, HR professionals, sales teams, and content service providers of all sizes.
  1. Synthesys: It’s an AI-powered platform and a leader in the creation of algorithms for commercial applications that transform texts into voices and videos. Imagine adding a real human voice to your social media videos or online courses.
  1. Murf AI: It’s another great tool, AI voice-over and text to speech are two of the essential features of the Murf.AI platform. Murf gives you the option to create high-quality synthetic voices for a variety of applications, regardless of whether you require male or female voices and support for many languages.

Personalized Content: Deepening Engagement with Audiences

AI algorithms analyze customer data to deliver highly targeted and personalized content. This personalized approach enhances engagement, boosts conversion rates, and fosters more vital customer satisfaction and loyalty.

By leveraging AI-driven insights, marketers can understand customer preferences at a granular level and create video content tailored to their specific needs, pain points, and aspirations. 

From personalized product recommendations to individualized storytelling, AI enables brands to forge deeper connections with their audiences and provide them with valuable content that resonates personally.

Advanced Analytics: Insights for Data-Driven Decisions

AI-powered analytics tools provide valuable insights into video performance, tracking metrics like views, engagement rates, and conversion rates. These data-driven insights can aid marketers in making wise choices and enhancing their tactics.

AI algorithms can go beyond surface-level metrics and dive into more nuanced aspects of video performance, such as audience sentiment analysis, emotional response tracking, and attention heatmaps.

With these insights, marketers can fine-tune their video content, iterate on successful elements, and experiment with new approaches, all to continuously improve performance and drive desired outcomes.

Hyper-Personalization with AI Recommendations

AI algorithms deliver hyper-personalized video recommendations based on individual preferences, interests, and browsing history. This focused strategy promotes brand loyalty, consumer happiness, and engagement.

By analyzing vast amounts of data, AI can identify patterns, behaviors, and affinities, enabling marketers to deliver video content that aligns with each viewer’s specific interests. 

Whether it’s recommending related videos, personalized playlists, or tailored product suggestions, AI-powered recommendations create a highly personalized viewing experience, keeping audiences engaged and coming back for more.

AI-Driven Targeting & Optimization

AI enables precise targeting and optimization of video marketing campaigns by analyzing data on past search history, previous purchases, and social media interactions. This precise strategy maximizes conversion rates by ensuring that video content is delivered to the appropriate audience at the optimal moment.

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AI algorithms can segment audiences based on demographic factors, interests, and behaviors, allowing marketers to create tailored video campaigns that resonate with specific customer segments. 

Through continuous analysis and optimization, AI-driven targeting empowers marketers to allocate resources effectively, refine messaging, and achieve better campaign performance and ROI.

AI-Generated Content Creation

AI facilitates content marketing especially content creation in video marketing through generated scripts, automated production, and AI-assisted editing. Marketers have the opportunity to utilize AI to delve into concepts improve their work processes and boost productivity.

Scripts generated by AI can serve as a foundation, for video ideas enabling marketers to streamline the process of creating content. Automated production tools powered by AI can effectively manage tasks such, as creating scenes tracking objects, and rendering which ultimately results in a reduction of time and effort involved in video production.

AI-powered editing tools provide suggestions, for transitions, visual enhancements, and pacing to ensure that the end result of a video aligns, with the intended goals and connects effectively with the target viewers. In addition, nowadays, a lot of AI-powered platforms are available that can generate successful (high conversion) banner and video ad creatives.

AI-Powered Interactive Video Experiences

Interactive video experiences empowered by AI captivate audiences with personalized branching narratives and interactive decision-making. These captivating elements help to hold the attention of viewers resulting in increased levels of engagement and loyalty, towards the brand.

By using AI algorithms it becomes possible to analyze how viewers respond and behave while interacting with videos. This analysis allows for adjustments to the content ensuring a personalized experience, for each viewer.

Interactive videos powered by AI enhance viewer engagement and empowerment by providing options, quizzes, and personalized storylines. This fosters a bond with the brand. Boosts the chances of viewers taking desired actions.

The Future of Video Marketing with AI

As we gaze into the future the potential, for video marketing with AI appears bright. The latest trends suggest that AI technology will continue to progress presenting marketers with possibilities, for creative breakthroughs. Here are key ways video marketing with AI will continue to evolve in the near future:

  • Enhanced deep learning algorithms for improved content personalization
  • AI-powered real-time video analytics for instant insights and adjustments
  • AI-generated dynamic video ads tailored to individual viewers in real-time
  • Voice-controlled video experiences powered by AI voice assistants
  • AI-driven emotional analysis for personalized video recommendations based on mood
  • Automated video translations for seamless global audience reach
  • AI-powered influencer marketing matching algorithms for effective collaborations

AI Changing the Video Marketing Quick Wrap-Up

Undoubtedly, AI is changing the video marketing strategy and will only be more popular in the future. As we enter 2023, AI is set to revolutionize video marketing and overall social media strategies in various ways. From AI-powered video editing and personalized content delivery to advanced analytics and interactive video experiences, AI brings innovation and efficiency to the field.

