Planning your content strategically will ensure your digital marketing activities all support your goals.
Step 3. Create a content planning grid
So far, you’ve established your customers’ process, and where/how they interact online — time to plan how you can fit into this equation specifically.
Fill in the cells where your customers’ purchasing process and your digital media meet. Put the phases in the process across the top and the media/channels down the left hand column (Ex. Process: Trends, Ideas, How To, Products, Comparison, Buy; Ex. Media: Site, Blog, Social, Mobile, Video). Start filling in the general topics, questions, resources. These will serve as the themes for the content and pages you will create to meet your customer’s needs. This will help you see the bigger picture of how to implement an integrated digital marketing plan effectively to serve your audience(s).
Later, you will should prioritize the contents/themes of the grid and assign it to an editorial calendar. Having this framework will save you time and ensure that all of the content you create will be strategic. Figure out what the customer process and channels mean to your brand and brand strategy — and plan accordingly.
Your digital marketing efforts will be significantly easier to measure when you understand why you’re doing it, what you should measure and how it all fits into the bigger picture. The purpose of any page, discussion or post related to a cell in your grid, should be clear to you and to your audience. Once you meet the customer need with the content, remember your goal… what is the next logical step? The call to action and goal should be to move users to the next phase and closer to a purchase. This also gives you some specific ways to measure each element.
You may find that you already have many of these elements, but realize you need to reorganize the information and resources in a more logical way. You also may find that you have some of these resources offline, but need to create electronic versions to use online. Another thing to think about is what media/channel you’re using for something that is successful for you now — how can you use it in other media/channels as well to magnify this success? If it’s a download, maybe make a video, create a blog series, start some social media discussions around it and create a mobile-friendly version. For more on reimagining content in different ways, I recommend reading Content Rules by Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs.com.
Of course every person does not have the same needs and preferences, though they will follow a standard general process the vast majority of the time. That means you need to figure out what different types of shoppers or personas are your consumers, and plan your content to meet those different types. Try to keep this in mind when filling out your grid. You can probably glean this from available market research in your industry.
Also do a competitor analysis and see what pieces of your grid they have covered and where the gaps are. You may want to prioritize some of the gaps to exploit your advantage in the search space, or social media space specifically.
By the time you have finished this content map, you will be well prepared to move forward. The next step, is analyzing keyword trends at each phase to assess where your focus should be for SEO when creating the content you have just laid out. This may also make you aware of some additional content you will need to create based on trends you uncover.
The Bottom Line: Don’t spin your wheels creating content on a one-off basis. Know how each piece fits into your integrated digital marketing strategy, what the purpose and goal is, and how you can measure it.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post, for more on keyword research.
Your customers are already online – find them and figure out where you can fit in with your online marketing activities
Step 2. Find your customers online
Create a presence where a presence already exists. Don’t expect that your customers will automatically come to you once you create an online presence. Use the tools like the ones below to find your customers and competitors. Once you listen to what’s out there, you can learn where your opportunities are and plan your digital marketing and social media engagement strategy accordingly. Ultimately this will help you build your credibility as an expert and build relationships. When you are an expert and people trust you, you can influence the conversations, opinions and behavior in this space. This is essentially the social engagement strategy I recommend at it’s most basic: Listen – Learn – Engage – Influence. I highly recommend Brian Solis’ book Engage, which solely focuses on engagement (obviously) and follows this general strategic pattern.
Web Sites
What are the top sites and blogs for your industry or subject matter? Follow the RSS feeds and keep up with what’s trending. Use Google Alerts to follow topics of importance, and check Technorati for the top blogs on relevant topics. These are free resources you can use to see what else is out there for your customer. Who is doing it right? Where are the gaps you can fill? Are there companies doing well in this space you can partner with?
Social Media
For B2B digital marketing, start with LinkedIn Groups and join the groups your customers and competitors would join. This is a topic for a whole other blog, but LinkedIn Groups is the most benecial B2B social medium to get involved with. Groups are a great place to learn what is trending, what people are talking about and where you can contribute to the conversation.
Do your customers use Facebook? I’ll answer that for you – YES! You need to be there engaging with them. Create a business or brand page and create a Facebook places listing (directory listing, particularly for local businesses) for each of your physical locations. Facebook will play an important part in your digital marketing strategy, as the vast majority of Americans are on Facebook today and they do follow and engage with brands and businesses there.
Are they on Twitter? Yes! Find them using tools like Twellow for local tweeps, Klout and Tweet Grader to find out who the influencers are on your subject matter or geographic area, Tweetdeck to follow your 
relevant hashtags (#keyword). These hashtags will play a role later in developing your digital marketing strategy content grid. You want to be known as a topic expert – so identify the topics and people already trending. It’s also important to know Twitter users are more influential than Facebook users in their social groups when it comes to brands. They are also more likely to follow a brand with an intent to purchase.
Check social bookmarking sites, like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious and Reddit to follow relevant topic links/bookmarks (and note where you can fit your site/blog/tools into the picture). Follow the relevant influencers to see what moves them.
Find relevant YouTube.com videos and channels. Start to get a sense of where in the process videos make sense for the customers. What types of videos on your relevant topics get the most likes, favorites and comments? YouTube is the top place consumers (even B2B) search for videos, so it should fit into your digital marketing strategy somewhere.
Find mobile apps for your industry or subject matter. What is getting the most downloads and best ratings? What types of information and tools are you customers looking for on the go? Is there an idea that hasn’t been developed you could run with? Is there a popular mobile app that you can get plugged into? Mobile MUST be a part of your digital strategy, as recent estimates put an average of seven mobile devices in the hands of each American by 2020. If nothing else, your site must be optimized for mobile viewing.
The Bottom Line: Don’t expect the Web to revolve around you. Go to your customers where they are, and join the conversation in a polite, useful and genuine way with your digital marketing activities.
Watch for tomorrow’s post on Step 3: Create a content planning grid.
Your Digital Marketing Strategy Starts with Understanding the Customers’ Process
Step 1. Map your customers’ purchasing process
There is usually a logical progression of steps a customer (whether B2B of B2C) must go through to finally end up purchasing your product, service or solution. Think of yourself as the GPS to the destination – the purchase. You need to figure out the path, find your customers on the path (more appropriately help them find you) and lead them step by step in a very natural manner using your digital marketing activities, including: social media posts, your Web site, social networking tools, blogging, videos, images and other elements that will fall into your digital marketing plan.
Typically, it will start with a research phase. What type of research would they be doing? What is the business or personal problem your product, services or solutions solve?
From there is usually gets more specific at each phase. Do they need ideas, case studies, how-to information, product information, comparison information, local business information? You will use these phases to align your digital marketing strategy with the customer’s process as closely as possible. By understanding the “need behind the need” you can attract customers earlier in the purchasing process and stay engaged with them down the sales/purchasing funnel.
The Bottom Line: Know your customers’ process so you can align yourself to make the journey with them!
Read tomorrow’s post for Step 2 for getting started on your digital strategy: Find your customers online.
Marketing Consulting, Web Design & Strategy
Developed a comprehensive strategic integrated marketing plan for the online casting video database company (Launching in July/August, 2010). Consulted and managed the design and development of the front-end for PIXME2.com’s Web site, including the logo design and integration of video as well as social media tools and pages.
PIXME2.com’s Web site and online actor’s video database tool set to launch in July/August of 2010.
Email or call 248-854-4822 for the password to view work samples from this and other projects.
