Chris Bonney, VP of Strategy
Zach Wilson, Partner
Hi everybody. Thanks for joining us today. This is Chris with Gulo Solutions and this is the web marketing insights podcast today. Joining me as usual is Zach from Gulo as well. We're here to talk today about what we feel are the seven steps to successful digital marketing strategy and planning. What does it take? What are the steps that you should take as a marketer for your organization, for your company, for your business? Smaller, large steps are the same, might vary in scope, but the steps are the same. What are they? Uh, we're going to talk about that today and we're just going to simply rattle off one through seven and talk a little bit about each one today. Very practical podcast for you. And, uh, we're going to jump right in. Zach, before we do, is there anything you want to say? Let's boogie. Perfect. Okay. Number one is what we called discover and review and simply, it's pretty descriptive, but it's super important to say, where are you now? We can't move ahead. Oh, without understanding where we're at, what we've done, what's worked, what hasn't, what systems are we using today? And also, uh, what systems then might we want to use in the future that we don't have now? And we don't know what that looks like if we don't take a look at where we're at today. So a big part of understanding how to move forward when it comes to digital marketing strategy is just understanding where we are today. So what we'd like to do is talk with our clients and say, um, what systems, what's the ecosystem of how things are integrated today? Are you doing SEO, yes or no? Do you have a, you know, a CRM system of some kind at play? Yes or no? Uh, how are you using those systems today? And it's not about aspiring to how we'll use them in the future. It's just about understanding that we have them today and how we use them. Um, so that we can leverage that moving forward. Um, Zach, we recently did this with a client. Um, how did you feel that went? Did you feel like we had a good grasp of, of where they were at and, um, and how did that help the process do you think?
Zach Wilson:Yeah, well I think a big part of it too, uh, it was really helpful for them to just provide them structure and planning, like you said, uh, discover what your deficiencies are and put into perspective war you need to the amp up your digital marketing. And one of the components of that was resources, right? So what, what resources do you have available? Whether that's uh, whether it's people capital, Mmm. Uh, hardware, you know, podcasting, right. Just those, those type of, those type of things, channels, et cetera. So getting a land, a lay of the land of
Chris Bonney:what
Zach Wilson:you have available currently and putting that under review and aligning your resources with your overall PR strategy in your plan.
Chris Bonney:Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, I agree. Great. Um, great. And uh, you know, and again, it's fairly self explanatory. We'll dive a little deeper into some of these other ones. But the second one I think is really quite crucial. Um, and we call the second one define the second step is understanding what is it that you're trying to do. A lot of times we'll talk with businesses or organizations that have some sort of generalized, uh, goals or aspirations. Uh, many times they're not written down and many times they're not articulated, uh, in a way that makes them somewhat measurable at some point. So we look at it like this, there's a few things at play when we talk about how do we define what we want to do and where do we want to go? Uh, first of all, you have a goal and that can be a higher level sort of um, non, um, measurement based, um, a goal. Okay. Maybe if you're an association, something that's very simple to apply. Um, and same with the, uh, with maybe a business, but let's just go with an association right now. Um, maybe you want to improve a membership registrations, increase the number of membership registrations that go on and that happen online. Okay. If you're a business, maybe it could be simple as generate more leads through the website, very comparable kinds of things. And those are fine. Um, so that's step one is a goal, but then what we, what comes underneath of that is sort of an objective. And that's really where there's one goal to maybe multiple objectives and the objective sort of small fall into more of that smart, um, specific measurable, attainable, results oriented and timely, right? That acronym that we all know for how to make things measurable[inaudible] impactful to us. And that's where your objectives come in. We want to strategize and then we also want to measure. So it's sort of those four steps here that happened. And I want to talk a little bit about[inaudible] um, the measurement, cause we've talked about that with our clients as well. So there's, there's measuring things and looking at that, there's metrics. Those are sort of the numbers. There are, you know, what a lot of people call KPIs, key performance indicators, what are those? And for us, I think in Zack, I want to get your opinion on this because um, I feel like metrics[inaudible] is a simple thing to measure. And what it implies to me, and this is just
Zach Wilson:personal, is it implies after something has happened, what happened, right? How do we put a tangible, you know, measurement or metric against what happened and then how do we say, okay, let's look at that and see how we change that metric. Uh, and I think that's the most basic sort of measurement process that we can do. And that's what most people think of. Um, when we talk about KPIs, I think it can be a little more nuanced where a KPI isn't after everything is done, what's the KPI? I think key performance indicators, each step of your process may have a KPI assigned to it that keeps things a little more granular in your sort of dialing KPIs in over time, during each step of your process. So at the end you achieve something and have a metric. But that's just my sort of, the way I look at it. And for people that wonder, you know, what KPI's are and should I call them KPIs or what are they? Uh, I don't know. Do you have any thoughts about that? I mean it's just, it's sort of out in the weeds kind of a thought. But since we're talking about metrics, maybe it's just worth talking about a little bit as it applies to digital marketing. Yeah. I think the biggest thing for metrics and KPIs that we pass along to people as part of the step is defining KPIs for each aspect of your strategy and then have those KPIs[inaudible] Mmm. Actually tie to your overall arching goals, whether whatever that is, if you're, if you're a B to B commerce and you're trying to reach X number of sales per month, what are the KPIs across each channel and each category that are gonna relate back to your sales goal for the month and what the last thing that we like telling people about those two is if you're, yeah. Uh, a pretty good size company for each channel you're going to have, likely you're going to have different people managing those channels. You might have someone doing email, you might have someone doing social, you might have someone doing PPC, you might have someone doing organic and across each one of those channels. Yeah. Just come up with, for max, um, to report back on to yourself and to keep track of and to report to management or, or your board or whoever you actually have to talk to. Because if you, you know, our, our problem today isn't tracking data. It's, it's[inaudible], it's tracking data in a meaningful way and passing it on to people so that they can actually process it. So that's the big takeaway as far as I'm concerned here.
