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I wish I could say there is a magic button for effectively marketing your business. Unfortunately, there is not. As a business owner, you must have both a clear picture of your business’s unique selling propositions (USPs) and of your target market. Without clarity about these things, marketing efforts will be frustrating, meaningless, and fruitless.

Marketing Myth-Busting

Before we get into the guide to creating an effective marketing strategy, let’s dispel some myths.

Myth 1: Marketing plans should be robust and contain lots of information if they are to be successful. This simply isn’t true in most cases. Depending on the size of your company, often, a one-page marketing strategy is more effective than something longer. A one-page strategy can be accomplished with fewer resources and still have the same financial impact on the business.

Myth 2: Effective marketing plans should always follow a certain format. Again, this is untrue. How you format your strategy has absolutely no impact on its effectiveness. Whether your strategy is in word format, or any other format doesn’t matter.  What matters are your resources, knowledge of what should be done, and the ability to execute on the activities.

Myth 3: Once in place, your marketing plan should not change.  We must understand the target market we service is going to change over time. Evolution is a part of life, and your business is no exception. Because markets change, your marketing plan will also need to pivot with market demands. Success today doesn’t always mean success tomorrow.

Your Step-By-Step Guide

Ask yourself the following questions and allow the answers to help you build your successful marketing plan.

Setting Your Revenue Goals

What are your company’s revenue goals?

Begin by specifying your desired revenue increase, such as aiming for a $200,000 boost by year-end. Break this down into actionable steps: increasing your email list by 75%, boosting web traffic by 125%, enhancing online engagement by 200%, and finally, multiplying your impressions by 400%. While it might seem complex, the essence is to recognize that achieving your main goal involves interconnected steps in your marketing strategy.

Evaluating Your Marketing Strategy

How effective is your current marketing strategy?

Examine what elements of your marketing have been successful and which have not. Use data to guide your assessment, avoiding reliance on intuition alone. It’s crucial to base decisions on concrete data to steer your company effectively.

Learning From Competitors

What insights can you gain from your competitors’ marketing strategies?

Investigate your competitors by searching your business type online and studying their landing pages and SEM strategies on platforms like Google and social media. The objective is to identify areas for improvement and effective strategies you can adopt.

Understanding Your Market

Have you accurately identified and communicated with your target market?

Ensure you understand your target market to avoid misallocating resources. For instance, if you’re in residential plumbing, focus your efforts there rather than on the commercial sector. Consider how your pricing strategy affects your target market, aiming for a demographic that aligns with your pricing and service offerings.

Incorporating the 4 P’s

Does your strategy effectively use the 4 P’s of marketing?

Product, Price, Promotion, and Placement are key. Your product must meet consumer demand, priced appropriately for the market. Promotion should aim to emotionally connect with your target market, creating urgency and offering solutions. Placement is about where and how your product or service is presented, which should be appealing to your target demographic.

Choosing Marketing Channels

Which channels are most frequented by your target market?

Focus on channels where your target market is most active, whether it be Google, Facebook, Instagram, or others. It’s better to excel in a few channels than to spread your efforts too thinly across many.

Crafting Your Message

What is your market messaging strategy?

Engage your target market with questions to spark interest. Use value-driven statements to highlight the benefits of your offerings. Tailor your messaging to resonate with your audience’s needs and preferences.

Planning Your Marketing Budget

How will you budget for marketing?

Your marketing budget should be a function of what your business can realistically afford, not just what you wish to spend. Typically, marketing budgets range from 5-10% of revenue, but the key is to align with your financial capabilities and overall business budget.

Implementing Your Marketing Plan

How do you plan to execute your marketing strategy?

You have three main options: manage it yourself, hire a full-time employee, or engage an outside firm. Each has its benefits and drawbacks, from the hands-on involvement and knowledge retention of doing it yourself to the expertise and broad perspective an outside firm can offer. Choose the option that aligns best with your company’s financial situation and marketing needs.

