May 2024 Update – Google has officially released its Generative AI feature for its search engine, called AI Overviews (formerly the “Search Generative Experience” covered below). You can learn how AI Overviews work in this post: How To Rank in Google’s AI Overviews.

Something HUGE is coming. You’re probably no stranger to AI and have seen its increasing integration into marketing life. Google’s AI integration into SGE (Search Generative Experience) is likely to impact ALL businesses significantly with a reduction in organic website traffic of between 15 and 64%!

At Thinkplus we win business (and awards) for our clients through digital marketing. It’s our job to be ahead of the search game – read on to learn more about the future of search or request your free digital marketing and website review video.

Search in 2024: Businesses Could Lose As Much As 15-64% Of Website Traffic

In May Google started testing one of the biggest changes in Search Engine history. As an award-winning global digital marketing agency, we’re used to big changes – but this one takes the cake.

We’ve marketed through some of the most radical moves Google has made. We’ve rescued businesses from the wrath of Panda, the clutches of Penguin, and the interrogation of Medic. Yet even through all of this, Google’s new AI-powered search engine, SGE, is set to take the crown for unprecedented changes to how businesses make money online.

The move to SGE is modelled to be significant with many businesses being heavily impacted. Although Google are yet to give a launch date, Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s announcement to investors in Q2 and an ‘end date’ for the test of December 2023, let us know that the launch of SGE (or its bigger brother or sister) are not many steps into our future.

What is it?

Google’s SGE (search generative experience) is the integration of generative AI into Google’s search engine.

Why will SGE mean my website traffic decreases?

Google’s SGE provides answers to a visitor’s search directly on the search engine results page. Using generative AI, Google can present a fully formed answer, using websites only as a means of ‘corroboration’. This changes the way that visitors interact as Google’s goal is no longer to send its visitors to the best-fit page. Instead, it provides the answers directly.

The potential impact of this on businesses is huge. With a steep reduction in the number of visitors needing to click on a website for their information, businesses will experience drops in their page visits when this rolls out. Analysis suggests that the drops could be anywhere between 15 and 64%, depending on the type of search, the industry, and how many key searches SGE shows up for.

Traffic drops of this magnitude will not only put marketers in a tricky position, but also will likely impact the number of visitors who convert on websites from a very ‘top of funnel’ informational search. Fewer visitors will need to visit a website to get the answer to their questions, and so fewer visitors will be exposed to the calls to action businesses rely on to collect leads and nurture new sales.

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The looming launch of SGE is likely to mean stark reductions in traffic for many businesses, less business generated from informational terms and a ‘shake up’ in which businesses are winning in the search engine results. 

Marketers are left with a choice: prepare or risk the impact.

At Thinkplus we have been preparing our clients for SGE’s launch and we have tested and identified how to rank in SGE. Though we anticipate that SGE will continue evolving before its launch, there are steps you can take now to help prepare. The first is to register for your free digital marketing and website review where one of our marketing consultants will assess your digital marketing and where your focus should be. They’ll assess your site’s preparedness for SGE and let you know what you should do next.

If I rank well currently, I’m safe – right?

Although businesses who are currently well placed on search engines seem to be referenced more in the SGE results, it is by no means a guarantee that the bot will reference them. 

In our experiments we have found that in some cases even websites who hold the Featured Snippet and Position 1 in the ‘classic’ listings, were not referenced by SGE’s answer. So despite the classic algorithm seeing a website as an authority on a particular topic, it is not at all a guarantee that SGE will make the same calculation. 

This extends even to searches for some brand names not ensuring that SGE uses the brand’s website as the corroborating link.

How do I rank on SGE and Bing Chat?

The good news is that our experiments so far suggest that the work you do to help SGE understand and cite your website, also positively impact how you rank in Bing’s Chat.