With AI’s capabilities, video marketing will continue to evolve and create highly impactful and immersive experiences for audiences. It’s an exciting time for video marketing as AI takes it to new heights of success.

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Are Skill Gaps Holding Back Your Social Media Marketing Team’s Potential? https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/growing-your-social-marketing-team/ Thu, 21 Sep 2023 22:00:24 +0000 https://www.digitalmarketer.com/?p=166548 Are gaps in your social media marketing team hindering productivity and growth? Identify gaps and empower your team to thrive with Digital Marketer.

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Social media is one of the most quickly evolving areas of digital marketing. So, your social media marketing team needs to keep pace with customers and competitors alike. 

From new social platforms and changing algorithms to the latest technologies and trends, marketing is unforgivingly fast-paced. It comes as no surprise that social media marketers are struggling to keep up. 

In a recent survey by The Social Club, it was found that the accelerated pace of social platforms is becoming overwhelming for social media marketers. 81% admitted that it was a struggle to stay on top of the latest trends and technologies.

Other marketers struggle to develop the wide range of must-have marketing skills needed to perform the diverse role. 

As a result, performance, knowledge, and skills gaps can grow within social media marketing teams—and they can wreak havoc. Luckily, you can combat gaps by identifying and addressing them in a variety of ways.

So, let’s discuss how you can identify and tackle gaps within your team. And in doing so, how you improve productivity, future-proof your business, and equip your team to meet social media marketing goals.

Evaluate Your Team’s Skill Sets & Experience

Before you can identify skills gaps, you need to establish the skills and experience your team currently possesses. 

So, start by conducting an in-depth evaluation of your team’s current skill sets, experience, and knowledge. This will present you with a comprehensive inventory of skills that you can align with your business goals. 

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Ultimately, it helps you determine where your team thrives and where it falls short.

But how do you go about this? 

As a best practice, consider using several different methods of evaluation to get a reliable picture of your team’s current skill set. For example, you might:

Create a Formal Test

Formal tests can be used to assess the technical and theoretical competency of your employees. For example, you can test how effectively employees are able to use a certain tool. Or, you can assess how aptly they identify a particular framework and apply it to a situation. 

While this is a popular evaluation method, there are some limitations to consider. 

Formal test conditions don’t always present a reliable picture of proficiency. Some people perform worse in test conditions due to stress and anxiety. Other people might display competency in test settings but are unable to apply this knowledge in real-life scenarios. 

So, consider using formal tests alongside the two other evaluation methods that we’re going to discuss below.

Conduct On-the-Job Observations

Observing real-world performance is one of the best ways to accurately gauge your team’s skill set. 

On the job, are your employees able to efficiently utilize technologies to meet goals? How effectively do they communicate and collaborate in fast-paced environments? Are they applying their skills, knowledge, and experience to a standard you’d expect?

In-person assessments allow you to observe your team within the everyday work environment. Compared to formal tests, they can give you a more accurate representation of employee performance. But, there’s still the risk that employees’ nerves may alter their performance, which can skew the results of your evaluation.

And of course, in-person observations simply aren’t possible if you’re a remote team. So, you might have to use another method: performance management technology.

Utilize Software to Measure & Evaluate Performance

Instead of relying on in-person observations, you can enlist the help of software to track your employees’ performance. This includes tracking whether employees meet project deadlines, reach benchmark KPIs, and are otherwise engaged in and attending to their responsibilities.

The data obtained from software can help you identify performance gaps. Performance gaps are just as critical to identify and address as skills and knowledge gaps, as they damage productivity and negatively impact your bottom line. 

In many cases, performance and skills gaps overlap in some way. 

For example, underperforming employees might lack the skills or knowledge they need to perform their roles effectively. Similarly, employees who regularly miss work might lack motivation or feel dissatisfied in their role, which can arise as a result of a skills gap. 

To combat this, an HR performance management system with an attendance tracker feature enables you to track performance and attendance in real-time. Attendance software automates the process by identifying absence patterns and quickly alerting you to potentially struggling employees. As a result, you can uncover and tackle performance gaps more efficiently and effectively, all while supporting your employees and earning their loyalty.

Establish Your Team’s Objectives

Setting realistic, unified team goals and objectives can close performance gaps that may be hurting your productivity. When team objectives are misaligned or unachievable, employees disconnect from them. This leads to disengagement and poor motivation. 

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However, when you set clear, realistic objectives and empower your team to achieve them, you can boost productivity and close performance gaps.

Establishing team objectives can also help you identify skills gaps. 

Let’s say that your team really wants to grow its followers on Pinterest. As you proceed to devise a Pinterest marketing growth strategy to meet this objective, you might discover that your team doesn’t know enough about Pinterest to execute this strategy effectively. So, you’ve identified a skills gap.

Armed with this knowledge, you can quickly target this skills gap by hiring a marketer with the relevant experience. Or you could upskill your employees—more on this later. 

