eStrategy Development > Social Media Marketing
You want to use social media to boost your marketing, but need help developing a strategy and plan...
Even though there are more channels than there have ever been, basic marketing concepts are still fundamentally important. John Jantsch, in his book Duct Tape Marketing, developed the marketing hourglass to capture the progress of a prospect from initial exposure through the buying process and after the sale has been made.
The Marketing Hourglass© by John Jantsch
The Easiest Way to Explain the Marketing Process
- Know—the prospect gets to know you and becomes aware of your brand
- Like—the prospect becomes more familiar with your organization and comes to like your products and service offerings
- Trust—the prospect starts to trust that you can deliver on your brand promise and, in turn, that will help them achieve their goals
- Try—the prospect has the opportunity to sample the product or service before committing
- Buy—the prospect converts to being a customer by purchasing a product that exactly meets their needs
- Repeat—by maintaining a relationship with the customer—understanding their changing needs and exposing them to additional products that can help them fill those needs—the organization can cross-sell other products and services into the customer base
- Refer—establishing and promoting a strong referral program helps turn customers into advocates who promote your products and services to their friends and colleagues.
Understanding these steps is part of the picture. You have to set goals, develop a strategy, implement, measure your results, and iterate in order to be successful. Your goals can be aligned with the phases of the marketing hourglass so you know how and why you’re doing what you’re doing. Capturing and understand metrics, including Web analytics, pay-per-click analysis and social media influence, help you make adjustments to your strategy to continuously improve your results.
Successful internet marketing is based on a solid understanding of your marketing goals, according to Beth Kanter on Beth’s Blog. With that in mind, we collaborate with you to answer the following questions:
- What are your goals?
- What would success look like?
- What will you measure?
- What tool or tools you will use to gather measurements?
- What plan will you follow to achieve your goals?
- What is the value of success or cost of failure?
We believe it’s important to understand or create a marketing strategy that supports the marketing hourglass before developing a tactical implementation plan. The Web, internet and social media marketing compliment traditional marketing techniques and must be woven together to be successful.
Together we’ll develop a specific action plan to integrate social media marketing into your organization’s marketing plan to help you connect with users and drive traffic to your site.