Small- to medium-sized business (SMB) owners and entrepreneurs are definitely allowed to daydream about taking company success to the next level and beyond. If you aren't doing at least some "Magic Wand Thinking" occasionally, you might want to check yourself for a pulse. If you are serious, a marketing growth plan can help you get there.
There are few things more intrinsic to the mind and heartbeat of an entrepreneur or SMB owner than to speculate on how to boost productivity, enhance visibility, and beef up the bottom line. Motivations will vary, of course, but it's common knowledge that daydreams must be translated into plans at some point.
"Failing to plan is planning to fail" has become a well-known guardrail for running a successful business, and for good reason. To ensure that your marketplace success is more enduring than a flash in the pan, you must set aside time regularly to develop, implement, and fine-tune a marketing growth plan.
Perseverance in the Face of Ongoing Change
Some SMB owners and entrepreneurs are tempted to give up on maintaining a marketing growth plan. The pace and frequency of marketplace changes have become dizzying. Planning and adjusting a marketing growth plan can seem secondary to the everyday demands of keeping all the pie plates spinning simultaneously.
There's no getting around it. All seven of the elements listed below will require the investment of your time and attention. How you find time in any given week to review, update, and inform others will vary depending on the main thrust of your enterprise.
1. Overall Vision and Supporting Objectives
It’s easy for visionaries to keep their “35,000-foot view” of any business undertaking tucked away securely in the recesses of their minds. While acknowledging that entrepreneurs must keep at least some of their cards close to the chest, the primary problem with too much secrecy tends to crop up when employees and other strategic partners come alongside to help implement the vision. If you’re an inventive, free-thinking leader, you can unintentionally believe that other people know everything you do. In all likelihood, they don’t.
Don’t expect your people to become mind-readers. Break out whatever works best for you to get those objectives and plans out of your head. For some, this will mean recording voice messages on a smartphone. Others think best while using a computer and keyboard. Still others prefer to use pencil and paper.
Use whatever helps you crank out your ideas as quickly as possible. As you brainstorm, hold off on judging what pours forth. You can do that later. During this step, your job is simply to see how well you can translate your big ideas into words that others can understand.
Objectives and vision statements don’t need to occupy multiple three-ring binders. In fact, the very best vision statements often take the form of a single sentence. If you can think of your vision statement as a platform, the objectives you come up with to achieve your vision are the undergirding support structure.
2. Niche-Specific Research
Don’t skimp here. This part of the process will likely consume most of the time you invest in your marketing growth plan. In addition to an initial research period, you will want to set aside a chunk of time every so often — weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever — to review, update, and add to what you’ve learned.
Research doesn’t need to be a drag, either. Yes, some hours might be spent feeling chained to a book or web browser, but there are other ways to discover what the “latest and greatest” in your industry looks like. Who knows? You might even find that you enjoy the process of adding to your personal knowledge base.
Extroverts typically prefer to get out of their routine, meet others, attend conferences and events, and volunteer their time serving the community. (You might be surprised to find out how much you can learn about the local business landscape just by serving alongside others.) All of these represent opportunities to gain knowledge, improve visibility, and perhaps even garner candid feedback about your company that you would be unlikely to attain any other way.
Introverted types can spend long hours with a laptop, trade journals, magazines, books, and other “solo” data sources. What’s more, they tend to thrive in that setting. Another suitable self-driven means of research might be watching or listening to industry-specific podcasts, training sessions, DIY videos, etc. Truly effective ongoing research will draw on both learning styles, but the key will be to find what works best for you and augment it with other forms of learning. The main takeaway here is that to keep up, you need to keep at it.
3. Data-Driven "Best Guesses"
By now, most SMB owners and entrepreneurs have already had it drilled into their heads. The era of following hunches is more than likely in the rearview mirror.
True, there will always be a place for novel insights and unique approaches to problems the rest of us assumed had already been solved. However, the catchphrase for the 21st-century marketplace is data-driven.