Identify Areas for Skill Development

Now it’s time to dig a little deeper and identify any specific skills gaps that exist within your social marketing team. Chances are, you’ll find some—53% of companies currently have a skills gap, according to research by SHRM. 

Skills gaps can arise for a variety of reasons. Talent shortages, poor training, lack of experience, and failure to keep pace with new technologies can all result in skills gaps that put your company at a competitive disadvantage. 

With a fine-tooth comb, inspect your team’s digital marketing skills, experience, and objectives to illuminate any areas for improvement. For a social marketing team, the most pressing and common skills gaps include graphic design, videography, and photography.

Provided by The Social Club, here’s an example of what social media marketers deem to be essential skills, compared to how many marketers feel that they actually possess these skills.

Provide Continuous Training & Development 

Before you rush to fill your skills gaps by hiring new employees, consider upskilling your current employees first.

Upskilling is a learning and development strategy that involves providing continuous training to employees to help them learn new skills. There are a bunch of benefits to doing this—it’s more cost-effective, it boosts productivity, and it even increases employee satisfaction and retention. 71% of employees who took part in employer-provided upskilling opportunities say that it increased their overall job satisfaction.

That said, any old training program won’t do. Training content needs to be delivered strategically, with a focus on keeping it engaging and interactive to maximize knowledge retention. 

Here are some top tips for training your social media marketing team:

  • Create visually engaging and interactive online training videos
  • Utilize other interactive training methods too, like memory games, quizzes, and puzzles
  • Assign employees to a mentor for 1-on-1 training and development sessions
  • Create a centralized online knowledge base packed with valuable content (how-to’s, blog posts, indexes, etc)
  • Offer bitesize training modules to help employees retain knowledge
  • Most importantly, provide opportunities for them to exercise their new skills

Seek Feedback From Customers

Your customers are invaluable information sources. Their feedback can shed light on areas that your social media marketing team needs to improve on, driving learning and development initiatives in the right direction. 

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There are lots of different ways that you can request feedback from your customers. Follow-up emails, social media, and website surveys are just a few examples. And you can request feedback on pretty much anything you want, from the quality of your YouTube videos or Instagram photos to the consistency of your brand’s voice across your social channels. 

Just make sure to avoid common customer survey mistakes if you want to garner the best results.

If you’re still struggling to obtain customer feedback, there are different ways to tap into what your customers are thinking without asking them directly. 

Reviews left on third-party websites like Google and TrustPilot can be a source of valuable feedback. Try encouraging customers to leave reviews which you can use to accumulate useful information. For example, recurring pain points that come up in reviews may uncover hidden skills gaps or performance gaps within your team.

You can also use social listening tools to monitor what customers are saying about you online.

Review Your Team’s Workload

A heavy workload hinders productivity and is one of the leading causes of performance gaps. But it can exacerbate skills gaps, too. 

Without the means to undertake professional development, employees can quickly fall behind competitors. Remember, 81% of social media marketers struggle to stay on top of social media marketing developments. 

The same study found that 53% of social media marketers claim that it takes over an hour a week to keep on top of the latest marketing trends. 10% say that it requires over two hours of dedication a week.

Put simply—if your team has a heavy workload, keeping up just isn’t possible.

Assess your team’s workloads and, with the assistance of your employees, adjust them to free up time for learning and development. Through this process, you might also realize that you can reallocate resources to maximize skill utilization and reduce skill gaps. 

An employee who excels in paid advertising, for example, should invest more time in utilizing and refining those specific skills. Or, if various team members are tackling campaign management alongside their other duties, it might be wise to hire a dedicated social media marketing manager to unburden these responsibilities. This provides more time for learning and development while also closing a skills gap. 

Consider Hiring Additional Team Members

Sometimes, hiring new team members is absolutely essential. 

For example, it could be that your team completely lacks the necessary experience to fulfill duties in a complex area, like social media analytics. Or, it could be that your team’s workload is so heavy that it’s impossible for employees to leverage all of the necessary skills to their full capability. 

In these scenarios, look into bringing new team members on board. But be careful—a poor hiring process can result in bad hires and a host of other issues. Not only can this widen skills gaps even further, but it can seriously damage your team’s overall productivity. 

So, it’s critical that you precisely identify the skills and experience that you need a new hire to possess. From there, you can create job ads that accurately detail the responsibilities of the role, increasing your chances of attracting high-quality candidates. 
Using talent acquisition software, you can then leverage AI to automate the labor-intensive candidate sorting and screening process. Talent acquisition tools can match and score candidates according to your preset rules, dramatically reducing the time it takes to find the best candidates to interview.

Evaluate Your Team’s Culture

A team culture that is misaligned with your company’s values and objectives can contribute to performance and skills gaps. This is why it’s so important to continuously evaluate your team’s culture, nurturing positive cultural traits and weeding out any negative traits.

