Anne-Marie Lacey is Managing Director of Filament PR, an agency specialising in the lifestyle, leisure and entertainment sectors. Here, she talks through the steps you need to take, to get your marketing communications off to a strategic start this New Year.
Set out what you want to achieve:
Start by setting out some objectives for the year ahead. Ask yourself what do you want to achieve, and more importantly, why? Whatever your end goal is for your marketing communications in 2018, make sure its aligned to your overall organisational objectives. Don’t forget to make them SMART so you can evaluate your success. Your objectives should be specific, measureable, achievable, realistic and timely.
Review and refine:
Whatever your end goal is for your marketing communications in 2018, make sure its aligned to your overall organisational objectives.
Anne-Marie LaceyNow you know where you’re going, you need to look back at where you’ve been. Review your marketing communications activity over the past 365 days. What’s worked well for you? What hasn’t hit the mark? It will massively help you to plan what you need to do to achieve your objectives into the New Year and beyond.
Listen and learn:
Listen to your different audiences. Learn who they are. What’s important to them? What are their pain points and how can your organisation help to meet their needs? Whether they’re existing customers you can call, a survey you can send, or observing conversations on social media, this is a crucial step in your understanding. You want to find out not only what your audience thinks of your organisation, but what their perceptions are of your competitors, what their purchasing behaviours look like, and who influences them throughout the buying cycle.
Develop key messages:
Having listened to your audiences, next it’s time to develop a suite of key messages. Articulate what your organisation – its products and services – is all about in relation to their wants and needs, and why you’re different to the rest. A handy little acronym is DRIP; your key messages should work to differentiate, remind, inform and persuade your audiences that your organisation is the right fit for them.
Where in the world?
Having done your homework, you’ll be able to determine which channels of communication your audiences use. If they spend more time on LinkedIn and reading trade publications, don’t bother with Facebook or glossy magazines. You get the picture. Also think about when not only where your audiences engage with organisations. What times of the day or week are they most active, when are the quieter times you want to avoid? Use this information to plan a content calendar of what you’re going to say, where you’re going to say it and when you’re going to say it.
Create content:
No one likes to be sold to. Using your key messages as a basis, create branded content that is interesting, educational, funny, whatever it might be that appeals to your target audience. Remember the 70/20/10 rule too. 70% of the time your branded content shouldn’t include any sales messages or calls to action. 20% of the time is a good amount to talk about your products and services, without the hard sell. And finally, the remaining 10% of time is where you include your calls to action for people to buy, sign up, donate whatever your end objective might be.
Test and tweak:
So now you’re sharing branded content that is highly targeted and relevant to your audiences, you need to keep tabs that your efforts are on track to help you achieve your end goal. Test your activity and if it’s not hitting the mark, tweak it until it works for you. Remember, this is why you set your SMART objectives in the first place so you can engage with the right people, at the right time and in the right way to achieve your end goal.