Data sifting software solutions are evolving at a rapid pace. Many SMB owners might assume that advanced data analytics are the exclusive province of Big Tech and out of reach for the average entrepreneur. While that may once have been the case, this is no longer true. Witness the rise of an ever-expanding array of business solutions offered under the umbrella of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
Today, even the smallest businesses capture and generate an enormous amount of digital data daily. Since the onset of the digital revolution, one primary problem has been sifting and sorting through terabytes of information, looking for the tiniest fractions of data that SMB owners can use to hone their products and services to meet genuine needs.
Business owners owe themselves a renewed look at the SaaS services available for every budget. Collecting and analyzing data is in many ways easier today than ever. Armed with previously-hidden insights, you can construct a marketing growth plan that leverages hard facts. And if you want to throw in one of your (data-informed) hunches from time to time, go ahead.
4. Plans A, B, C, and D
How many successful entrepreneurs or SMB owners do you know are still operating profitably with the plan they came up with decades ago? Chances are good that number is zero.
However, this does not mean that it’s not on you to come up with your single best shot at a workable Plan A. What is the default strategy you will use to prosper and grow? Nail it down.
Many business people like to use (read: overuse) buzzwords such as agility and pivot. OK, feel free to use those terms if you must. Still, the underlying idea is to look carefully at your completed Plan A schematic and purposefully, intentionally look for every weak spot. At every potential breaking point, sketch out a backup plan for adjusting your marketing growth plan.
More than a few businesses still go into total gridlock if the internet goes down. If all it takes to wreck your productivity is for a load balancer to blow at the local power company, start over. Come up with an alternative that includes regular service interruptions and even makes allowances for disaster recovery.
You don’t want to send everyone home and shut down your company’s website if, for example, a pandemic forces you to disperse to remote locations. (Perhaps a far more common disaster would be your competitor getting to market six months earlier than you had projected.) Whatever the calamity, don’t allow your overall guiding vision to be obscured by the unpredictable.
5. Inventory of Strengths, Opportunities, Limitations, and Needs
No one knows your business better than you, right? Who better to compile the authoritative list of your strengths, known opportunities, limitations, and needs? Well, not so fast. An effective marketing growth plan often needs to bring more than just your insights to bear.
There really is no substitute for clear-eyed, impartial assessment than someone with no vested interest in whether your company succeeds or fails. While hiring an outside contractor or agency may not be in your operating budget year after year, you should at least consider bringing in a consultant with a proven track record. Once the confidentiality issue is settled to your satisfaction, give your expert permission to ask all sorts of annoying questions, some of which you may never have considered. Here’s a partial list of what you’ll want them to cover.
Strengths
Your company might dominate the widget-building industry, but that’s an obvious strength. Non-obvious strengths might include geographic location, unique skill sets of employees, online reputation, employee perks, etc.
Opportunities
Are there markets for your product or service that you may not have previously considered? Have you recently acquired staff with highly specialized skills? Are other municipalities offering incentives that would significantly reduce your operating costs? All of these (and more) should show up here.
Limitations
Less fun, but listing these out is necessary. If your planned expansion stalled out for lack of capital, that will need to be documented. Are you locked into an unfavorable multi-year contract? Most of us are only too painfully aware of our limitations. However, an objective perspective can help flesh this out, too.
Needs
Needs are not the same thing as limitations. This section of your marketing growth plan can be considered more of a “shopping list” than anything else. They are not obstacles in the same way as a limitation but rather assets you don’t have yet. Which line items will you need to add to your budget this quarter? This year? Five years from now?
6. Risk Assessment: Upsides and Downsides
Most of us prefer to live on the sunny side of the street, but you did not become a successful SMB owner by ignoring the potential pitfalls. Your marketing growth plan must consider both sides of the success ledger. Without allowing yourself to get carried off by unrealistic expectations or becoming overly moribund, strive to find the middle way.