As a small business owner or a corporate pro; there will come a time when you will have to repair something that is negatively affecting your digital marketing strategies. It will never be as easy as correcting one issue and allowing the rest to fall where it may. You might think that if you fix one problem that should fix it all, it won’t, so you should consider dismantling the entire situation and rebuilding.

We want to take the time to provide you with the critical information required and some tips that will repair your broken digital marketing strategy.

You Must Begin By Understanding The Audience You’re Targeting:

• The moment you realize that your digital marketing strategies may be in ill repair, you must gather your team and thought leaders to begin your brainstorming sessions. Go back to the beginning and study the audience you’re targeting. As technology continues to advance, you may start to see an evolution in the needs of your clients/customers. If you encounter this, you may find that you’re not clear and therefore will need to consider tweaking your digital marketing strategy.
• Try reconnecting with your targeted audience. Try to locate its most significant issues and understand how it may be engaging itself with your business.

It May Be Time to Redefine Your Business:

• If the way that you are engaging with your market is beginning to evolve, then continued engagement will be critical. You will need to offer consistency with your online messages. While you’re doing this, you will have the opportunity to redefine your business and be confident that your clients/customers understand their importance to you as a business owner. Your clients/customers may not be receiving the message of what your business means to them.

• Are you, as a small business owner aware that 1 in 3 users of social media would prefer social media client services as opposed to speaking to someone on the phone or participating in email exchanges? When a potential client/customer poses a question to you via social media, it’s critical that you provide the information they are requesting. A friendly, personal, and trustworthy answer is essential to remaining in front of them as much as possible.
• Should you find that you’re dealing with a demanding client/customer about your products or services on social media, then that is where you need to respond to them. This quick response in kind will provide you the opportunity to clarify within the social media venue that you are willing to go above and beyond to resolve their problem as immediately as possible and are eager to go above and beyond. This interaction is very similar to standing on a stage with millions of people watching. As a point of fact, that’s what is happening precisely.
• Social Media is far more than a place to post content. You must remember that this medium can be a delicate balancing act. You need this medium for your digital marketing strategy.
• Social Media is a tool to establish yourself as the thought leader that you are. The more of this that your audience sees, the better they understand just whom they are dealing with when they consider your business for their products/services.
• According to SBA Social Media is utilized by more than 3 billion people.As a small business owner, you should be well aware that your target audience IS somewhere on social media at all times. You need to be there for them or consider placing a social media specialist in your stead.
• Only you can build trust through consistency with your clients/customers. On average it requires eight contacts with members of your target audience to achieve a sale.
• It’s time to make your business future-centric. Social media is here to stay, no doubt about it! The success of your small business in many ways will depend upon your footprint in the digital world. It’s part of your business; it’s time to accept it.

Social media is a two-way street. It requires a lot of conversation. Be confident that you are giving the content you want to share with your audience. If your clients/customers are not engaged, your strategies will continue to fail your business. Stay in front of your audience, personalize email communications and keep the discussions positive. Before you know it, you’ll be back on track again.

At Cogent Analytics, we never stop looking for ways to improve your business and neither should you. So, check out some of our other posts for helpful business information:

Not all small business owners/managers are familiar with marketing terms and how understanding their meanings will benefit them as they continue to grow in the global electronic community. We would like to provide this extensive list of marketing terms and their definitions so that small business owners will become more educated in what they are and how they are instrumental in business planning.

This is a categorized and defined list of marketing terms that you’ll have the ability to bookmark and refer to as often as you need.
As 2019 approaches, these terms will become even more important to small business owners. Take some time to look over these terms and definitions as you can.