Performance monitoring and attendance tracking software can help you identify engagement issues and tackle their underlying cause. Gathering employee feedback via pulse surveys and eNPS surveys can highlight areas for improvement that you may have otherwise missed. And external employee review sites are also a useful way to glean honest, unfiltered insights into your team’s culture.

To effectively close performance and skills gaps within your social marketing team, work on fostering a culture that embraces knowledge-sharing, unity, collaboration, and continuous learning and development.

Key Takeaways

As the latest digital marketing trends, technologies, and platforms continue to emerge at an accelerated rate, knowledge and skills gaps are bound to crop up. It’s vital that you empower your social media marketing team to keep pace with competitors and meet marketing goals by identifying and addressing gaps.

Once you’ve identified gaps through observations and analysis, you can work on closing them the right way. The best ways to tackle gaps in your team include providing continuous training, hiring experienced employees, and adjusting your team’s workload.

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How to Create An Email Strategy https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/create-an-email-strategy/ https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/create-an-email-strategy/#respond Sat, 18 Dec 2021 02:31:58 +0000 https://www.digitalmarketer.com/uncategorized/create-an-email-strategy/ Your email marketing strategy doesn’t have to wait until things slow down, you “know more,” or you’re finally ready. It just requires taking the first step...choosing your type of newsletter.

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Creating an email strategy feels like you’ll need a whiteboard, 5 different colored pens, your entire team, and 4 cups of coffee each.

It feels like a *big* task—something that your team needs to work on at *just* the right moment. 

We have some news for you…it’s actually the opposite. An email marketing strategy is less about an over-the-top, “started from the bottom now we’re here,” type of strategy and more about taking one step forward. Then, another. And, another.

There are 5 steps to creating an email strategy that encompasses your organic, newsletter content (that isn’t overly promotional), and your promotional content (that sells products).

And each one can be situated within a week (maximum!).

Your email marketing strategy doesn’t have to wait until things slow down, you “know more,” or you’re finally ready. It just requires taking the first step…choosing your type of newsletter.

Step 1: Choose Your Type of Newsletter

Our favorite part of email marketing is the relationship we can build with our audience without selling them anything. Using a weekly newsletter, we can create 52 touchpoints a year with our subscribers with the goal of giving them useful marketing information that helps their launches, campaigns, and business endeavors.

There are 4 types of newsletters to choose from:

#1: “Letter-from-the-editor” or “Featured Article” Style

This type of newsletter is best suited for: 

  • Brands with something to say and/or points to make
  • Companies wanting to take a stance on something happening in their industry (have an opinion, provide tactical advice, etc.)
  • Businesses willing to dedicate more resources and time to create a valuable newsletter

#2: “Link” or “Curated Content” Style

This type of newsletter is best suited for: 

  • Brands and businesses who want to provide quick value to their customers
  • Companies strapped for time and people power

#3: “Blog” Style

This type of newsletter is best suited for: 

  • Brands with a dedicated blog and/or content repository
  • Companies that want to drive A LOT of traffic to their content

#4: “Hustle” Style

This type of newsletter is best suited for: 

  • Brands with a dedicated content team that can really put pen to paper
  • Companies that are big on the affiliate side of marketing
  • Businesses that want to establish themselves as THE AUTHORITY in their industry

Action: Choose the type of newsletter you’ll send out on a regular basis (1-3x per week). If you’re having trouble deciding what your audience would like most, ask them!

Step 2: Create an Editorial Calendar for Promotional Content

Your promotional calendar is a big part of your email marketing strategy. We’re not saying you need to have your entire year planned out without any room for flexibility. You just need at least 3 months of a *decently* solid idea of what you’ll be promoting. Of course, as those weeks play out and if anything needs to shift, you can. But, your promotional calendar shows you what you have coming up and where your organic content can help you with campaigns.

Not only will our promotional content (email campaigns with copy specific to purchasing the Digital Mastery Certification) cover the offer, but we can also add it into our organic content.

The DigitalMarketer Insider newsletter can support this promotion by talking about the importance of being a T-Shaped marketer and linking out to our article explaining what it is and why marketers should care.

Action: Create a promotional calendar, so you know when offers and products are launching. Then, use that calendar to correlate your organic content with those offers and products to help support your campaigns.

Step 3: Schedule When Your Emails Will Go Live

Remember, your email marketing strategy is just as much about nurturing your audience as it is about selling your products. Here’s the rule of thumb we like to follow: publish a newsletter consistently (1-3x/week) and only run 3x promotional offers per month. If you run more than that, you’ll “fatigue” your email audience. This means they’re so bombarded with promotions and offers that they start to delete your emails the second they show up in their inbox.

Your open rates decrease, your click-through rates are minuscule, and your profits suffer. 

Since this is the worst-case scenario in email marketing, you need a plan to avoid it. That’s why you’ll schedule when your emails go live for your newsletter and promotional content.

For example, let’s say you have a weekly newsletter that goes out every Monday. You have 3 offers you’ll promote between November 29th-December 31st, and you have 3 emails per offer for a total of 9 promotion emails. 