Chris Bonney:That's a great point. Yeah, that's what that is. That is a big takeaway. That's good. Um, number and you know, the thing is too, people, we don't want to write down sometimes our goals and objectives and KPIs because the minute you write them down, you're accountable for them, right. And it becomes sort of visible and it's just sort of the psychology of it. And if we can all kind of just agree to keep things like a goal and high level and that not dive into the actual numbers, uh, it can, you know, give everyone a little bit of a peace of mind, but it's not necessarily going to drive your business forward. You might not hit every number, but that's okay. Write them down. Um, number three. Number three is what we call strategize. Um, again, we all love the word strategy. What does that mean? That's a different podcast, I think, but for the sake of digital marketing, uh, and our seven steps, number three is to strategize well, that's the thought work. Okay. And, and really what we need to know. So, so far we have sort of, uh, what our goals are and what we're talking about, where we've been, what we know we do now. Now we want to understand who we're talking to and make sure we understand the audience and then how do we take what we're trying to do, what the goal is and who we're trying to speak to and how does it make sense to do that? Um, do we want to, uh, become a social media heavy, uh, online entity because, uh, we're in, you know, the consumer packaged goods world of media and maybe we, we are, uh, a competitor to Apple AirPods and we are earbuds that are wireless and pretty cool. And we know there's a lot of influencers on Instagram where we can plug in ads around what they do. No, that's just, just a real simple example, but that's where the strategist station, so to speak, comes in. We want to think about not just who we're talking to and what we're trying to achieve, but what strategies can we put in place that makes sense around all those, um, to achieve our goals. Mmm. Zach, what do you, you know, if you're thinking about other people we've worked with, thinking about what we do here at Gulo, even any thoughts or tips or insights into when you're strategizing what you should do, how, what is, I mean, should we have a strategy that maps up against every goal or overarching strategies that may be applied to all the goals or what are your thoughts on some of that?
Zach Wilson:Yeah, the, this, the strategy is definitely really important.[inaudible] for sure. And I think these sort of relate back to your top level goals without question. But this is the part where I think you really want to get into some of your messaging and you're, you're, you're, what, what's, what's the narrative? What's the messaging look like? Like you said, what, uh, who we actually speaking to, you know, part of the audience. Uh, part of the goal aspect is, is your audience, right? Knowing your audience and who you're actually trying to go after. And, and, and, and similarly down what channels, right? Like, we've, we've talked about this before. Um, but gleaning on the example that we talked about earlier with this recent client is we've looked at their communication over email and they're sending the same message to every single person in their database. And we started to dissect that a little bit further and we realize that there was a lot more granularity in that segment then they were, they weren't taking advantage of. And so we broke it down into, I think it was four different audiences just within the email channel. Um, and how to talk to them and how to cater to each one of those, um, members' needs specifically because member a didn't have the same needs as a member. Um, see, and B versus D, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a, and if, and if we're not[inaudible], if we're not leaning, having that strategy, have some empathy to our audience and, and really lean in on that, then well, the message is going to be lost, right? Like this doesn't speak to me, this is garbage on. Subscribe, done. Right. So, so that's, I think the takeaway there is, is is the messaging and how that maps up to the audience.