Beginning With the Top Need-to-Know Terms –
• Analytics – An interpretation and discovery process of data that a company has input into their analysis software that will predict trends.
• Algorithm -A sorting process that takes place internally. Online platforms use this information to show written content that visitors would be most interested in reviewing
• Brand Identity – This would best be described as the personality traits and characteristics that would best define your company or organization. It’s your company’s entire message and the selected identity that will be viewed by the world outside the business.
• Cross-Channel Marketing – This is a strategy that shall promote an identical message across several channels. Important to know for business planning and budgets
• Conversion Rate – This is the rate in which your clients/customers will actually complete a step that creates a conversion to a sale of goods or services.
• Engagement Rate – This is the rate in which specific followers tend to engage with social media content.
• Experiential Marketing – is a marketing strategy that engages and therefore connects consumers with brands, live and in-person, up close and personal.
• Evergreen Content – This type of content is one that is relevant regardless of the time of year.
• Inbound Marketing– By use of informational content that is created by a brand, company or organization, this is a strategy that is used to attract clients/customers that will come to the brand as a result of the content provided.
• Influencer – One who is well known and well followed in a social media environment. Followers are often moved to a call to action by these people to consider trying products/services they endorse.
• Impressions – This is the number of clicks your published advertisement or content experiences views.
• Key Performance Indicators (KPI) – Are generally used in business planning to measure against goals and also in marketing to measure the effectiveness of campaigns against investment. (ROI)

• Keyword – Words or terms that are used by search engines so that they may categorize search results.
• Lead Nurturing – An avenue used to assist in guiding potential clients/customers to purchase from one particular company, brand or organization.
• Long Tail Keywords – A composition of short phrases that are shortened to provide specificity pertaining to what is being sold.
• Meta Description – This is an HTML tag of approximately 150 characters that will summarize the content of a page. This metadata is provided by search engines generally when the phrase is actually listed in the description. It’s important to know that optimization of the meta description is vital for ‘on page’ search engine optimization (SEO).
• Marketing Funnel – The way that a company guides a client/customer from mere prospects to buyers and repeat clients/customers.
• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) – Would be a lead that a marketing person or team would consider viable in comparison to other leads based on actions taken by the potential client/customer while they visited a website.
• On-Page Optimization (or on-page SEO) – Is any change that can be made within a website that will provide an improvement in search rankings.
• Organic Traffic – Persons who make it to your website not because they’ve been influenced by ads, influencers or any type of paid content, but purely because the web page had been ranked by specific keywords and drew the interest of the visitor.
• Page Views – A number provided stating how many times a brand’s page has been reviewed.
• Page Authority (PA) – A score that Moz had developed to predict how well any page would within search engine results pages; also known as (SERP). The scores will fit into a range between 1 and 100. The greater the number, the better the page is likely to rank.
• Reach – When statistics are applied to the analytics of advertising and media this would refer to an overall number of various people who have been exposed at least one time to a particular medium during the span of a specific period of time.
• TOFU -MOFU-BOFU Funnels – Top of the Funnel (TOFU), Middle of the Funnel (MOFU), Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) – All of the stages in a marketing funnel.
• User Generated Content – This is a form of content that is created by persons who are fans or unpaid persons who contribute with various forms of media that will promote a brand as opposed to the brand promoting itself.
• Unique Selling Position (USP) – A benefit that a company, product and/or service exhibits that will allow them to stand out among other competitors.

