Whether you are a solopreneur or taking on a business that hasn’t had anyone focussing efforts into online marketing the process is exactly the same. Your tools and budget may vary, but you are walking the same path.

Start off by asking the 5 W’s and an H

WHO is my audience?

this is the foundation of your business. Understand who your customers are. Motivations, demographics, locations, income levels, fear, ambitions. It's a deep dive into their psyche. Chances are you will have multiple audiences. We’ll dive into how to identify and create those a little later. Most businesses have several audiences and personas to identify. Know who your audience ISNT is just as important on this journey.

WHAT do they want? Do your research

This can be as detailed as services but make sure you exhaust your queries around keywords and searches, platforms, doing competitive analysis, their USPs, and any industry white papers, trends and stats. This can also change over time and trends need to not only be top of mind in rapidly changing business landscape, and making sure you are servicing with the latest tools and best practices.

WHERE do I advertise?

Well, this is the million-dollar question. It’s so unique to every business. Platforms like LinkedIn have a really different audience to Pinterest and Snapchat. You need to figure out what platforms your industry is spending the most time on. We think the non-negotiables are Facebook. This is purely from a trust factor. If you don’t exist on Facebook then most people don’t think you exist, you are not as easy to find in Searches, its a lead source no matter what you think, and it’s super easy to manage and should be part of your overall social media strategy.

Twitter is 240 character bites of news and opinions, and if you have one, then it’s a great way to gather an industry following in bite-sized chunks. LinkedIn will be the most likely platform along with your website industry blog. These are also the platforms you’re going to want to advertise on, build your funnels and migrate them from socials to your website so they are self-contained within your ecosystem.

WHEN is the right to advertise?

This process will be iterated, developed and tested. Know your audience. What they need and when they need it. Google extensions and goals set to calls for local restaurants during business hours are vastly different to fashion labels doing a black Friday sale. Timing is important. As is follow up to your leads and funnels.

WHY would they choose you?

Long after the new car smell has worn off the leather is starting to flake, you offer lasting value. You have built trust in your brand. Your customers are now brand advocates and lifetime customers who will come back to buy from you like the best service, most knowledgable and trustworthy person in your industry.

You provide and the right message for what they want when they want it.  You are there when they are researching or intent on buying. Your ads are working!

 HOW do we measure success?

There are as many ways to measure every step and action that you take with your marketing efforts. Analytics and Metrics can be measured across every channel and be compiled show you truly what your Return on Investment is (ROI. Using SMART goals (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) help make sure that your goals can be measured accurately.

Starting at the top of your funnel (awareness), to leads (acquisition), Calls to Action (conversion) and re-purchasing, we can establish the lifetime value (CLTV) of your clients. And what you will need to pay for the cost of acquisition (CPA) for each lead. On social media, you can track your owned (your properties) earned (engagement) and Paid (PPC) ads.

Develop your Buyer Personas

Now that we know all the W’s we need to lock in your personas. The research you have done up to now will inform this process. Our favourite tool for this is (Hubspot). They allow us to develop as many personas as we want and tailor our messages precisely.

Segment your clients as well as you can. There will never be a perfect fit for all of them but you’ll start to see major trends in service, skills, demographics, and goals.

For example, you might have 3 segments: high net worth, new investors, and current investors.

Demographics - Most common demographics are Age, Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Geographic Area, Educational, Income, background and skills. These details will help you find your demographic much easier. For example, if you were to look for High Net Worth Investors on Facebook, you can use all the demographics you know about that segment of customer (38-55), Lives in CBD, Darling Hill, Toorak, Male, MBA Uni-level, CEO level, drives a black BMW, Audi, Maserati, Bentley, or Mercedes-Benz, Investment banks, wears Ted Baker & Florsheim, shops at David Jones and Woolworths, listens to KissFM, drinks Belvedere, is a Qantas platinum member. As much as you can dig into your clients the better our pinpoint targeting can be.

Goals

Knowing not only what your KPI’s are for your website goals, but tying them to your website goals is key.

When we talk about how we track ROI for your website fees and advertising we need to be able to track that back to a business goal - a purchase, a lead, awareness & branding campaigns etc. For example: If you were to track your sign-ups and knew that it took 5 leads to get someone to become a client with a lifetime value of $10,000, then you know you are happy spending $500 getting those leads and converting them. Leads = customers. Your CPA (cost per acquisition) is $500 but your return is $9500. 

Setting your goals in business are always tied to your goals on your website. The closer you can get to determine your important goals, and measuring them, the more you will understand the processes are working or not.

Pain points

Every solution has a problem.  Every client has a problem that needs to be solved. They will be as diverse and varied as your clients are. Choose one or several. But not all of them. You’ll end up splitting hairs and micro-managing far too many issues.

Wordstream uses these:

• Financial Pain Points: Your prospects are spending too much money on their current provider/solution/products and want to reduce their spend
• Productivity Pain Points: Your prospects are wasting too much time using their current provider/solution/products or want to use their time more efficiently
• Process Pain Points: Your prospects want to improve internal processes, such as assigning leads to sales reps or nurturing lower-priority leads
• Support Pain Points: Your prospects aren’t receiving the support they need at critical stages of the customer journey or sales process

Get your clients the information they need before it becomes a pain point like knowing shipping costs and service fees in advance. This not only allows the client to self-select if out of their financial reach but also to make sure they know all of the costs upfront so there are no surprises.