Just like classic SEO, there is no ‘one size fits all’ but there are a number of things we have discovered about how to rank in SGE. At Thinkplus, we are one of the few agencies that has both played with and understood how SGE works. We’d even go so far as to say we’ve cracked it! We’ve identified several ways to rank in SGE and have shared this piece on how to do it. We anticipate that it will continue to evolve as it is tested further and as with all Google products, there will be iterations. 

At Thinkplus we set out to be the leading example of how a digital marketing agency should be. For us, this definition includes staying ahead of the trends, sharing what we know and preparing our clients for changes before they land. 

If you are looking for help with your SEO and to be in the arms of an agency who knows how to prepare you for this, the first step is to request your free digital marketing and website review. One of our Marketing Consultants will analyse your website and will share the priority actions needed to get your website on top, if it looks like we’re a match, they’ll share with you how we might be able to work together.

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It’s a strategic approach that covers all aspects of bringing a product or service from development to market launch and beyond.

The main goal of a go-to-market strategy is to ensure a successful product launch and a successful lifespan for the product.

Of course, a huge part of any go-to-marketing strategy is marketing.

Without that, you’ll have a great product or service ready to launch, but no one will know it exists.

The biggest mistake we see is go-to-market strategies that only include marketing right at the end, but for your strategy to work, marketing needs to be involved in all three main stages:

• Pre-launch
• Launch
• Post-launch.

Let’s start with the stage with the most planning — pre-launch.

Pre-launch

Pre-launch is a pivotal phase where your expertise and strategic thinking can make all the difference in ensuring a successful product or service launch.

Understanding Your Product/Service and Market

Start by defining your product or service.

This sounds obvious, but having this clear from the start will make everyone’s lives easier.

Being clear on exactly what you’re selling from the get-go will give you a north star to work towards. You can’t market the vague idea of a product or service.

Are you selling one product, or is it an entire range?

Are there multiple products or services that are part of the same range but have slightly different audiences?

For example, Gymshark stock clothing collections that include items for men and women, so they include multiple models in their website imagery.

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Next, conduct in-depth market research. Dive into the hearts and minds of your target audience to understand their needs, pain points and desires.

Uncover valuable insights about their preferences, behaviours and expectations. This knowledge will serve as the bedrock for shaping the entire strategy.

HelloFresh understands that their audience is looking to save time by spending less time shopping and cooking, so they highlight that on their homepage.

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Then, armed with the insights from your market research, you’ll collaborate with the product team to craft an irresistible value proposition.

Highlight the unique benefits your offering brings to the table and clearly communicate why it’s the perfect solution for your target customers.

Finally, it’s important you analyse the competitive landscape.

Investigate the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors to identify opportunities for differentiation.

This will help you position your product or service in a way that stands out in the crowd.

Focus on the way they market their product or service — do they highlight price, quality or something else?

Which marketing channels are they using? What type of content are they sharing on those channels?

Gousto highlights that they are the number-one recipe box for choice, as they realised that customers wanted more meal options from meal kit subscriptions. Having the most recipes gives them an edge over competitors; this may convert people who feel that they don’t get enough choice with other meal kits.

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In their ads on Facebook and Instagram, Gousto often focuses on the number of recipes they offer — 250 per month and 75 per week. By keeping this consistent across all their channels, people will begin to associate Gousto with having the widest choice of meals in the meal kit market.

Setting Clear Objectives and Goals

Setting clear objectives and goals is critical in creating a successful go-to-market strategy.

Well-defined objectives provide direction, focus and a benchmark for measuring the strategy’s effectiveness.