These are general numbers, though. You can send more (or less) promotional emails depending on how many promotions you’re selling, when the final purchase date is, and how your campaign is doing (poorly = send more emails).

Action: Create an email calendar that shows when each email you plan to send each month will go live. You can also use this calendar to figure out when to have newsletter content, and promotional copy written, edited, and uploaded to your email platform.

Bonus Tip: Make sure you have someone on your team dedicated to email. It’ll be their job to make sure newsletters go out on time and promotional copy is written and scheduled for campaigns. This is the *only* way to avoid email falling through the cracks and reaching Q3 of 2022 and wondering what happened.

Step 4: Use Email for Market Research

In 2021, we lost a lot of data thanks to Apple’s iOS 14 privacy changes. This isn’t a bad thing (people should be aware and able to choose where their data is shared), but it did require a pivot in marketing. Instead of relying on third-parties to capture and use data in our campaigns for us—we need to start doing it ourselves.

And email marketing is the perfect place to start. Your email audience is more than hot leads. They’re a direct connection to your customer avatar and what they’re thinking, feeling, and looking for when it comes to your brand and products. They can tell you what type of newsletter they’re looking for, the products they want you to create, and how they feel about your current email strategy.

But, you have to ask them first.

Use your email platform to ask your subscribers market research questions. Now, here’s where we create an email marketing strategy out of this. Tag the subscribers based on their answers, build funnels for your specific products related to their interests, and send subscribers down funnels for products they actually care about. 

Or, as your promotional calendar starts rolling out, you now have lists of subscribers interested in those products or topics. Let’s say we surveyed our email subscribers and asked what they were struggling with the most and one of the answers was SEO. Every subscriber who answered SEO could be sent a DigitalMarketer Insider personalized to help them learn more about SEO, with content like this:

Action: Personalize your email strategy by surveying your audience to see what they’re most interested in and sending topic/product-specific content and funnels based on their answers.

Step 5: Test, Optimize, and Stay Flexible

If there’s one piece of overarching marketing advice that any business could take and apply, this is it. Marketing is all about testing, optimizing, and staying flexible. Great marketing plans aren’t written in stone. They’re adapted as needed based on the story the metrics tell them.

For example, if you start sending out an email newsletter with 4 curated links every week and your open rate goes from 30% to 10%—there’s a problem. Your audience doesn’t want curated links…they’re looking for something else. This is your sign to ask them what they’d like to see more of and integrate that into your upcoming emails.

Every year we take a look at our best performing email subject lines to figure out where we could do better and which subject lines to leave behind in the new year.

Action (Test): Try out different sections in your newsletter to see what your audience loves the most (keep tabs by looking at open rates and click-through rates on links in that specific section).

Action (Optimize): Ask your subscribers what they’d like to see more of through market research and tags, and pay attention to what topics get the most opens and clicks.

Action (Stay Flexible): Don’t take it personally if the marketing strategy you created doesn’t work out the way you’d hoped. Stay flexible and change it based on the new data you have. 

Email Strategy is a ‘One Step at a Time’ Game

Each step of creating your email strategy takes a week—maximum. That assumes your team is completely bogged down with other work and only has a minimum amount of time to put towards it. 

If your team has remotely a decent amount of time to allocate to your email marketing strategy, you’ll have it live in less than a month. And you don’t even have to feel overwhelmed by the process, because email strategy is a ‘one step at a time’ game. 

Step 1: Choose Your Type of Newsletter

Step 2: Create an Editorial Calendar for Promotional Content

Step 3: Schedule When Your Emails Will Go Live

Step 4: Use Email for Market Research

Step 5: Test, Optimize, and Stay Flexible

Once you’ve gone through these 5 steps, the next step is creating an Email Indoctrination Series that introduces your brand to your subscribers, tells them what to expect from your emails, and gives them a free gift. 

Ryan Deiss, CEO of DigitalMarketer, teaches the 10-Point Indoctrination Email Playbook: How to Welcome New Email Subscribers inside of DigitalMarketer Lab. Get access to the 10-Point Indoctrination Email Playbook, and Insider Trainings, Workshops, and Playbooks covering marketing topics like:

  • Email marketing
  • Building out your agency
  • Copywriting
  • And more…

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How to Build Your First 3 Marketing Service Offerings https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/first-three-service-offerings/ https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/first-three-service-offerings/#respond Mon, 22 Nov 2021 03:28:49 +0000 https://www.digitalmarketer.com/?p=87479 Agency owners know their expertise, but it's hard to wrap it into perfect packages that your prospects can't say no to. If you offer too little, they won't be interested. And if you offer too much, they might not be able to afford your services.

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How to Build Your First 3 Marketing Services

Agency owners know the struggle of packaging deliverables.

They know their expertise (like content marketing, paid ads, or SEO), but it is hard to wrap it into perfect packages that your prospects can’t say no to. If you offer too little, they won’t be interested. And if you offer too much, they might not be able to afford your services.