Chris Bonney:Oh man, I, that is a great, great point. That is a really great point. Um, and uh, what we'll do also, um, uh, in the notes here on on YouTube is we'll put a link to a blog post that we're writing about this topic as well. So you can link to that. And, and these will be complimentary to each other's a little deeper dive probably in the blog post as well. But I love that idea of positioning and messaging because it speaks to the very next topic actually, which is number four.[inaudible]. Um, so now that we understand what we're going to do, we need to have the collateral, the copy of the videos, whatever it might be to achieve that. And I think your point is perfectly taken. Uh, and we've said this before, it's one thing to say, I want to engage an agency to do my digital strategy for me. That sounds great. Uh, we will do social, we'll help you with email, we'll rebuild your website, we'll, we'll do whatever we can in your website. Well, put new imagery out there. We'll redesign it. We'll do SEL. That would be great. We're going to do search engine optimization. Yep. That's all the checkboxes for digital marketing. Now, uh, what's your place in the world? What's your, to your point, what's your message? Right. And this is what we talked about. That's why that's such a huge point. If you engage someone and say, just start here at the create stage for us and just get that social media posts out there as soon as possible for us. Just get that website out live as soon as you can for us. If we don't do all the things that we've already talked about up to this point, how can we be successful? Right? Isn't that what it comes down to? I mean, how can we actually be confident that you've done the work as a business, as a, as a company, as an organization, that you know how to speak to your constituents out there in the world and your potential customers and have it resonate because if you're not and we're just taking what you have and thrown it in a social media post or otherwise, right? The odds of success are pretty low. So the, I love the coupling of these two pieces in what you just said, but this is an obvious one as far as this is where we know what we were. We're trying to do who we're speaking to, what our goals are. Now we need to create the content and get it out there. And the content can be anything these days. It can be a podcast, it can be a video, it can be, um, uh, a blog post. Uh, there's just so many different, it can be a PDF, obviously, whatever webpages it goes on and on and on, and uh, the more creative you can be and the more collateral and, um, pieces of content you can have, uh, to help support your strategies and goals. Obviously the better. And there's so many creative things you can do is act too. Um, one of the things we've talked about is taking the video and perhaps audio, um, of some of our podcasts and slicing them into smaller tidbits or just tips and tricks or various things like that. Mmm. What are your thoughts? I mean, when it comes to creating content, what have you seen over the years where you think, you know, what, why something people aren't doing is this, and they may be, should be, or here's something somebody did that was really excellent, that improved the results and their numbers. Any, any thoughts about that? Yeah.
Zach Wilson:From a creative standpoint. Yeah. I think the big, the big thing there is, is to, is to[inaudible] if you're diving into a new channel from a creation standpoint, start light, podcasting and great example, we keep leaning on that cause here we are doing a podcast and uh, you know, just it doesn't, everything you create doesn't have to be, um, billion dollar budget and quality. You know, if you're creating something, pull out your iPhone, say something for 30 seconds posted on LinkedIn a do a podcast by, uh, high end speaker or a high end microphone for 50 bucks on Amazon go right? Like so. So I think the thing with create is, uh, if you're in a new channel specifically don't over burden yourself with trying to
Chris Bonney:B, B, a Joe Rogan of podcasts and in day one, you know, start, start small and uh, build up and graduate into more high quality, high end content. Oh, I love it. Yeah, that is such a great tip. And should we can all, Oh, you know, take that to heart. I think in what we do, whether it's, I mean we don't, it is a fine line. We've talked about that before in some of the talks we've had about blog posts and we had that session at the AMA recently where we've talked about this a little bit as well. And uh, I think it's just really something to heed the advice. It's just something, it's just a good life lesson really is, right. It's a universal truth. Just get started. Just, it doesn't mean jump in deep end and start flailing around. No, be a little more, right. You start in the start in the shallow end in Wade into the pool. That's what we're saying. Don't flail around in the deep end, right? Yeah.[inaudible] just Wade into the pool, but get it, put your toe in and get going and things will start happening. And your S it's amazing how quickly things, the world starts sort of conspiring in your favor once you start doing something. We've had this podcast just for a month or two and we've already had very cool guests, uh, speakers. And we have[inaudible] clients that want to be on our podcast, that we're going to be doing this for. We've upgraded our equipment, that we have a better way of doing what we do. We have a great editor. All these things we didn't even know how to do or where to find them. And suddenly these are all a part of what we just do as part of our marketing now. And it's only because thanks to Zack, uh, uh, we jumped in and just started. Uh, so huge, huge points. Uh, love that. And then number five is what we call implement. And this is huge. And again, it's a perfect segue from what you said into this. Just get the stuff out there, get it going, implement, uh, get your website fixed up and live. Get your podcast, uh, edited, published for in life. Um, you know, don't wait around for everything to be perfect before you get things pushed out. Implement. Um, get the social media posts ready. If you want to use HootSweet or some other tool to load up all your social media posts, uh, and have them go out to an automated means, great. Get that account and get going on it. And maybe it's a little clunky at first, maybe it's not great, but, but get it going. So this step is called implement because it is Pardot and, and, and, and here's what I want to stress about these, uh, points to Zack is that these can kind of be rolling. It feels like a chronology. The way we're presenting it. And in some of it is some of it's like a critical path. Yes. But, uh, when you're implementing, you're not just going to implement once and then you're done. This is rolling, right? I mean, we're, our goals and strategies and those are always overarching, but we want to continue to create, continue to implement. Right. I think that[inaudible] takes us to the next one too. And I want to get your opinion on this. So you create, you implement, and then number six is promote. So as you can see, there's sort of setting things up. And then the second half of the list is one we're rolling and creating. So[inaudible] promote, um, gosh, what, there's so many different means of doing that. When people hear, promote though, it kind of, you feel like maybe you're advertising right or we're trying to, uh, broadcast out promotion can also be something like, um, guests posting a blog post. It can be guesting on a podcast. We've, like I said, we just had some guests on a podcast. It was great for us. It was great for them. They're going to promote the podcast cause they were on it. And so are we. So our reach just quite frankly doubled or more by bringing on some key influencers and thought leaders in our industry and energy.[inaudible] uh, just so that's promotion to write, uh, partnerships, collaborations, affiliations of any kind, word of mouth. Uh, any kind of PR that's possible. Okay. So don't just think about, well yeah, we blast it out over Facebook and our email and Twitter and we promoted it. No, we need to be very creative in how we, Mmm. What means we use to get the word out about what we do. Mmm. Zach, let me ask you specifically about something like, lot of people talk about influencers, um, around promotion. Do you have any thoughts about that? Like where does that sit for folks today? Is there a way for it, anybody to leverage any, find an influence or what if I feel like I don't have an influencer in my industry, maybe I don't, or, or do I actually, what for some of your thoughts about this influencer marketing part of promotion?
Zach Wilson:Yeah, well, it's in terms of finding influencers, that's the, you've got to, you've got to look in your channels and, you know, look for partners or look for people that are[inaudible] I'm aligned with your brand or your product or whatever. Um, that's, that's number one. But in terms of, in terms of those influencers that I think, uh, you know, from a promotion standpoint, from what we've experienced and with the CPG, they've[inaudible] and what we're seeing just in terms of the trend is they're incredibly, they're incredibly powerful platforms. Like YouTube and Instagram are very hip to the power of influencers and the power of content. All of these platforms are now creating ton of tools for influencers so they can understand how they're getting monetized and they can make money. Because, you know, I mean, Instagram and, and YouTube especially, I mean, they're dependent on, they're dependent on the content creators, right? So it's in their best interests to make those tools. And that's, that's what's going to keep bringing people back if they can understand how they're monetizing their own, you know, their own brand or the brand that they're working for and so on and so forth. So, um, yeah, but it's circling back to the promotion part. That's obviously one channel, but it's, it's just like anything else we talked about here is it doesn't, you know, you don't have to go spend a gazillion dollars on Tom Brady to have him as your influencer. Um, you know, you can start light and there's, there's, there's a, there's a lot of people in the world and a lot of people that will probably, you know, shamelessly promote your product and you can start light if that's one of your, uh, strategic points in terms of getting your brand out there or yeah. You can just be light and use your, use your company. Um, yeah, we just discovered, uh, in LinkedIn, remember they had LinkedIn rolled out in new feature to tell everybody else in your company about the content and that your pushing out through your brand channel. So, um, you know, so they're, they're getting hip to it as well. So um, start light.
Chris Bonney:No great stuff. And I wrote a article recently, I think I might've been on inc com. I'll put it in the notes if I can find it. Mmm. About,
Zach Wilson:uh,
Chris Bonney:influencers, who, some brands are now going with the micro influencers, people with 1000, 2000 followers. And it's interesting to see how brand managers now are looking at influencers so differently just because you have 2 million, you know, followers or whatever on Instagram. They're looking at the comments are looking at how many people are engaging and how people are engaging with the content that you post on Instagram. And they're finding that some of these Michael are influencers. They may only have 2000 followers, but they're, you know, acolytes. They're, they, they, they comment in the right way. They engage in the right way. And so some of these folks have just have a couple thousand Mmm. Influence are being approached by brands to help promote. Now what happens is they were even giving numbers in this article, um, that these influencers only getting paid$150, maybe$200 to mention a brand. But when you do the math on what it might mean to have some outreach to 2000 people that are so niche and so right in the market of whatever you're trying to sell. Mmm. And to have someone expressed to them how much they value that. Wow. I mean that is just to steal, right. For 150,$200 from a brand's perspective and the influencers feel important, they feel like, Hey, that's little extra money in my pocket. What do I care? I'm doing it great. So I just thought that was really interesting how this micro-influencer things seems to be getting some traction as well. So a little deeper on the influencer side of promotion, but again, the takeaway there is, uh, be creative. There are just so many ways to do it.