1. Be Specific: Ensure your objectives are specific and clearly defined. Vague goals can lead to confusion and a lack of focus.
   An example of a specific goal would be to increase market share by 10% within the first quarter of the product launch.
2. Make it Measurable: Use quantifiable metrics to track your progress and measure success.
   For example, you could aim to achieve one thousand new sign-ups for the product’s free trial within the first month.
3. Set Attainable Goals: Be ambitious but realistic. Setting unattainable goals can demotivate your team and hinder progress.
   For example, securing partnerships with at least three major industry influencers within six months is more realistic than ten major industry influencers in the next three months.
4. Ensure Relevance: Align your objectives with the overall business strategy to drive meaningful impact.
   For example, increasing sales revenue by 20% in the target market segment identified by the business expansion plan is better than trying to target a new audience that’s less relevant to the business plan.
5. Time-Bound: Assign specific timeframes to your objectives to create a sense of urgency and maintain a sense of accountability.
   An example of a time-bound goal would be to achieve 50,000 app downloads within the first three months of the mobile app launch.

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If you want to take these goals to the next level, you should also consider the following:

1. Consider Resources: Take into account the available resources, budget and team capabilities when setting goals.
   An example of this would be to increase social media engagement by 30% with the current social media team and budget.
2. Segment Your Objectives: Divide your goals into short-term and long-term objectives to ensure steady progress and momentum. The short-term goals should feed directly into the long-term ones.
   For example, you could set a short-term goal of securing at least five media mentions during the product launch week, with your long-term goal being to maintain a consistent media presence with at least one feature per month.
3. Ensure Alignment: Make sure your objectives are aligned with different departments within the organisation to foster collaboration.
   An example goal would be to increase cross-functional collaboration between marketing and sales teams, resulting in a 15% increase in lead conversion rates.
4. Quantify Market Penetration: If you’re entering a new market, you should set objectives for market penetration.
   For example, your goal could be to capture a 12% market share in the Southeast Asian market within the first year of expansion.
5. Customer-Centric Objectives: Focus on customer-centric goals to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. This shows you’re thinking beyond the launch of the product.
   This goal could be to achieve a customer retention rate of 80% by implementing a comprehensive customer success program.

Remember, well-crafted objectives provide clarity and direction for your go-to-market strategy.

By following these guidelines and using measurable and time-bound objectives, it will be easier to track how successful your marketing is and make changes as needed.

It’s normal to need to make adjustments to these goals once you’ve launched your strategy. For example, a channel that you thought would be a winner might flop, you might have a change in team capacity, or you may find that a less obvious channel leads to lots of sales — there are plenty of reasons why you may want to change things up.

Your goals should be flexible, but any changes to them should be based on data and facts.

Crafting a Unique Value Proposition

Crafting a unique value proposition is all about speaking directly to your target audience. It helps you stand out from your competitors, address your customers’ needs and communicate the value of your product or service.

Here are three things you need to consider when creating your unique value proposition:

1. Differentiation from Competitors

Think of your value proposition as a spotlight that highlights what makes your product or service special and distinct.

Start by identifying the key features or benefits that set you apart from the competition. Maybe you offer unique technology, exceptional customer service or a more affordable pricing model. Highlight the things that make you shine in a crowded marketplace.

Salesforce positions itself as the customer-first CRM platform. This is reflected in their homepage copy, as well as in their metadata.

They refer to themselves as “the customer company” in the meta title and mention “the customer journey” in the meta description.

2. Addressing Customer Pain Points

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and identify the challenges they face. Your value proposition should be a solution to their problems or pain points.

Show them how your product or service can make their lives easier, more enjoyable or more efficient.

Empathy goes a long way in building a connection with your audience, but it’s also worth speaking to actual customers.

Find out what makes them tick and how they feel about the product or service you’re bringing to market.

You might get insights that you never expected, which will influence the rest of your marketing strategy.

Monday run ads on the keyword “salesforce” and highlight a common problem people have with Salesforce – that it’s hard to use. They position themselves as being “actually easy to use”.

3. Communicating Value Clearly

Keep it simple and straightforward. Your value proposition should be concise and easy to understand.

Remember to avoid using technical jargon that might confuse or alienate your audience. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking your audience uses the same terminology as you, but you may find out that they don’t

Focus on the core benefits your customers will experience and use relatable language to convey your message effectively.

