The specific marketing tools marketers, brand managers and SME owners will find useful will depend on the strategy and goals of the company and the brand. But having a broad understanding of all the tools available will help us focus in on what we want to achieve and how to do so. At its core the efficient marketing strategy entails creating content, publishing content to various platforms, promoting that content so that as much of our audience as possible will get to see it and then analysing the effectiveness of those efforts.
CREATE
Marketing means putting an idea of our brand into the minds of our customers. We do that with content that we create specially for our brand that communicates not only what we can offer the customer physically (products and services), but also how making a connection with our brand can add value to their lives, as well as our brand values, specified in something like your purpose statement. So, depending on the type of content we need to create to form that engaging connection with our audience there are many different software programmes that will assist us here.
Informative content is best delivered in a professional way, for example blog posts and articles. For more emotional content video and graphics will inspire your audience more. Suites like Adobe offer a range of hight end solutions. For the economic marketer Canva is a great alternative.
PUBLISH
After we have winning content we have to share it. This is where your social media and digital platforms come in. Meta, the company behind two of the biggest social media platforms (Instagram and Facebook) have a Creator Studio where you can schedule your content to be published on those two platforms. There are also many third party applications like Hootsuite and eClincher, that have scheduling capabilities across multiple platforms.
But, in its simplest form publishing is simply showing your audience your content, so be sure to be where they are. If you haven’t built up your following on social media you might not see the engagement that your content deserves – don’t’ let this discourage you. All that’s needed is to re-align your strategy and find out where your people are. If your audience use search engines make sure your website is updated and your content is optimised for online searches. If your people are the outdoors type invest in printed posters or community advertising, like bus stops, corner convenience stores or inside shopping centres.
PROMOTE
Ok, here’s where we’re feeling the heat. We have our content, we have placed it places where we know our audience will see it. What’s next? Well, we need to tell them about it. Email marketing is one of the most popular ways to engage with your audience. Again, this is work you do even before the CREATE stage, because all you do is tailored towards your audience who you have already profiled.
Platforms like MailChimp are easy to use and offer many free tools for you to distribute your message to different audience types. Don’t underestimate the effectiveness of sending your customers an email telling them to join you on a certain digital platform or at a certain physical space where you have shared your brand message, a competition, or relevant news about the sphere you occupy. .
For the marketer who has a healthy budget paid advertising on TV, radio, social media and web platforms will also extend your reach. But don’t’ enter into these lightly as they can be quite complex. An agency like Nucleus Vision can help you set up these processes as well as guide you in crafting the perfect type of call to action that will draw your audience closer to you.
ANALYSE
Especially if you’ve chosen a paid option it’s essential that you evaluate the performance of the content that you have published and promoted. Many of the publishing and promotion tools have the option of progress reports with different parameters so that you get a 360 degree view of your campaign. Inside and out, up and down. But again, knowing which data points to compare and how to read the results is something that needs to be approached with surgical focus to maximise understanding and so that everyone involved knows exactly what went right and what went wrong and how to apply that knowledge to get the best return on investment possible.
When analysing the performance of your content, publishing and promotion efforts information from Customer Relationship Management tools and software must be considered. Apps like Pipedrive and Sales Force require diligent set up but when the wheels get rolling they work as hard as you do and offer immense value and insight.
BONUS: COMMUNICATE
Throughout the process of Creating, Publishing and Promoting content that will engage your audience there are multiple teams involved, sometimes from different companies. Though all teams have the same goal and should have singular focus you never know when certain elements, big or small, can be forgotten, overlooked or mishandled. Project management tools like Monday.com are a life saver and programs like Hubspot go in depth and could integrate with lots of other tools you use for promoting and analysing the content you publish.
Nucleus Vision Digital and Design Legends
A full-service Marketing and Design Agency
hero@nucleusv.com
www.nucleusvision.digital
USA
