Building the right strategy now will help your business through the year. In an economic downturn, it's even more vital to plan and allocate budgets to the right place, creating a marketing plan can help you to do this.

For some helpful tips with a Digital Marketing Strategy read our blog Financial Crisis - Why Digital Marketing is Vital for your Business

​The main points to consider when creating a marketing strategy are:

• SWOT - identify your business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

• Decide what you want to achieve - your marketing plan should be linked to your business goals, both short and long term. Have your business objectives in mind when writing your marketing plan.

• Know your customers - to gain an insight into your business and where it stands try asking your customers their opinions.
• Research the competition - find out who your competitors are, look at their strengths and weaknesses. It’s always worth knowing what your competitors offer that you don’t.
• Strategies - determine how you can best reach your target customers covering all marketing channels to achieve your plan.

• Budget - it’s important to have a budget set aside for your marketing and you need to stick to it.
  
  

There are a number of marketing channels you can cover in your strategy including:

• Email Marketing - newsletters/e-bulletins
• Website Content - Home page design, landing pages, products & services
• Blogs - Case studies and blogs
• Social Media - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc
• Print Collateral - Stationery, folded leaflets, flyers
• Vehicle livery and exhibitions stands
  
  

If you’re pressed for time a 12 month plan seems like too much to tackle, then you can try a 3 month plan. Here you would focus on short term goals and then branch out from this once you’ve completed it.

If you need any help or advice Creative Remedy are here to support you, so please get in touch if you have any questions.

Comment below if you would like to receive our 2023 Marketing Planner.

With financial worries plaguing us all it’s likely you’re looking at ways to help your business survive. One area you should be focussing on is your marketing strategy, so this month we are taking a look at digital marketing and how building the right strategy now will help your business through the next year.

Prioritise your Customer
It’s understandable that cutting spending is the first thing we look to do when faced with financial uncertainty but marketing is vital for your business in order to stay visible to your customers. Instead of thinking of marketing as a cost to your business you should view it as an investment that will boost engagement and help you build a strong relationship with your customers.

• Focus your marketing on what your core customer will prioritise. Everyone is going to be limiting spending on unnecessary items so businesses need to make a concerted effort to promote services and products that are important to their customer base. 
• Look at your numbers, analyse them and get a thorough understanding of what your customer needs from your business. Once you have the data you can target your marketing.

Stay True to Your Brand
Customers will only spend on the brands they can trust or where they feel they get the most value from. Now is the time to be open and honest about your business and what you have to offer.

• Make sure your products or services are necessary to your customer - do your research now and adjust your strategy accordingly.
• Ethics are important to most customers so make sure your brand reflects this.
• Make sure your brand is conveying your key message.
• Shout about what you are proud of - sustainability within your business, ethical products/manufacturing, locally made products etc
• Update your customers of any changes, ie opening times, stock, prices etc.

Review Your Digital Marketing Strategy
As customers change the way they shop your business needs to adjust. Look for ways to engage with your customers - now more than ever you need to focus your marketing on staying connected to your customer base.
 
Don’t make the mistake of cutting back on your marketing - now more than ever your customer is looking for certainty in uncertain times. Stay active on social media to make sure you're strengthening your relationships with your customers - post regularly with relevant and helpful content to engage with your audience. Blogs, newsletters and email marketing are other great ways to communicate what is happening within your business while building strong and long lasting relationships.
 
Are you struggling with your digital marketing? We can help you stay focused, hone your key marketing messages, take the pressure off by doing it for you or simply get better through  training and support.

Running a business is expensive - from property rental and the associated bills to employing staff. So, when it comes to marketing your products and services it makes sense to utilise all the free tools at your disposal.

In this month's blog we are discussing the best free online tools available to promote your business on the internet.

Google Business Profile
All businesses should be making the most of Google and most will already be making sure to optimise their website to boost their Google ranking but it’s easy to forget another important part of Google that requires attention- Google business listing. Previously known as Google My Business, your Google Business Profile allows you to optimise the Google listing for your business by adding details such as location, services and products as well as photos of your business. Note that Google Business Profile is only available to businesses that have contact with customers either via a physical premises or meeting customers in other locations (ie consultants, electricians etc).

A Google Business Profile is a fantastic free tool to reach customers that are searching for products and services like yours in their local area.
 
Mailchimp
Free for businesses with less than 2000 subscribers, Mailchimp is an indispensable tool for your email marketing strategy. Mailchimp is one of the best-known email marketing tools and for a good reason. Mailchimp has been helping businesses communicate with their customers since 2001 and their free plan, if you have a designer on board, lets you create great looking email templates, automate email campaigns, follow up leads and convert leads to clients. It also has a fantastic analytics dashboard.

Hubspot
For a free Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool you can’t go far wrong with Hubspot. With Hubspot you have access to tools that help with everything from blogging to SEO, marketing to analytics. It really is a one stop shop marketing software tool. Great for startups and established businesses alike, there’s no wonder Hubspot is such a popular choice amongst many business owners.