For example, “Get a restful night’s sleep with our memory foam mattress, designed to provide unmatched comfort and support for your best sleep ever.”

Remember, a compelling value proposition is the heart of your go-to-market strategy. It’s the reason why customers will choose you over your competitors.

By clearly showcasing what makes you unique, addressing your customers’ needs and communicating with clarity, you’ll create a value proposition that resonates with your target audience and leaves a lasting impression.

Smol is a brand that makes it clear right away that its products benefit you and the planet. Since you can buy cleaning products in most supermarkets, they need to find a way to stand out and convert people over to buying Smol. Further down the homepage, they also highlight that their products are delivered straight to your door, highlighting convenience.

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Choosing Your Marketing Channels

The channels you choose for your go-to-market marketing strategy could make or break your entire campaign.

You should have an idea of which channels will work best for you based on your audience and competitor research, but you should also take into consideration the capabilities of each channel.

Imagine digital channels as various tools in your marketing toolbox. Each has unique strengths and capabilities. From social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to content-driven platforms like YouTube and blogs, you should explore what each channel can offer. This knowledge will help you leverage their strengths effectively.

If you’re a visually-driven brand, platforms like Instagram and Pinterest might work wonders. For thought leadership, LinkedIn and blogging platforms could be your best friends.

You also need to take into account which channels work best for the different stages of the sales funnel.

Keep in mind that the sales funnel is active while you’re building hype before your new product or service launch. Some people will have reached the bottom of the funnel by launch day, but it may take others longer.

At the top of the funnel, your audience will be looking for information about your new product or service but might not know much about it or if it’s right for them. They might not have come into contact with it before, especially if it’s entirely new.

You want to raise awareness and educate here. Answer common questions as blog posts, run PPC ads in the places your audience spends their time and create a buzz on social media. Reach out to the publications your audience reads often and get featured in one of their articles.

In the middle of the funnel, your audience needs nurturing.

You should create more tailored blogs for this stage, as well as automated email campaigns that warm users up to your business and product. When you’re launching a new product, this is a great way to build hype.

At the bottom of the funnel, you need to make sure there are clear next steps for your audience. If this is pre-launch, offer them the chance to pre-register to hear more about the launch or pre-order your product.

If you’re at launch, run early-bird offers for the people who convert first, and make sure your checkout process is straightforward.

If you’re expecting a lot of traffic on launch day, make sure you plan ahead to have more customer service representatives available.

Yes, this isn’t technically a marketing role, but if customer service is poor on launch day, this will not look good for the brand as a whole.

Remember, your role at the pre-launch stage sets the stage for a stellar product or service launch. Your dedication, insights and marketing prowess will pave the way for a successful go-to-market strategy. So, embrace this phase with enthusiasm and creative flair.

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Launch

Executing the Launch Plan

This is where you get to put your marketing plan into place.

For some content, like social media or email, you’ll want to stagger rather than post it all at once, but you may want to make all your blogs live so that you’re getting traffic from a variety of different questions and search terms.

Make sure that your sales and customer service teams understand what content is going live and when. This will help them understand the questions customers might have and can be useful to them in helping customers.

You may want to make your new product the star of the show or highlight it in a more subtle way.

Lush does both with their new Spongebob range — there’s a banner on their homepage promoting the range, but they also label the product images with “limited edition” to show that these products are new and only available for a limited time.

Image Source

Tracking KPIs

Tracking KPIs during a product launch is a crucial aspect of a marketer’s role in a go-to-market strategy. KPIs help us to assess the effectiveness of their plans and measure the impact of their efforts.

By monitoring KPIs, we gain valuable insights into various aspects of the launch, such as website traffic, conversion rates, social media engagement and sales figures.

This data-driven approach helps marketers understand what’s working and what needs improvement, enabling us to make informed decisions to optimise the go-to-market strategy.

Tracking KPIs also fosters accountability and transparency within the marketing team and across the organisation.