Of course, any enterprise's primary threat these days is the growing risk of hacking, ransomware, and data theft. Digital security is paramount for any business to succeed long-term. Your plan must make allowances for added expenditures to protect both your business and the privacy of those with whom you do business.
Of course, risk management is hardly limited to the digital realm. In early 2019, no one was predicting that a worldwide pandemic would close stores, overwhelm the healthcare field, and send the value of video conferencing software stock over the moon. When conducting your risk assessment, you might find it helpful to open up a casual conversation with your insurance agent and the law firm that represents your firm. One or both of these professionals will likely offer insights you might have missed otherwise.
7. Ongoing Assessment and Revision
In the halls of academia, it’s common knowledge that every Ph.D. student who successfully publishes a thesis is “the world’s leading expert” on that specific topic. However, this claim to fame lasts for approximately one or two days. As soon as someone else publishes another thesis on the subject, that person’s previous work is obviously still relevant but not current.
Keep this concept of obsolescence in mind as you plan and launch your marketing growth plan. You will protect yourself against frustration by beginning the process if you understand at the outset that you will need to update and improve your marketing growth plan.
Preparation and Flexibility Are Everything
The actual launch of a space shuttle takes less than 10 minutes. However, no one in their right mind wheels a hunk of metal onto the pad and straps a few engines to it. Arriving at lift-off presupposes thousands and thousands of hours of intense labor.
Likewise, your marketing growth plan will require a diligent effort, but make sure to have some fun along the way. If you can assume that not everything will go to plan, that’s more than half the battle. Are you prepared to solicit advice and feedback earnestly? If so, you strengthen your marketing strategy by adding the wisdom of others to your company’s portfolio. Dream big, and allow others to do the same on your behalf.
You know you need to market your company. And, unfortunately, we all know the days of submitting an ad to the Yellow Pages and calling it good are long gone. Now, it seems, if you're not constantly creating quality content online and distributing it via social media, your business will struggle to succeed. However, you don't have time to pursue a digital marketing career or learn about the latest and greatest marketing automation tools in addition to your everyday routine. Sure, you want all the benefits of growth marketing but fear you don't have the necessary resources.
This is a quandary many businesses face. They feel as though they'll get left in the dust if they're not constantly putting out new content marketing and working toward growth every millisecond. Yet they don't have the time to focus exclusively on a digital marketing campaign. They don't have the staff to help them pick the most effective social media platform. Heck, they might not even be 100% sure who constitutes their target audience!
Some businesses don't see the immediate benefits of growth marketing, so they stop...marketing. Like, at all. *Googles furiously to see if Yellow Pages ads are still a thing.*
The truth is, solid online marketing strategies don't have to be that hard. You may just need a little help. Moreover, the benefits of growth marketing are pretty astonishing if you'll just stick with it.
The Benefits of Growth Marketing
So, just what are the benefits of marketing? Does social media marketing offer substantive help in your niche?
We're talking search engine optimization, credibility, customer experience, and brand recognition. We're talking about B2B account-based marketing, new customers, and free word-of-mouth marketing, not to mention a better understanding of your buyer's journey.
Fortunately, you can get started without necessarily hiring a marketing team or investing big bucks in marketing automation software. You can build increased customer loyalty with your existing base and leverage market research to target the potential customer. And no, none of this type of marketing effort is outside the reach of the small business.
Does that sound like the type of campaign you're looking for? Good! Now read on to learn more about the benefits of marketing and how a great content strategy can help your business.
1. You build your brand awareness...and then it builds itself.
Growth marketing isn't about getting the biggest number of prospects into the funnel in the shortest amount of time.
Though traditional marketing often takes that approach, it's not necessarily an effective digital marketing tactic. That might just mean you snagged 100 prospects and...99 of them enjoyed your free trial and left. Sure, you might have hit your target audience, but the investment did nothing in terms of customer retention or promoting brand awareness.