Pay Particular Attention to the Following Terms as All SMBs Should be Aware of Their Meanings:
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) – This is the ability of a machine (computer) to imitate the intelligence of the behaviors of humans.
• Average Revenue Per User or Unit (ARPU) – This is a measure that is generally utilized by networking companies, digital media companies or consumer communications entities. It’s the total amount of revenue that is then divided by the number of active subscribers.
• Business to Business (B2B) – Marketing or sales that occur between 2 businesses.
• Business to Customer (B2C) – Sales and/or marketing that will occur between a business and it’s clients/customers.
• Big Data – These are very large sets of data that are likely used for analyzing trends, patterns, and associations that will generally relate to human interactions and behaviors.
• Brand Identity – A message that is created by the use of taglines, logos, the tone of the message etc that will enhance the appeal and provide a consistent message for its audience.
• Buyer Persona – A summarization of specific data to include but not limited to; interests, hobbies, patterns of purchases and demographics. These summaries will provide clearer information pertaining to who may be more likely to purchase a business’s products/services.
• Churn Rate – A calculated percentage rate in which clients/customers will end subscription to a service.
• Conversion Rate – This is any company’s calculated percentage of website visitors who become purchasing clients/customers.
• Cross Chanel Marketing – Also known as multi-channel or omnichannel marketing provides client/customer engagement across all channels and through any device. This will monitor and track the data pertaining to customer/client movements and actions.
• Customer Insights – Also known as a consumer insight – Interprets those trends in human behavior that will assist in increasing the effectiveness of a particular product and/or service on behalf of the consumer and creates increases in sales. This will mutually benefit both the merchant and consumer.
• Customer Journey – A full client/customer experience (to include the number of interactions with a company or brand) leading up to the point of purchase from a brand or company.
• Demographics – This is defined as any statistical data that is related to the population in specific areas and the groups within the area.
• Hard Offer – Is an offer to purchase something for less; after a soft offer has been presented and there has been no response. The goal is to get the consumer to purchase before leaving a site. The product or service would be paid for in advance before the product/service is provided.
• Lifecycle Stages – These are the various stages that your audience will experience while they consider purchasing a product/service. They research, consider a purchase, purchase the product/service and purchase again, post-purchase of the product/service being offered.
• Machine Learning (ML) – This is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI). Involving computational science; uses statistical techniques and methods that allow a computer a way to learn from the data input and not manual programming.
• Marketing Funnel – The paths taken by clients/customers that will continue to nurture and guide them through to a sale through a company or organization.
• Marketing Trend – This is a perceived probability that a financial market could perhaps move in some specific direction in time. Trends are classified as “secular” for longer time frames; “primary” for a middle amount of trending time and “secondary for shorter time periods.
• Market Segment(ation) – This is a process of the division of a particular market of clients/customers into groups. The groups are comprised of consumers who are likely to have similar responses to various marketing strategies. The consumers possess common needs, interests, locations and other traits.
• Niche Market – A smaller branch of a core market whereas the focus is on a specific product or service. The niche is features of the product or service that would better satisfy a market’s needs, quality of production, price, and demographics for which it’s intended to impact.
• Objective – A specific goal that a business owner would like their business to reach.
• Omnichannel – The integration of retail that sells across different channels i.e. a bricks and mortar store, online or by telephone.
• Pain Points – The various problems or issues being currently experienced by a customer/client that may lead a client or customer to purchase a product or service from a business.
• Return on Investment (ROI) – The monetary gain received per each dollar spent on strategies or tactics that have been used to market a product/service.
• Strategy – A forward-looking and long-term approach in business planning to creating a plan with a goal of achieving a competitive and sustainable advantage.
• Tactics – A plan or means that will help a business reach a specific goal. These are usually planned to support the strategies outlined during business planning process.
• Target Audience – A specific group of people to whom an advertising campaign would be aimed as they are the most likely group that would be willing to purchase the products or services that a business specializes in selling.

Social Media Terms and Definitions –
• Algorithm – A process of problem-solving operations and methods used by a computer that would provide posts that would be most interesting to the user upon inquiry.
• Engagement Rate – This is a rate that followers engage with content on social media.
• Followers – Users of social media who have opted to follow a particular social media page.
• Hashtag (#) – This is a phrase that precedes the # sign that provides a specific identity to a post regarding a particular topic.
• Impressions – This is when an ad is fetched from the source making the fetch countable.
• News Feed – News that is transmitted by an internet newsgroup or broadcaster.
• Reach – Is an application of stats to analyze media and refers to the number or amount of different people and/or households who are exposed to any medium of advertising at least one time.
• Social Proof/Social Influence – This is a social phenomenon that is psychological in nature whereas one may imitate the actions of others who appear successful in receiving approval because they would like to reflect behaviors that would also be true and correct in any given situation.
• Share of Voice– This is known to be used to “represent the relative portion of ad inventory available to a single advertiser within a defined market over a specified time period.” (Advergize)
• Social Media Campaign – Increases focus measurability and targeting for the purpose of reinforcing or assisting with the goal a business has set and will carry out on one or various media platforms.
• User-Generated Content – A written story or a content piece that is created about a specific brand by a user who would like to share information about the brand to their network of followers.