It provides a tangible way to evaluate the success of the product launch, identify areas of success or challenges and make data-backed adjustments for future endeavours.

Embracing KPI tracking empowers marketers to adapt and refine their tactics in real time, steering the product launch towards resounding success.

Analysing Results and Making Improvements

Tracking your KPIs will allow you to adjust the campaign in ways that you couldn’t have predicted until launch.

You may see lots of questions coming through from potential customers that you haven’t answered on landing pages, an FAQ or a blog, so you’ll want to make these answers visible ASAP.

By analysing your results, you’ll be able to plan the type of content you need to make during the post-launch phase of your go-to-market strategy.

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Post-Launch

The biggest mistake you can make in your go-to-market strategy is losing focus after your new product or service has launched. You need to be thinking about how to optimise and scale your campaign once the data starts rolling in.

Start by analysing the performance metrics of each marketing channel used during the launch.

Identify the channels that yielded the best results in terms of conversions, engagement and ROI. This will help you pinpoint the most effective channels to focus on.

You should also listen to what your customers are saying about your product and marketing efforts. Use this feedback to make improvements and align your strategies with their needs.

Then, review the messaging and content used in each channel.

Fine-tune the language and visuals to align with the preferences of your target audience. Tailor the content to resonate with specific segments, making it more personalised and relatable.

Don’t be afraid to broaden your audience demographics or venture into new geographic regions.

Be open to exploring new target segments that might have untapped potential, but remember that these audiences may need different messaging.

Finally, never stop experimenting and iterating like an artist perfecting a masterpiece.

A/B test different variations of your ads, content, and landing pages to discover what works best and use the insights from these tests to continuously refine your marketing strategy.

These insights will also help any future marketing campaigns you run if the audience or product is similar.

Conclusion

A well-defined go-to-market strategy helps companies avoid costly mistakes, focus their efforts on the right target audience, and create a compelling and differentiated market presence.

It ensures that all departments within the organisation are aligned and working towards the same goal, ultimately increasing the chances of success in the market.

What to Read Next

• Selling an ethical product or running an ethical business? Our ultimate guide to marketing an ethical business is a must-read
• Track your go-to-market campaigns and improve your strategy using Google Analytics 4
• Learn to set out a smart budget for your go-to-market campaign.

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Business-to-consumer marketing, more commonly known as B2C marketing, has been shaken up in the past year thanks to the AI boom we saw in the first half of 2023.

Because of this, you might be left wondering what marketing strategies are best for B2C businesses. In this guide, we’ll share ten ways to make your B2C marketing stand out in 2023 and beyond, including:

1. 1. Understanding your audience
   2. Repositioning your PPC campaigns
   3. Nailing your brand positioning
   4. Promoting social responsibility and good causes
   5. Making use of personalisation
   6. Using digital PR to your advantage with AI search in mind
   7. Mastering video marketing
   8. Taking your social media campaigns to the next level
   9. Incorporating influencer marketing
   10. Utilising an omnichannel marketing strategy

1. Understand Your Audience

The foundation of any B2C marketing campaign is a good understanding of your audience.

In today’s world, there’s more competition, more noise, more products…the list goes on.

Understanding your target audience is one of the best ways you can work towards standing out from the crowd.

You should think of your potential customers as more than just age, gender and location.

You need to consider what drives them, what they value and why they need your product or service.

This exercise is vital for anyone who also thinks they have a clearly defined target audience.

Reviewing this can help you find new opportunities you haven’t noticed before and help take your B2C marketing above competitors who haven’t put in this work.

How to Define Your Target Audience — Step-by-Step

Review your product or service

Start by looking at the benefits and features of your product or service and how buying from your business might appeal to potential customers. This includes ethical business practices, excellent customer service, fast shipping times, products made using a specific material or process or good product guarantees.

For example, earplug brand Loop makes the benefits of its product clear right away on its homepage — “innovative earplugs that look and feel good“.