No, growth-mindset content marketing is all about a slow, steady increase in your brand's reach. You build an effective marketing strategy by constantly testing what works, analyzing the customer data, mercilessly scrutinizing every marketing channel, and building upon successful approaches. Over time, you know that the copy, landing pages, and web layouts you keep as part of your content marketing work, that they are empirically sound.
Once you have a brand with enough people addicted to it, word-of-mouth content marketing kicks in. So do brand recognition and regular PR hits. Overall, it will start helping you win out in battles against close competitors and essentially help you own your industry.
2. Your SEO snowballs.
Over time, steady growth marketing will boost your SEO or search engine optimization. Constant experimentation and analytics lead you to format your content marketing in ways that algorithms adore.
This means you'll have more articles ranking on certain topics. It becomes easier to interlink your content, and as that happens, content gradually appears higher in search rankings.
All of this is going to help you show up when someone searches terms relating to your business. You'll show up when they're looking for information, and if that's not great, well...we don't know what is. It's the very reason we engage in content marketing in the first place.
3. Authority comes to stay.
Street cred is a fickle friend. When you have a thin website with barely any information, don't expect investors, potential customers, or anyone else to think you're an authority in your space.
Continual, data-tested additions to your content marketing stable will keep you high on the authority meter. Create helpful, educational content that hits on all stages of the buyer's journey. Create linkable content so the earned media mentions come to you.
We know it takes time, but building authority is a key growth marketing strategy. Start making an effort with your onsite content marketing and...et voilà...authority is born.
4. You understand your target audience better.
Keep in mind that you're not trying to win everyone over with your content marketing.
Instead, you're trying to find the people who really and truly want what you have to offer. The ones who will love your SaaS/nutritional supplements/cat sweaters/whatever so much they'll shout your name from the rooftops.
People-oriented, data-backed strategies help you do that. And the more you know about your audience, the better you can educate, inform, and serve them.
5. Your content accrues interest.
While your content can't actually earn you a percentage every year, it certainly gains value and returns on investment, so it's kind of like banking it.
Why?
Because the longer content is alive, the more it earns backlinks. As it matures, you generate more and more interlinks you create within your own content as well. The longer it's around, the more search engines trust it.
Content can also help keep existing customers on board. It's great to attract new leads, but if you lose them right away, you're swimming upstream.
Make sure your blog posts, articles, and sales guides aren't just geared toward the top of the funnel but instead hit on every stage of the buyer journey. Begin building customer satisfaction and brand loyalty at every step along the road, before they get rushed immediately over to your sales team.
6. Content marketing means you have an anytime, anywhere calling card.
Anytime someone wants to know who you are and what you do, all you have to do is point them toward your website. You can give them a gentle nudge through value-laden email marketing.
Yes, you can also hand out business cards, set up a phone call, or give them a demo. But your online content (social media, video marketing, and other marketing materials) will do a lot of the work for you. Your content answers frequently-asked questions, introduces your team, and serves as a map to all of the great content you've created over the years.
7. With time, your content marketing will become increasingly effortless.
The name of the content marketing game these days is increased automation. Yes, adjusting your creatives to serve an increasingly digital audience might take some doing, but as they say in this game, you have to go wherever the eyeballs are landing.
Once you begin to embrace the benefits of marketing that are increasingly to be found in the digital realm, you'll hit your stride and be able to automate in no time.
Dive Into Growth Marketing
In a nutshell, a good growth marketing strategy keeps your brand front and center.
Wherever your audience is, your brand should be there as well. Every successful marketer knows that if you faithfully execute an intelligent, consistent content plan, it will be.
Not sure where to start with your own content marketing? Don't know the first thing about affiliate marketing or influencer marketing? Don't let that stop you! You may want to look into a growth marketing agency to help strategize and execute your next growth marketing campaign.
No Yellow Pages ads are needed.
Your brand’s reputation and credibility is an important part of how you are received by key audiences. A brand that is credible will have better relationships with consumers and a strong loyal customer base.