Your agency needs to make a profit, and that means you have to get an ROI on all your lead generating investments. That’s why building your first 3 marketing service offerings feels like a daunting task.

If you mess this up—your business doesn’t grow. 

Luckily, tens of thousands of agency owners have walked this path before you and figured out how to market your service offerings strategically. It all comes down to something you see all the time—tiered packages.

Tiered packages look something like this:

  1. Basic
  2. Premium
  3. Top-Tier

These tiered packages give your clients the option to choose between the deliverables that work best for their KPIs, and their budget. 

But what do these packages look like for agencies? Let’s look at some examples…

Your Basic Package

Think of this package as your Step One. It’s for clients who are dabbling in your marketing expertise (like email marketing or data and analytics). It’s the package with the least amount of deliverables, time commitment, and investment. It’s your minimum viable product (MVP) that you can sell that still has a profit margin.

A basic package for a content marketing agency might include:

  • 4x articles per month for the client’s blog
  • 5 distribution channels per article
  • $5,000/month

A paid ads agency’s basic package could look like:

  • 8 ad sets per month
  • 3 conversion goals
  • $5,000/month

This is the best package for prospects who don’t have a lot of money to invest in their marketing just yet (but want to get started!). With this package, you can not only show them the ROI of working with your agency. You can also get the wheels turning on their content output or paid ads account.

These clients are the *best* clients to continue to upsell down the line. Once you’ve achieved results for them (a.k.a helped them make their investment back AND then some), let them know how much more successful ($$$) they could be if they upgraded to your Premium Package.

Your Premium Package

Chances are that most prospects will choose your Premium Package, in the same way you generally go with the middle-tiered package for the subscription services you subscribe to. The Basic Package can be too simple, and sometimes you need more experience with the company before you’re willing to go for the full Top-Tier Package (we’ll talk more about that in the next section).

Your Premium Package is a few steps up from your Basic Package, with more deliverables, more time commitment, and higher investment. The caveat is that this extra work and investment comes with a higher ROI.

A premium package for a content marketing agency could be something like:

  • 8x articles per month for the client’s blog
  • 10 distribution channels per article
  • $10,000/month

A paid ads agency’s top-tier package could look like:

  • 16 ad sets per month
  • 6 conversion goals
  • $10,000/month

Essentially, your Premium Package builds off of your Basic Package. You’ll add more deliverables and charge more for your time, and the ROI that comes from publishing more content or paid ads (for these examples). Sometimes these deliverables are the same as what you were offering before (like adding more articles), but other times your Premium Package might include differing deliverables.

For example, a premium package for a content marketing agency with differing deliverables could look like:

  • 4x articles per month for the client’s blog
  • 4x newsletters per week
  • 10 distribution channels per article
  • $10,000/month

Notice how instead of adding 4 more articles to this package, we included 4 newsletters instead? That’s a change in deliverables based on the package. For some agencies, this will make sense and for others, it works to just add more of the same deliverables to your basic package.

You can do the same thing with your Top-Tier Package.

Your Top-Tier Package

Think of your Top-Tier Package as the Rolls Royce option of your agency. This is the fanciest, most prestigious package you offer your clients. This means that you want this package to *feel* fancy and prestigious—and like the clients that choose this option are entitled to much more than your Basic and Premium package clients.

With your Top-Tier Package, you can offer more of the same deliverables included in your lower-tiered packages. You can also offer special exclusives—like 1:1 coaching sessions, events, gifts, and more. This is a great time to put your marketing cap on and think what could make *this* package so much more special than the rest.

Of course, the main answer is an ROI. But, that doesn’t have to only come from more money in the bank. An ROI could be 1:1 access to your thought leader CEO, specialized trainings, and free worksheets. Think of the things that make your client’s lives easier and if you could add them as a deliverable in this package.

A top-tier package for a content marketing agency would be: 

  • 10x articles per month for the client’s blog
  • 10 distribution channels per article
  • Monthly content marketing mentorship calls
  • 1:1 Q&As with content marketing experts
  • $15,000/month

A paid ads agency’s top-tier package could be:

  • 20 ad sets per month
  • 6 conversion goals
  • Access to exclusive Facebook events for marketers
  • 2x a year retreats for your clients
  • $20,000/month

Notice how we added in more deliverables, but we also added cool stuff like mentorship calls and exclusive events? Things like this can make your Top-Tier Package look *extra* fancy, despite it not taking much more time out of your schedule. You don’t have to add these extras, though. You could always do something like…

A content marketing agency’s top-tier package:

  • 12x articles per month for the client’s blog
  • 10 distribution channels per article
  • $20,000/month

This Top-Tier Package just multiplies the number of deliverables (and the ROI).

The Easiest Way To Start Building Your First Marketing Service Offerings

Your prospects and clients have already told you what they want your packages to look like—it’s just a matter of listening to them. When they tell you they want more blog traffic, they’re saying that they need higher quality articles and some SEO help. If they tell you they want to sell more ecommerce products—they’re asking how you can get their products in front of more eyes using paid ads.