Loop likely researched its target audience and found the common pain points — earplugs are uncomfortable and look unappealing — and realised it could highlight how Loop earplugs differ to appeal to its target customer.

Understanding what’s great about your product, service or business will help you understand who your business should target.

Conduct market research

Next, conduct market research by studying competitors and your industry. You can conduct surveys and interviews for a more hands-on approach, or you can take to social media and forums to see what your ideal customers are interested in and the comments they leave about your business or competitors.

You don’t just need to look at their comments concerning your business — pay attention to the type of things they post on their social media — this will give you a more rounded view of what your target customers are like as people, which will help you later when you create a buyer persona.

Analyse existing customers

Analysing your existing customers is one of the easiest ways to learn more about who you should be targeting. Not everyone who buys from you will be an “ideal customer”, but they will help you understand why they buy from you.

You can send out surveys to your existing customer base, look through reviews and conduct phone interviews with them.

Remember, customers need guidance through this process — if you ask them what their buying habits are, they will likely get confused.

Asking them questions like “Do you tend to buy on impulse or spend lots of time researching?” would be a better way to understand their buying habits.

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Segment your audience

Now that you’ve gathered this information, you likely have a few different customer types. Spend time sifting through all the information and segment customers into different groups.

You may find that one segment is unexpected, and it’s up to you whether you’d like to lean into this unexpected audience or change your positioning to focus more on a different segment.

For example, an earplug business could be aiming to target people who struggle to sleep but then realise that young concertgoers are making up a large part of its customer base.

It may decide to rebrand to get more concert-going customers or analyse its positioning to see why it’s attracting concertgoers over people who struggle to sleep.

You can see how choosing to target one of these two audiences would change the brand image, the way it’s presenting itself in paid advertising, the tone of its marketing campaigns, the marketing channels it’s using to promote itself…all of its digital marketing!

This is why understanding your target audience on a deeper level than age, gender and location is so important.

Create a buyer persona

Finally, you should take things a step further and design a buyer persona.

Buyer personas focus on individual consumers you’ve made up based on research — essentially, your ideal customer.

You give them a name, add a stock photo and describe their buying habits, family life, job, hobbies, values and more.

This process helps you visualise your ideal customer and will influence a lot of your marketing. When you create an ad, you’ll think, “Would this appeal to our buyer persona?”

You don’t have to do just one — if you have a couple of customer types, create more. Just don’t create so many that you lose track.

2. Reposition Your PPC Campaigns

In an AI-driven search landscape, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising will become an even more powerful tool to help businesses get the necessary visibility.

With the rise of AI search experiences, organic website traffic could drop by as much as 30-40% for some businesses. If you experience a drop in organic traffic, you’ll want to drive traffic through search PPC and non-search PPC platforms like social media or the Google Display Network.

An example of how shopping ads will look in Google’s SGE

However, you won’t be alone in this endeavour.

With the introduction of AI-generated ads, the number of businesses using PPC will increase, meaning costs will rise. Whatever quality AI can produce will become the new standard, so you must make something better.

Example of AI-generated backgrounds from Meta Ads

The quality of your ads will be crucial. Well-written and highly creative PPC ads will stand out from the crowd, as the quality of AI-generated ads can vary significantly.

Google has already provided previews of how PPC will look in the new search format, with ads appearing above AI-generated responses and sponsored shopping results within the response. Microsoft is testing ads within its Bing Chat AI, indicating an increase in PPC clicks compared to non-AI search.

Example of ads in Bing Chat

If your Google search ads are not converting as effectively in the new AI search experience, consider moving more of your ad spend to platforms where you’ve succeeded, such as a specific social media platform.

However, following best practices and leveraging AI tools available on platforms like Meta and Google, you can still get a strong start with search ads when the new generative search experience becomes the norm.