Digital Marketing Terms –
• Bounce Rate – This represents a number or percentage of visitors who actually enter a website and leaves immediately as opposed to continuing to tour the site. This term is used most often in the analysis of web traffic.
• Chabot – Is basically a computer program that is specifically designed to converse with human users usually online, however, there are also auditory chatbots that exist within many bricks and mortar business’ that allow users to communicate with a bot telephonically.
• E-Commerce – Online platforms that make it possible to make selling and purchasing possible online and instrumental in business planning.
• Gamification – Is an application that contains various typical elements of gameplay. Some examples would be rules, competition with other users, scoring points etc…) Overall it’s an online marketing strategy or technique that encourages engagement with a particular product/service.
• Geo-Targeting – An advertising technique that is often utilized to target more local clients/customers by the delivery of varied content or advertising to a site user based on geographical location.
• Lead Scoring – A method of ranking prospective buyers by the perceived value that each lead would offer according to the probability of purchase. The score would be used to decide which leads would engage in the order of priority.
• Live stream – The transmittal and/or reception of live video coverage of a particular event that can be experienced by way of the internet.
• Marketing Automation – Is a form of technology that provides businesses the ability to increase efficiency and improve engagement with customers/clients so that they may increase revenue at a more rapid rate.
• Mobile Marketing – An interactive, multichannel way of promoting products/services by way of mobile devices and networks.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) -An index that would measure the level of willingness that clients/customers have to provide a recommendation of a business’ products/services to other people. It’s also used to gauge client/customer satisfaction with a company as well, the client or customer’s level of loyalty to the company.
• Podcast – A digital audio file that is created and made available online. Subscribers may download these digital files to a mobile device or computer to listen to at their convenience.
• User Experience (UX) – Encompasses an end-user’s interaction with any company or organization pertaining to the company’s products/services.
• User Interface (UI) – This term encompasses anything that is created and/or designed into a device that provides information from the internet and would allow a user to interact. Examples would be items such as keyboards, a mouse, screens that would display images, programs, apps.
• Unique Selling Proposition or Unique Selling Point (USP) – This is an aspect of the presentation that would show a difference in a product from that of its competitors. Some examples may be, lower pricing, finest quality or even one of a kind product. An important part of business planning.

Paid Marketing and SEO Terms –
• Click Through Rate (CTR) – The percentage of persons who click on an ad after viewing it.
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) – A systematic process that allows the increased percentage of visitors to a website and is willing to answer the desired call to action (form completion, purchase etc..)
• Domain Authority – As one of the many search engine ranking systems, this is a measure of the power of a domain name. Factors are size, popularity, and age.
• Inbound Link – A hyperlink, (backlink) is a link located on a third-party site that will direct a visitor to another site for further information.
• Landing Page – Is the portion of a website that is accessed or where a visor will “land” after clicking a link on another page. This type of page is a page that stands alone and is generally created for advertising and marketing purposes.
• On-Page Optimization – In SEO, On-page optimization would refer to the factors that have any effect on a website or page within a website listing in search results that are natural. Some examples would be keyword placement, HTML tags, keyword density, and meta tags.
• Organic Traffic – Is traffic that is generated using any search engine i.e. Google, Yahoo or Bing and has not been referred to a website by another site.
• Page Views – When a user has visited a specific page on any website.
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – When a company that has placed an ad on a site will pay an amount of money to the site hosting the site whenever a user will click on the ad that’s been placed.
• Responsive Design – The goal for the use of this particular website design is to have the ability to detect the size of the visitor’s monitor screen so that the design will automatically change to accommodate the visitor’s screen.
• Title Tags – Found displayed in the top bar of internet browsers, these tags are HTML title elements. These elements are vital to SEO and the user experience. They are briefly used to accurately describe topics and themes regarding online documents.
• Slug – Is an advertiser’s signature on printed advertising or a ‘name’ of an advertisement.
• Schema Markup – Is a code that would be included on a site to assist search engines in returning more informative results to inquiring users.
• Unique Visitor – With regard to web analytics; this term refers to a person who would visit a website at least one time inside of a specific period of reporting. A unique visitor is identified by their IP address and is counted only one time during a reporting period.