Credibility can also help you overcome a crisis faster and gain important word-of-mouth recommendations. Overall, brands that are considered credible have an easier time growing the business and gaining new customers. But building that crucial credibility requires a strong, strategic approach to owned media.
An owned media strategy takes advantage of the content you have control over. That could include blogs, newsletters, personal publications, emails, websites, and even social media.
Taking advantage of those channels and creating an owned media strategy allows you to build your brand’s credibility. But which types of content are the best options when creating your owned media strategy? Let’s examine the right kind of content to promote while boosting brand credibility.
1. Influencer Content
In today’s world, readers trust influencers more than they trust brands. That impacts buying behaviors, which in turn means that brands need to adapt their owned media strategies.
Influencers have very loyal fan bases who listen and respond based on what the influencer suggests. Influencer content can be shared on your owned media channels, helping to combine both the power of owned media and influencer impact.
Influencer content can include unboxing videos, product reviews, shout-outs, and even advertisements. When the content on your owned channels includes a recommendation from an influencer, audiences are more likely to listen.
It also boosts your brand’s credibility. If an influencer promotes your brand, your brand is tied to their credibility and reputation among audiences. The audience of the influencer becomes your own audience, and your content channels gain more viewers as a result.
2. Authoritative Content
Authoritative content is a content marketing strategy that proves to readers that you understand your industry and can provide them with answers. When you demonstrate authority, you become an industry expert. Both search engines and readers look to you as a source of information.
It can help you grow your content readership and gain more followers across social media. And, most importantly, authoritative content puts you ahead of your competitors and lets you lead the industry.
Examples of authoritative content might include detailed blog posts, educational ebooks, how-to articles, or product and service buyer guides. By giving clear details and insider information to readers, you build up a content platform of authority. When readers want a credible brand, they look for content from industry experts and thought leaders.
3. Shareable Content
Another type of content that is important to boost brand credibility is shareable content. Shareable content refers to content pieces that inspire readers to want to spread that information among their own networks.
Readers trust their networks and will look to friends for brand recommendations. The more your content is shared, the wider your reach and credibility are among new audiences.
Shareable content is often thought of as social media content. Social media posts have the ability to be shared with the click of a button and can quickly gain traction.
Optimizing your social content can help improve your shareability. You can try having infographics, images, and videos that garner mass appeal. You could also try posting quick, memorable copy snippets that are more appealing to share than article links or dense paragraphs.
4. Linkable Content
Linkable content is content specifically created to attract high domain authority publications to link to your information. This type of content is more likely to be viewed as authoritative and, in turn, can boost your domain authority. When readers see your content being used externally, they are more likely to trust your brand and its insights.
In order to be viewed as a credible source, you need to provide trustworthy content. That can include independent research, unique information, and claims backed up with data. Creating well-crafted, well-informed linkable content will increase your chances of being shared and gaining new audiences.
5. Interactive Content
Another example of content you want to boost is interactive content. In today’s world, readers have a relatively short attention span. In order to capture their attention and spread the credibility of your brand, the content you create needs to be engaging. Interactive content doesn’t mean it needs to be loud and bright, but it does need to be interesting.
Interactive content like quizzes and calculators on your website has high engagement rates with users. You can also use videos, GIFs, and graphics to gain the attention of readers and increase engagement.
This content is also more likely to be viewed, commented on, and shared on social media platforms. That increases the reach of your audience and allows you to control the message you send to viewers. When you have control over the content, you can use that to improve your brand’s credibility.
Own Your Industry with Strategic Content
When you have the right owned media strategy, you own your industry. By taking advantage of the owned media channels you have, you can build your brand’s credibility.
Rather than letting another source tell your story, you can have control over the content. And, when you have control, you can ensure that the content you share is authoritative, shareable, linkable, and engaging.
Even if your business is small, chances are you have some big competition. And in the digital age, you and your competitors are both vying for visibility, traffic, credibility, and authority online. When you want your business to stand out from your competitors, creating rankable content for SEO that positions you at the top of search engines’ rankings is key.