Chances are your products are already outlined by your clients. You just need to go in and fill it in with color.

This is a great time to survey your audience or current customers about what they would want from your packages. Just like you ask your client’s customers for feedback to create your marketing strategies—you can ask *your* prospects and clients what they want to see from your agency.

Based on their feedback, you’ll create 3 types of packages for them to choose from:

  1. A Basic Package
  2. A Premium Package
  3. A Top-Tier Package

Once you set up your packages, it’s time to start generating leads for your agency to fill your schedule. Generating leads can be tricky if you don’t know the right strategy. Inside of DigitalMarketer Lab, we have trainings from multi-million dollar agency owners teaching you how to create your own 7-figure agency. 

Get expert advice on how to grow your agency by signing up for DigitalMarketer Lab today.

Sign up here.

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Everything You Need to Create a Solid Competitive Report https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/create-competitive-report/ https://www.digitalmarketer.com/blog/create-competitive-report/#respond Mon, 15 Nov 2021 21:33:30 +0000 https://www.digitalmarketer.com/?p=87357 Analyzing and monitoring your competition is fundamental to any business success. So what should a good competitive report include and how to take it from research to an action?

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How to create a competitive report for your online business

Analyzing and monitoring your competition is fundamental to business success.

From Fortune 500 companies to startups—businesses need an idea of where they stand in the marketplace. Most importantly, they need to know how to use that information to help them stand out.

That’s why competitive reports are such a huge part of business success. It’s a roadmap telling you what to do, what to avoid, and what to try. Without it, you’re attempting to get from Point A to Point B with a blindfold on. With it, you’ve got supervision.

Competitive reports look at competitive benchmarking, competition overview, SEO strategies, and more. Ecommerce businesses, SaaS businesses, and marketing agencies can use them to figure out their short-term and long-term plans.

Every business owner has two options:

  1. Know what the future can hold for their business
  2. Guess and hope the future is bright

We’ll take the first option—and we’ll bet you will too.

What should a good competitive report include and how do you take what you’ve learned and apply it?

Why Does My Business Need a Competitive Report?

Businesses need competitive reports for 4 reasons:

  • To better understand your target audience by research how they find and engage with your more established competitor
  • For market research: Understand what is currently available on the market and where your business fits in
  • To get an estimate of your future marketing budget
  • To identify effective marketing tactics, etc.

Competitive reports are much more than copying your successful competitor’s marketing tactics. It’s actually nothing close to that because copying would never bring you ahead. (If you need marketing ideas, check out DigitalMarketer Lab!).

Competitive research is about understanding your target market and distinguishing your unique value proposition and consequently your unique marketing strategy to conquer it.

Competitive Research = How are your competitors doing and where you do stand in comparison?

Your Brand’s Unique Identity = What’s your USP (and how does it differ from the competition)?

Original Marketing Ideas = Your brand’s unique identity strategically creating awareness, engagement, and conversions using competitive research to know how to stand out from the competition!

Every competitive report needs 6 parts for a holistic understanding of your competitors, how your brand identity makes you unique, and what original marketing ideas come from it.

Competitive Benchmarking

Competitive benchmarking means collecting the performance data of your competitors and comparing it to your business. You can use these metrics to measure and monitor your business performance against your competitors. For example, if your competitors are ranking for the 3 top spots on search engines, you want to see where you’re ranking for those same topics. Are you slightly below them or on no-mans-land page 2?

You can choose your own performance indicators to track and compare. These may include:

  • Public traffic data (from tools like Ahrefs, Alexa and Similar Web)
  • Organic rankings
  • Brand awareness and sentiment (based on brand mentions), etc.

These performance indicators are your KPIs. They’re a fundamental part of your competitive report, but don’t consider your competitive report written in stone. It’s a fluid document meant to help you identify opportunities. Adjust it as needed (especially if your KPIs change in the future).

Competitive Benchmarketing needs to answer the question: What are your KPIs?

Basic Overview of the Competition

Aside from your KPIs, there are secondary metrics that will help you find competitors to keep an eye on. These aren’t your primary metrics (a.k.a your KPIs), but the smaller metrics that still tell you a lot about what that competitor is doing and where you stand in comparison.

These secondary metrics are things like:

  • Backlinks
  • Organic traffic
  • Social media followers
  • Social media engagement, etc.

Tools like Ahrefs, Keyhole, and Similarweb will help you collect all this necessary data.

Basic Overview of the Competition needs to answer the question: What are our secondary metrics of focus?

Detailed Dive into Organic Search Engine Optimization Tactics

There are two types of marketing interruption-based and intent-based. Interruption-based marketing is all the sponsored posts on your Instagram or Facebook newsfeed. It’s the commercial before your Hulu show or the ad in the middle of the YouTube video you’re watching. Intent-based marketing is more focused on answering someone’s question. When someone looks for a “black bookshelf” on Google, they have the intent to find a black bookshelf. Intent-based marketing helps your black bookshelf show up in their search results.