Email Related Terms –
• A/B Testing (Split Testing or Bucket Testing) – Compares two versions of an application (app) or webpage so that a determination can be made as to which one is better in performance.
• Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) – Considered one of the “toughest anti-spam laws in the world” by the ABA. This legislation requires any individual, company or organization that would send any kind of commercial e-mail, to acquire express written consent from all Canadian citizens.
• Clicks To Open Rate (CTOR) – Comparison of the number of persons that opened an email to the number of people who actually clicked. This will only measure the performance of the actual content of the mail.
• Dedicated Internet Protocol (Dedicated IP) – A unique IP address that only specific business hosting accounts are eligible to acquire and use.
• Email Service Provider (ESP) – Is a company that provides free or paid email services.
• Hard Bounce – An email that was sent and returned because the email address isn’t in existence or because the sender’s email address was blocked by the recipient.
• Email List Segmentation – This is a method of email marketing whereas email lists are split and used by businesses and marketing persons to send email communications that are relevant to specific people on a marketing list.
• Multivariate Testing – Is a method of hypothetical testing multiple modified variables that will determine what combination provides the best performing variations.
• Open Rate – Measures how many people who are part of a particular email list actually open or view an email during a company’s email campaign.
• Open Length – Is the length of time that a recipient of an email spends with the email opened to the time they close the email.
• Pre-Header (Johnson Box) – Is a very short summary that would follow the subject line that an individual will view while the email is in the inbox.
• Spam Trigger – All email programs have spam filters. Spam triggers are words that these filters immediately pick up and send the email to a spam folder.
• Sender Score – Is a number between 0 and 100 that determines your ‘sender reputation’. This score also provides information pertaining to how ESPs view your IP address.
• Soft Bounce – If a mailbox is full or the email recipient’s mailbox is set for filtering, an email that someone sends to a recipient may be returned to the sender prior to opening.
• Subject Line – A line of text that provides an introduction to the recipient and serves as a way for the recipient to know the intention of the sender prior to opening it.

Content Marketing Terms –
• ‘Above the Fold’ – Describes a part of the website that would be found directly below the web page’s call to action area. This is considered an important aspect of web design.
• Affiliate Marketing – Is an arrangement made between two or more companies whereas one will promote the product/services and/or content of another company for an agreed upon commission payment.
• Branded Content – The practice of creating and marketing content that is either produced directly by an advertiser or is funded by the advertiser.
• Case Study – Is an analysis that provides a story analyzing and describing the results of a client’s/customer’s experience with a company or organization.
• Curated Content – This is a process whereas large amounts of content are sorted through and the more superior posts are posted in an organized and meaningful fashion.
• Content Management Systems (CMS) – This system with its two components will allow anyone to modify, add or remove content regardless of their knowledge or expertise, without a need to have a webmaster intervene in the process.
• Dynamic Content – A term describing the aspects of a website, email body or ad that will change based upon the particular interests of previous behaviors of viewers.
• Ebook – A printed book that has been converted to electronic form so that it may be read on any device or computer.
• Editorial Calendar – Is a planning document that will provide a solid view of what’s happening with content, schedules posting dates, content deadlines etc.
• Native Advertising – Is content within an online publication that imitates the editorial content and look of the publisher, however, it is paid advertising and it is created for the purpose of promotion of the advertiser’s products or services.
• Microsite – Is a web page or a small group of pages that provide a separate entity for a specific brand. These sites generally have their own domain, some are subdomains and are capable of assisting brands like telling stories, highlight marketing campaigns target personas or even provide inspiration for call-to-action.
• Viral Content – A piece of content that spreads rapidly from user to user creating high numbers of open rates etc.
• White Paper – A carefully researched document that may argue one or several positions or may be used to help an audience solve a problem.

Although these terms apply mainly to the marketing area of a business, the activities they describe are instrumental in the business planning process. Marketing is woven throughout the many areas of a business and SMB’s should incorporate, plan and budget for marketing as they develop their business plans.

At Cogent Analytics, we never stop looking for ways to improve your business and neither should you. So, check out some of our other posts for helpful business information: