It’s good you did it – launched a stunning website for your business and even formulated one of the most admirable marketing strategies a business can ever come up with. But has it ever occurred to you that whatever you’re trying to do has already been done by some dominant brand within the industry you’re in?
Come to think of it, no idea is completely original. You might have customized it to match your brand, made a few calibrations here and there; but there’s a possibility that there exists a company that followed the same marketing strategy to get to their current level of success if any.
So instead of racking your brain too much, it sometimes makes more sense to learn from the best. Take a cue from them and find out more about how they were able to execute some of the strategies they employed. What hardship did they encounter along the way, and what did they do in their capacity to circumvent them and hit their goals.
You’re however reminded that there’s nothing like a one-size-fits-all approach to online marketing. But that’s NOT to say that there’s nothing to learn from some of the already established brands. Some of the brands you know, those dominating in their respective fields, were once in the same position you’re in.
They didn’t know where to start and weren’t even sure if the approach they were about to take would pan out. They, however, chose to run with it, making necessary adjustments along the way. And eventually, things started to flow according to plan. They were able to drive more business, scale, and grow their brands.
Worth mentioning is that a fair amount of them flopped, and it’s either because they made a couple of mistakes they couldn’t recover from, failed to plan appropriately, or the strategy they employed wasn’t just suited for their line of business. Either way, there’s a whole lot to learn from reading their story, whether it’s a story of success or failure.
Heineken
Heineken’s story is simple and straight to the point. If anything, the company has mastered the art of running clever sponsorships and creative adverts.
Heineken has also managed to capitalize on social media marketing. On reflection, it’s possible to tell the popularity of a brand by just looking at its social media popularity. And as it stands, Heineken has an upward of 20 million likes on Facebook as of the time of writing this. This makes it one of the most popular beer brands in the whole world.
First and foremost, Heineken is known for delivering stylish and easily recognizable ads that are easy to remember and relate with. An epic example is their ‘Open Your World’ ad campaign that would mark the beginning of their big break, after years of struggling and experimenting with different ad campaigns.
The campaign worked because it was targeted to the key millennials that found it relatable in a way. So the brand decided to focus on this specific demographic, which saw to it that they’ll also start investing in sports sponsorship.
By doing this, they were able to establish themselves as the key sponsors of the UEFA Champions league, in the dint of which they’re a staple of every Wednesday evening football.
It’s safe to say that the key to their success is their laser-focus concentration on their primary demographic. No room for distraction as the company is always focused on the younger generation, and that’s paid off really well on their part.
By doing this, they’ve managed to build and execute a more consistent and well-integrated multi-channel marketing strategy that’s like a springboard to their current success.
The Key Strength of Heineken’s Marketing Strategy
- Executing and scaling a more consistent and integrated marketing message that continuously target a specific demographic.
- They have a creative, in-house marketing structure.
- A Laser focus on their key demographic
- A Clever execution of sports marketing, which allows them to engage directly with their target audience during UEFA Champions League.
Shane Snow’s Marketing Plan for his ‘Dream Team’ Book
Shane Snow’s marketing strategy is pretty simple. It’s a prime example of how you can run a serious content marketing strategy and get to drive more sales by capitalizing on the readers you attract to your blog.
All that Shane did was optimize his content strategy in a bid to spread the awareness for his book. He did manage to get more of his readers to subscribe to his content, and eventually succeeded in converting an impressive chunk of his subscribers into active buyers. He was also able to encourage more of his buyers to spread the word to their family and friends thus driving even more sales for his book.
Before Shane thought of how he was going to market his new back, he had already decided that he’ll be using a data-drive content marketing strategy. So he settled for his favorite content marketing framework – the content strategy waterfall, which is essentially a model for creating a content marketing system with a linear and sequential approach.
He’s even written a detailed blog post on how he was able to pull this off using the waterfall framework. You’re therefore encouraged to read it through and use it to formulate your own marketing plan if by any chance it appeals to your fancy.
More specifically, here’s a list of things you’ll be learning:
- How you can apply his business objectives in deciding which marketing metrics you should be tracking.
- How to use his ultimate business goal to estimate your conversion rate and make necessary adjustments where needed.
- How to create buyers personas and determine which channel your audience prefer to consume your content on.
- How to use your average page views to determine the amount of content you need to produce to hit the financial goal you’ve set. The same goes to social media. How often are you supposed to be posting on social media in order to hit your goal?
- How to calculate the amount of money paid and earned cost will be cutting down on the amount of content you have to create and post.
- How to come up with a marketing procedure you’ll be following in order to create a systematic workflow. Through the strategy, you’ll also be learning about how to create a team and assign each member of the team a specific task that adds to the overall success of your business.
- How to analyze content performance metrics and refine your overall content marketing strategy.
