Putting together a basic Marketing Plan for 2020
A big element of Blue Whale Media’s daily interactions with Clients is them asking what they should actually be doing. In 2020 Blue Whale Media is going to be launching a new service of Marketing consultancy.
This is going to be a service where four of our team will come in review your business and put together a three-month marketing plan for you to follow.
We know that Marketing in this day and age can be tough and it can be hard to decide where to spend your money.
The truth is no one marketing plan works for all customers and every business has a unique customer base. What that customer base responds to can be the hardest part to any marketing plan. This is what Blue Whale Media hopes to help people with.
How should it be structured?
A big thing we find is that companies run before they can walk. They also don’t see their business from the eyes of the customers.
A marketing plan has to be the following:
– Consistent – On brand – Achievable – Structured
So, what do we mean by that? Well let me explain!
Consistent
In the age of Google your marketing cannot hop from topic to topic. Put simply it has no effect on your rankings and is a complete waste of money if you are going to jump from topic to topic every month.
You need to work out what your businesses focus is going to be each quarter and focus on that alone.
On Brand
Unless you are lad bible or one of the lower end online shops using memes and “if your names below you will” posts are not appropriate.
Put simply they cheapen your brand. Everything you publish should be your best foot forward. The internet is your shop front to the world and you should treat it with the respect and care you would if you had to show a person who was sat next to you.
Achievable
Do not be idealistically with your marketing plan. Be real with yourself and do not create tasks which you simply cannot afford to complete or do not have the time to complete.
Marketing plans have multiple levels to them and failing in one element because you didn’t have the time will throw the full plan off. This could mean that when you are evaluating the success of the plan you are not judging it fairly. It’s like baking a cake but taking two ingredients out, don’t be surprised if it didn’t look as good as in the recipe book.
Structured
Before you try and put a plan in place or actioning one makes sure you have each element of it broke down. What does “blog strategy” actually consist of, (what are the topics, when are you writing them, where are you getting the images from, who is putting them on the website) Do you see my point? It’s a great element to have but putting it into practice can take a vast amount of time.
Where should you start with a marketing plan?
Any good Marketing plan will start with an aim. What are you trying to achieve?
There are various outcomes you may be looking to achieve from more enquires/sales to better brand recognition to brand reinvention.
Some of the best Marketing plans do not plan on the basis of directly trying to increase sales. Some are all about getting your brand name out there or awareness of your business.
An example might be a new beauty salon. You might think that promoting your services and prices is the way to go but in fact some of the busiest and most successful salons actually base their marketing around the Salon, the look the feel, their USP.
We are currently working with a Salon due to launch in the new year in a small village and the whole marketing plan is around attracting the right customers to it. They aren’t trying to be the cheapest or the biggest. They are trying to ensure they give the best customer experience. They have spent a lot of time with the team ensuring their branding, styling and salon all follow a high-end unique customer experience which the area hasn’t seen before. The idea behind this is that the experience the salon offers will bring the customers to it.
So focus on your aim first.
What should you include in your Marketing Plan?
There are lots of different elements that can go into a marketing plan, but it honestly depends on your business as to what you should include. Some questions you should ask yourself when deciding what marketing to do are:
- Where are your current customers coming from? Was it mainly word of mouth or did you buy leads or attend business fairs or did your business come from search engine positions?
- How much time do you have spare to action your marketing plan?
- How much money are you willing to spend on implementing your marketing plan?
Once you know the above and you have your aim in place you are in a good position to start thinking about the elements you want to include in your marketing plan.
Elements that could be in a marketing plan?
Blue Whale Media alone has +20 services which all come under marketing. I will go through some of the basics
Social Media
Social Media Marketing has changed over the years and whilst it is widely recognised that Google does judge you on how active you are on Social Media it may not be your main focus. There are multiple platforms and you really need to review which one will work best for you and ensure that you can keep up with what is required.
Video
Video Marketing has really taken off in 2019 and is set to be huge in 2020. The great thing with Video Marketing is that it can work hand in hand with other elements of Marketing like Social Media Marketing and website Marketing. Getting some professionally produced videos created which you can share on multiple platforms can be a great way of killing two birds with one stone as they say.
Link Building
If like most companies your business requires Google more than anything else to provide it with business, then link building is a must to ensure you can maintain or achieve the required SEO rankings in Google’s search results. This can be a tedious option as reaching out to bloggers and other webmasters and attempting to get a decent link can take plenty of time and attempts.
Content
As the saying goes Content is King. It may sound like a corny saying but content writing is one of the most effective forms of Marketing around. Google will not rank you for services or areas it does not know you operate in and content is the only way to get this information to the google bots. Again, to put this in perspective though it generally takes about 10 blogs per week per service per location you want to rank for. Blue Whale Media charge £25 + VAT per blog.
Website
Do not go into an online marketing strategy with a poorly setup website. It is a complete waste of time and money. If your website doesn’t have its structure in place or it’s tagging competed then you are wasting money directing any traffic to it.
PPC
Pay Per Click can be a great way to get quick results/sales. Whilst it is normally fairly costly (Google aren’t one of the wealthiest companies by chance) it can help you get the results you need quickly. Please ensure you have your campaigns setup correctly though otherwise you will again be spending money without achieving any results.
How can Blue Whale Media Ltd help you?
As I briefly motioned at the beginning of this blog (some 1300 words ago) Blue Whale Media Ltd are launching a new service in 2020.
We will be putting together a package where our four department heads come into your business and evaluate all the above elements and put together a marketing plan for you.
There will be no obligation to then use Blue Whale Media Ltd to implement this plan but you will have an achievable plan you can implement for your business in 2020.
If you would like more information of this service please don’t hesitate to contact myself or Eve our head on marketing on [email protected] or [email protected]
Thank you for reading
Stephanie Sweeney – Operations Director – Blue Whale Media Ltd