Zach Wilson:One more, uh, anecdotal thing, I was just thinking about the opposite of what we're talking about was with the, uh, I don't know if anybody else noticed this, but with the Superbowl that like literally, I mean not every single one, but I swear like 85, 90% of the Superbowl ads had a list celebrities. And them. And so it was like to get on, you know, to, to make your Mark these days for on the Superbowl stage for commercial, it was like, Hey, let's bring in LeBron. Let's bring in Tom Brady, right? Yeah. Grocer. I mean, it was just ridiculous. I was just like, this is, we're watching a movie right now. Like the cost of these commercials is just insane with these A-listers.
Chris Bonney:Okay. That's a great point. No, it's a great, forget the cost of the, how much it took. You have to pay to have them area commercial. You have to produce the commercial a swell, right? So I mean, it's not just a$5 million charge to get a super bowl ad. That's just what it takes to get it on eight air to get it produced and pay for the talent and et cetera. It's a massive expense for these folks, but that's a really huge point. Um, lastly, the, the, the rolling part of our last seven is optimize. And that just seems to make the most sense to be the last one because we're always tweaking and optimizing SEO by its very nature. Search engine optimization is a part of that equation, but it isn't all of it. Um, we want to look at conversion rate optimization. What's that? Well, you should check out our podcast. We just had, cause it was all about conversion rate optimization. We'll at a link for that in the comments here on YouTube, but, uh, if you don't know a look it up or watch our podcast, but, uh, there's just so many ways to optimize. Um, there are things like heat maps that you can put on your website, um, that allow you to see where people are scrolling and how far people are scrolling on pages, where they're clicking, where their mouse actually travels around on the pages, are looking for things, and then where they actually click. That's all part of data that we review and optimize Google analytics, of course, what pages are performing, which ones aren't, can we figure out why and optimize around all of that. So that's really part of this continually ongoing, uh, element of what we do. So, uh, Zach, as we sort of wrap this up a little bit, how do you, what do you want to do as far as talking about number 700 optimizing? Do you have any just overarching thoughts or something people should do or maybe other people aren't thinking of this and they should be? What are your thoughts around optimization
Zach Wilson:for optimization? It's something that we always go back to is just looking at your data and, and coming and taking your data and analyzing your data and iterating. And this iterative loop for optimizing doesn't have to be, yeah. Uh, super complicated. You, you can just develop some hypotheses as to, you know, why you're not succeeding or w you know, what's going wrong and then, and then just test them and do a and see what the data looks like from test one to test two. Okay. Um, and that, I mean, that's it, that's, that's, that's a big part of optimization is just coming up with some ideas. I mean, if you have someone, an ideas person on your team, lean on them. Um, you know, schedule a conference, come up with some ideas, but it's, it's, it's not that hard to just break something, break something down and think about why it's[inaudible]. If it's not meeting your goals, just make some changes.
Chris Bonney:Yeah, no, that's great. Agreed 100% on that one. So let's recap. We've got seven steps to our digital marketing strategy here at Gulo Solutions. Uh, feel free to use them, implement them, and let them guide you as well as you think about your digital marketing strategy. Number one, discovery and review. Number two, define number three, strategize. Number four, create number five, implement number six, promote and where Zach just closed on a high note. Number seven, optimize. So, um, you know, keep us in mind as you look at these things. I hopefully this overview and maybe our blog post can help you guys get some traction internally. We're always here to help for sure here at Gulo Solutions. Uh, really appreciate you all sticking around and listening to our podcast today about our seven steps for digital marketing strategy. Come back again real soon because we're working on a new episode all the time and we always try to keep it in the digital marketing realm, a web marketing insights podcast. This is Zach Wilson and corresponding from Gulo. Uh, thanks again for joining us. Bye bye. Hi everybody. Thanks for checking out the podcast today. Go to Gulo Solutions.com to learn more about us. Subscribe to our newsletter. Uh, also if you can hit subscribe on our channel here on YouTube, uh, that would be great as well.