By reading through his strategy, you’ll be able to cultivate a content marketing strategy that allows you to understand your audience better. The framework is also meant to help you think outside the box while promoting and distributing your content, and using it to achieve some of the goals you’ve set for yourself.
Buffer’s Content Marketing Strategies
Writing a content marketing plan is never easy, particularly for those who’ve never written one before. As it goes, only 55% of the marketing teams make an effort to document their content marketing strategy. As for the rest, everything is handled on a humble.
Buffer did a huge service to the online marketing community by detailing their marketing plan and by making it available for anyone who bothers checking them out.
Of course you have countless number of content marketing templates to sift through and find out which one among them works best for your marketing needs. You also have the option to pick the best and test it out.
Buffer’s template is one good example of how an effective content marketing plan looks like. The best part is that they provided their template with all the instructions you’ll need to use it properly.
The template is lengthy, so we will NOT be covering it in this post. But here are some of thing things that you’re likely to learn from reading it:
- First, the template features four essential questions that you’ll be answering to formulate a clear, executive summary for your content marketing strategy.
- The template will also be helping you set thought-out content marketing goals for your business. These are the goals that will be dictating your course of action and some of the content marketing adjustments you’ll be required to make along the way.
- How to create accurate audience personas by interviewing a selected list of content strategists.
- How to shape up your content and use it to offer viable solutions to some of the problems your clients have.
- How to conduct a competitive research that involves analyzing your competitors and some thought leaders within the industry you’re in.
- How to evaluate the content strategy you’re currently using and find out if it’s effective enough to propel you towards your goal. The template allows you to evaluate the topics and themes you’re covering in a bid to find out which one among them performs the highest so you can start directing the bulk of your marketing effort towards it.
- To determine the type of content you’re going to craft based on the ability of your team and the available bandwidth.
- How to come up with an editorial calendar.
- How to develop an effective promotional workflow.
Buffer content marketing template is incredible and simple to both understand and follow. It’s a simple step-by-step guide that will be breaking everything into digestible chunks that you can easily follow and integrate into your own content marketing strategy.
Take the audience persona’s section for example. This section features a series of case studies taken from real audience personas such as Blogger Brian. This is the guide to settle for if you’re looking to come up with a solid content marketing strategy but you do not have the time to sit down and create a fresh one from scratch.
Elements of a Winning Content Marketing Strategy
No particular content marketing template is perfect for promoting or growing your business. If anything, it’s possible and extremely easy for anyone to craft their own marketing template that they’ll be using to formulate their own marketing strategies around.
There’s nothing extra ordinary about. But in order for the template to be effective enough and be able to generate the required results, a few essential elements have to be factored in while creating the template.
The elements include:
Research
You don’t just wake up one morning and get straight to planning on how you’ll be marketing your business. Some due diligence and thorough research has to come in handy.
Start by researching on your target market followed by your competitors. Find out what they’re doing and figure out the best way possible to beat them.
The research you do is also important in understanding the environment around you and the world at large. For all we know, your market structure could be almost similar to another market structure from somewhere else in the world. Meaning there’s a whole lot you can learn from following a brand that’s doing pretty well in a similar environment.
Target Customers
There’s no enough insisting as to why you need to understand your target customers to their teeth. What mental image do you have of them? What’s their demographic?
The research you do to wrap your head around them must stretch far beyond their basic demographic information. You have to dig deep and find out more about their buying behaviour? What are their preferences? What motivates them to make a purchase? And lastly, what’s the best way to appeal to them?
If they’re teenagers or millennials, then the marketing strategy you come up with should be one that takes a playful note, while embracing some of their hobbies and fun.
In other words, the strategy you choose should be more meme-ish and playful in nature.
Marketing Tools
The marketing plan you come up with should feature all the strategies and tactics you’ll be using to both market and promote your products. Tactics abound. But the plan you draft should feature more specific tactics.
In other words, the tactics you come up with should be one that makes the most sense to your business. It’s also crucial that you choose a tactic that best targets your prospects.
The three elements lay the ground from which you’ll be formulating your digital marketing strategy.
Conclusion
As a marketer or business owner looking to grow your business to greater heights of success, simple logic will demand that you spare an ample amount of your marketing time to coming up with a clearly defined marketing strategy for your business.
First, you need the strategy to make sure that everyone within your teams is in line with your marketing goals. You want to make sure that they know where you’re headed as a business and that they’re committed to get the business there come what may.
A marketing strategy will also be working to determine where you’ll be directing the bulk of your marketing effort. But most importantly, a clearly defined strategy will be helping you understand your business and the surrounding environment much better.
Just in case you’re stranded or NOT in position to understand anything we’ve covered, don’t hesitate to make good use of our contact box or live chat. Our team at MediaOne loves helping businesses develop and implement tested digital marketing strategies that foster growth in addition to boosting their bottom line. Feel free to chat us up and we guarantee there’ll so much you’d have gained by the end of it all.