But when it comes to creating content that ranks, providing helpful information for humans simply isn’t enough. There’s also a great deal of search engine optimization (SEO) strategy involved in the creation of any high-ranking content piece. And if you don’t get the strategy right, chances are you won’t get the results you’re after either.
So what exactly is rankable content and how do you create it? Read on to find out.
What Is Rankable Content?
Rankable content is easily readable, search-engine-optimized content that’s created to rank for a target keyword or keyword phrase. This type of high-quality content also targets a user’s search intent for specific keywords. That means it’s relevant to the user’s “what and why” behind a specific search query and provides valuable and accurate information.
Aside from having target keywords and providing value, rankable content must also be competitive with other content that ranks highly for the same search terms and search intent.
Develop a Customized SEO Strategy
Do you know what your industry’s top-converting keywords are? Do you know your target audience’s search intent for specific keywords? Do you understand how to organize your content so search engines know how to index your site and identify your area of authority?
If you’re unsure of any of these things, you’ll have a tough time creating content that ranks highly in search engines. That’s where a custom SEO strategy comes in.
There are more than 200 factors that determine where a piece of content ranks in search engine results for a specific keyword. Custom SEO planning analyzes what your business is trying to achieve with your content and maps out a strategic plan to help you attain those results.
A custom strategy not only includes on-page SEO, which focuses on on-site content and structure but also off-page and technical SEO. When you get all three elements right, your content starts to move up in search engines’ rankings.
If you’re currently creating the content you think people are looking for, you’re missing the mark. A custom SEO strategy will allow you to craft content that you know users are definitely searching for, which will ensure your content becomes more rankable over time.
Write Valuable, Targeted Content
Long-form content also tends to earn a great deal of backlinks and shares, both of which influence search engine rankings. When crafting rankable content, your overarching goal is to provide the reader with valuable information that’s relevant to a specific search query. Make sure you’re writing content that aligns with the length of content that is currently ranking for your targeted term.
But to create in-depth content that targets a user’s search intent, you must first understand the type of content you’re creating and how that affects its ideal word count. A “how-to” post will naturally require more content than a simple “what is X?” post. The amount of research required to support the content will also determine an optimal length.
When creating valuable content, you must also consider the content your competitors are publishing. Does your content provide more value? Does it deliver more accurate information? Does it cover subtopics that your competitors’ content doesn’t cover? If you can provide more value related to specific keywords and search queries, you stand an excellent chance of outranking your competition.
Create Scannable Content
Attention spans are short these days. People get scared off by huge blocks of text. Readers want information that’s not only easy to find but also easy to digest and retain. According to studies, over 75% of digital users don’t read online text in its entirety. That means your content must be scannable if you want it to rank.
What’s scannable content? It’s content that’s formatted in a way that allows readers to quickly grasp the major points of your message. Scannable content includes:
- Subheadings that organize the text into scannable chunks.
- White space helps prevent visual fatigue by giving readers’ eyes a break from processing text.
- Numbered or bulleted lists that group together similar items for easy scanning and digestibility.
- Bold and/or italic text (used sparingly) that emphasizes important words or phrases that readers can benefit from being able to see quickly and easily.
- Easy-to-read sentences that vary in length and don’t contain superfluous information (aka fluff).
Optimize Your Content for More Keywords
When you’re trying to rank for target keywords, you must consider how competitive those keywords are. Only going after high-competition keywords can make ranking tough, especially if you’re competing with very high-authority sites that already have super-strong SEO. That’s where finding high-volume, low-competition keywords that you can also target can be helpful.
Your competitors may not be targeting those keywords, but your target audience is searching for them. So if you target a mix of high- and low-competition keywords and phrases, your content ultimately stands a better chance of moving up through search engine rankings.
Creating rankable content isn’t difficult, but it does require strategy. If you’re unsure how to create an SEO and content marketing strategy that’ll get you the results you’re looking for, Relevance can help.