You can use Google Smart Shopping to get in front of the right audience and you can use organic search engine optimization tactics. Look at some key search engine optimization tactics your competitors are using:

  • Which keywords are they focusing on?
  • How are they optimizing their title tags and meta descriptions?
  • Are they optimizing their old content and how often?
  • What does their site architecture look like?
  • How are they organizing their main navigation?
  • What’s their internal linking strategy?
  • What are their most successful pages (i.e. those that rank for the most competitive search queries)?
  • What’s their semantic optimization strategy? 

Try running a few of the most important pages through a tool called Text Optimizer to determine whether your competitors are doing a good job optimizing for search intent:

One of the most actionable steps here is to look at Content Gaps, i.e. researching which keywords your competitors are ranking but your site is not. This is a great way to expand your content strategy to include new keywords. Ahrefs provides this analysis, so it is both easy and effective:

Organic Search Engine Optimization Tactics needs to answer the question: What organic SEO tactics are our competitors using, where do we stand, and where are there opportunities for us to rank higher?

Competitors’ Backlink Research

Backlink research is important for many reasons but don’t just use it in an effort to “steal” some of those tactics or claim some of those links. Remember, you don’t need to copy marketing strategies from your competitors. You just need to figure out what they’re doing to see the gaps that you can fill.

Look at a bigger picture:

  • Who are your competitors’ promoters (i.e. people who link to them) and how did your competitors win their hearts?
  • Which PR tactics seemed to work best for your competitors and why?
  • How are they utilizing content to generate backlinks?

The purpose of competitive backlink research is to understand what works for niche publishers and how you can build your own long-term relationships with them to outmatch your competitors in the long run. There are quite a few backlink checking tools that would help you create this report.

Competitors’ Backlink Research needs to answer the question: What’s our competition’s backlink strategy, where do we stand, and what opportunities are available for us?

Social Media Growth and Engagement

This section of your competitive report is an overview of your competitor’s social media channels. Some of the companies you research could be direct competition but others could have a similar audience and you’re figuring out what garners attention and engagement.

Create a quick chart summarizing your competitors’ active social media channels, number of followers and friends, and their overall activity. Use these metrics as either your goal or numbers you want to far surpass.

Keyhole can help you with this section:

Social Media Growth and Engagement needs to answer the question: What are our competitors doing on social media and what are companies with the same customer avatar as us doing?

Social Media Tactics to Take a Note of

While researching social media growth and engagement, you probably came across some inspiring ideas. Things that you haven’t done yet, but you know your audience would love (and engage with!).

Highlight some creative tactics your competitors are using on social media. In this section, forget about numbers! Highlight what you find ingenious. You’re not looking for what yielded great results, you just want ideas that your brand could take action on. My advice: take lots of screenshots!

  • Did your competitor use humor when replying to a customer?
  • Did you like their video they uploaded for a holiday?
  • Was their sponsored update particularly creative and attention grabbing?
  • Did they manage to get attention from a niche influencer?
  • Did you like the idea behind their social media contest or poll?

This section is supposed to inspire your social media team. Discourage them from copying anything your competitor did on social media (this could quickly turn into a reputation crisis). Instead, let this section be a conversation starter for your team to come up with their own ideas.

Social Media Tactics needs to answer the question: What strategies should be we implement on social?

Every Business Needs a Competitive Report

It’s impossible to name a business idea or model without competition. There’s competition to get to space these days, and we’ll safely assume the competitive reports from those companies are hundreds of pages and a foot thick when printed.

A competitive report is one of the keys to marketing success. But, you have to make it actionable, or else it will collect digital dust on your desktop. Use it as a starting point for your brainstorming meetings and continue to bring it up as you ideate new marketing strategies.

Distinguish tactics to discuss and use unified communications to come up with the ideas to improve and expand those tactics, as well as find unique angles and maintain your brand identity.

Because a competitive report is like getting a crystal ball and getting to ask it what the future of your business is.

The only difference is that you have to put work into creating that future, but luckily your competitive report is telling you exactly what to do.

If you need marketing inspiration from the top marketers around the world, you can join DigitalMarketer Lab to access Insider Trainings, Workshops, Playbooks, and Certifications. Learn what’s working in Facebook ads today, how to use Google Smart Shopping, and how to turn brand awareness into net profits.

Become a Lab member today.

Ann Smarty

Ann Smarty is the brand NINJA at Internet Marketing Ninjas as well as the founder of numerous startups including MyBlogGuest, MyBlogU, ViralContentBee, TwChat and many more.

Ann Smarty has been an online marketing consultant for 10 years providing high-quality digital marketing consulting through her services and courses (both free and paid).

Ann Smarty’s content marketing ideas have been featured in NYtimes, Mashable, Entrepreneur, Search Engine Land and many more. She is known for her indepth tool reviews, innovative content marketing advice and actionable digital marketing ideas.

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