Hotjar
With a free basic plan, Hotjar is a fantastic tool for discovering more about your website visitors. Using heatmaps to visualise user behaviour allows you to build up a picture of how customers navigate your website. Over time you can see where you need to make changes to your site in order to improve performance and engagement. 

Typeform
When it comes to knowing where to make improvements to your business, nothing gives you better insight than customer feedback. Typeform is a great online tool that allows you to design forms and surveys so you can collect all the important data you need to help you give your customers what they want!

There are lots of other great tools out there that can help with promoting your business, what tools do you use to help with online promotion? Let us know in the comments!
 
If you are in need of help with your online marketing, contact us for advice.

Hopefully you’ve already got email marketing set up as part of your marketing strategy for your business- if not then we recommend you read ‘Email Marketing For Small Businesses’ to find out why having one is an essential part of your marketing plan.

If you already use email marketing as part of your marketing strategy then great, but it’s important to update your email marketing strategy regularly in order to get the best results for your business. It’s no good just planning then leaving it for a few years. Over time your business changes and so do your customers. If your products or services have changed in order to meet demand, then your customers or your customers’ needs will most definitely have changed too.

Update Your Customer List
It’s so important to make sure you have an up-to-date customer list. If you’re using old contacts the chances are there are several incorrect details as well as subscribers who are no longer interested in your products or services. You need to be tough and cull any contacts that are no longer interested. Finding out who to keep and who to delete might seem like a bit of a task but it’s vital not only for your engagement but also to keep on the right side of the law with GDPR.

Email marketing services such as Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor will help you weed out the old customers and see which customers might just need a bit of a push to re-engage with your business.

Organise Your List
Once you’ve decided who to keep and who to throw out it’s a good idea to organise your customer list, whether that’s by the service they are interested in or behaviour such as previous purchases. Once you’ve got your groups sorted it makes it easier to tailor personalised email campaigns and hopefully increase engagement.

Make Privacy a Priority
You want to build trust with your customers and one way of ensuring that is by letting the customer know that their privacy is paramount to you. Keep on top of all legislation regarding privacy and make sure your customers are aware of the things you are doing to keep their data safe and secure - this can be detailed in your privacy policy. Finally, ensure it is easy for the customer to unsubscribe- make it clear and simple.

Make your Customer Feel Valued
Personalised email marketing is bound to have a much more positive effect on your customer engagement than the scatter-gun effect of just random content that might not resonate with all your subscribers. If you sell a product, you could consider sending out personalised birthday emails with discounts or for services- let them know how you are there to help and support them. You could also look at what's happening in the world currently- many businesses offer discounts to NHS staff or Key Workers in thanks for their continued hard work.
 
Book a health check if you need any support reviving your Email Marketing or Marketing Strategy.

The information you get will give you indications of how you can improve your website to increase visitor rate and sales such as redesigning your homepage to make it more user friendly or ensuring it’s mobile friendly if it appears most of your visitors are using a mobile device.
 
How does it help with each marketing channel?
The information you get from your website analytics data will give you great insight into where your visitors are coming from such as an organic search using a search engine, paid search (Google Ads etc), referral from blogs, social media or email. You’ll be able to see the biggest drivers of website traffic and it will also tell you which channels you need to focus on to see improved traffic flow.
 
In order to get a real understanding of the numbers you need to look at each marketing channel's analytics as well as your website analytics. Understanding how well a certain email campaign has performed compared with a blog or social media post can help you see where you need to focus your attention.
 
How can you find out this information?

• Google Analytics With this fantastic free tool you’ll find valuable information about all your website traffic and find out how your marketing channels are performing.
• Website reports
• Social media insights - most social media apps have their own free analytics so you can see how well they’re performing where you can make improvements.
• Email marketing insights - use this data to help you produce effective email campaigns. Insights will tell you what your readers are interested in so you know what to focus on in the next campaign.
• Collect your own data - trade shows, events and networking are fantastic opportunities to find out more about your customers and what they’re really interested in.

 
It’s really important that you use all the analytics tools available and measure everything you do. Focus on one marketing channel at a time, really get to understand it and build on this. Make it manageable for you and your business - if you find it tricky to get your head around or you lack the time and patience, get support from your web designer.
 
Understanding your numbers
If 100 people visit your website how many of those turn into a call, enquiry or an order? If you’re finding the number of conversions is dropping it’s worth reassessing your website. Perhaps your homepage isn’t clear - is it obvious what your products or services are? Or maybe your Contact Us form asks for too much information. If a customer is taking those first steps you don’t want to scare them off with lots of questions. Fundamentally you need to understand your customers so that all your marketing and content is relatable and relevant to your potential customers.
 
Contact Creative Remedy for further advice or to take advantage of a Free Website Audit