If you are responsible for the marketing activities of your company, you are probably in the throes of cobbling together a new strategy for 2016. And you may be putting together a sample marketing plan and trying to determine it's potential for success.
Content Marketing Predictions to Inform Your Sample Marketing Plan
Before you pull the trigger on your marketing plan for the new year, check out these content marketing predictions for 2016. The folks at Curata cobbled together responses from over 25 of the most influential content marketers and created this snazzy infographic.
It has been mapped out by five major categories: distribution, investment, content creation, measurement/ROI, and organizational structure.
How to Know When You Need Help With Your Sample Marketing Plan
There are a variety of approaches you can take with Internet, or inbound, marketing. The following steps for a sample plan are a great guide for covering all the essential tactics and tasks. Flexibility and experimentation is encouraged - don't feel you have to be tied down to a plan "just because" you were told it works.
Here are 13 steps for building an effective and affordable marketing plan:
- Determine your marketing strategy goals: What are your specific objectives?
- Create benchmarks for current sales and marketing metrics: How are you doing right now?
- Define your ideal lead or customer: Everyone is not your customer!
- Define your buyer personas: You probably have more than one type of customer.
- Research and select keywords: What words do people use to search for businesses like yours?
- Review your search engine optimization (SEO) checklist: Are you really optimizing to be found?
- Delegate website management and content creation: Someone's got to manage the work!
- Launch and develop your business blog: Whether it's in-house, or outsourced, get it going.
- Create landing pages with lead generation and content: The more, the better!
- Set up social media accounts and build your online presence: Not for you, but for you business...
- Delegate social media monitoring: It may be free, but it costs time and effort to do it well.
- Set up email marketing campaigns: Yes, email still rocks!
- Track, measure and analyze ongoing results: If you don't measure it, you can't improve it.
Getting Help for Your Affordable Internet Marketing Plan
Using content and inbound marketing can do wonders for your business. But achieving your marketing objectives with a content marketing strategy takes time. It won't happen with a few blog posts or some other great content. People will need to consume your content for a while before they contact you. Yet, without your content compelling them to contact you, your goals may never be met.
The good news is that you don't have to figure out alone. In fact, one of the best investments you can make with your marketing budget is to partner with a solid firm like BroadVision Marketing. Click on the button below to get your free Marketing Action Plan (MAP) guide so you can make an informed decision, or call BroadVision Marketing at 707-799-1238.
Jaco Grobbelaar is the owner and CMO of BroadVision Marketing. BroadVision Marketing works with business owners to put in place inbound and outbound marketing strategies that consistently secure new clients. The BroadVision Marketing Training Center is located in Petaluma, CA and primarily serves companies in the San Francisco Bay area.
Jaco can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.766.9778 or connect with Jaco on Facebook -www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing - and LinkedIn -www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.