3. Nail Your Brand Positioning

Brand positioning is a crucial element that needs to be part of any B2C marketing strategy. It will help you stand out from the crowd and give potential customers reasons to buy from you.

What Is Brand Positioning?

Brand positioning is the core of your brand’s identity. It defines who you are and helps you stand out from your competition.
Let’s look at two vegan shoe brands on Instagram as an example.
Will’s Vegan Store targets wealthier customers and uses serene nature images, neutral colours and higher-priced boots.

Screenshot of Will’s Vegan Store Instagram

On the other hand, KOI Footwear appeals to a younger audience with vibrant colours, urban fashion and more affordable boots.

Screenshot of the KOI Footwear Instagram

Both brands sell vegan shoes, but their unique positioning attracts different types of customers.

To create a brand position that helps you stand out, consider your competition, where you fit in, customer needs and how you’ll put your positioning into action.

Analyse Competitor Positioning

To stand out, you first need to understand what your competitors are doing.

Look at their websites, social media presence and PPC ads. Identify their strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps they include excellent customer service as a benefit of shopping with them, but many customer complaints on social media go ignored.

Example of negative customer feedback on Facebook

This will help you improve your digital marketing, clarify your target audience and address any customer issues with your competitors.

Consider why customers might choose your competitors over you based on their positioning, but also think about why your competitors’ positioning might turn potential customers off.

Use this information to adjust your positioning. You shouldn’t copy your competitors by any means, but seeing what’s out there will help you find ways to stand out from others.

Understand Your Customers

Examine your current and ideal customers — focus on their problems, concerns, demographics and buying habits.

Use surveys, market research, social media insights, customer emails, reviews and live chat responses to gain a deep understanding of your target audience.

Pay attention to what customers do and don’t like about your brand and your competitors. This information will help you identify their pain points and tailor your brand’s positioning to address those issues.

It’s important to be authentic and highlight what sets you apart from your competitors while meeting your customers’ needs.

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Define and Implement Your Positioning

Based on your analysis of competitors and customers, it’s time to define your brand’s positioning.

Sum it up in a few words that capture your values, such as personalised service, trustworthiness or ease of purchase.

Let’s compare two life insurance brands to illustrate this point.

Dead Happy positions itself as a rebellious alternative, using catchy phrases like “make a death wish” and emphasising simplicity and affordability.

Polly life insurance positions itself as the go-to brand for mums, using emotional language and stressing affordability.

These are two brands with totally different positioning that essentially sell the same thing — life insurance.

Once you’ve defined your positioning, ensure it’s consistently reflected across your website and all your marketing efforts.

Putting Your Positioning in Action

Your brand’s positioning should be seamlessly integrated into your marketing and the entire business as a whole.

Consider the customer journey and how each aspect of your positioning connects with customers at different stages.

For example, if simplicity is part of your positioning, make information easily accessible at the beginning, provide detailed product descriptions in the middle and ensure a straightforward checkout process at the end.

Mastering brand positioning is crucial in a competitive market.

By understanding your competition, analysing customer pain points, defining your positioning and implementing it consistently, you can create a unique brand that resonates with your target audience.

Remember to be authentic and ensure your positioning aligns with the actual brand experience. Consistency across all touchpoints is essential.

4. Social Responsibility and Incorporating Ethical and Sustainable Practices into Your B2C Marketing

61% of consumers consider company ethics and values before making a purchase.

The type of things that consumers look for in ethical businesses are:

• They sell ethically sourced products
• They treat staff well
• They are transparent with customers
• They avoid false marketing claims
• They strive for constant improvement.

Ethical marketing promotes products or services produced or carried out ethically or promotes environmental or social causes as part of a broader marketing strategy.

Any causes the business promotes should be reflected in the business’s practices.

There’s no point in sharing mental health content on social media if you don’t care for employee health or sharing recycling tips if nothing is happening in the office to reduce waste.

Examples of ethical businesses include Simply Business, Candy Kittens, Betteridge & Milsom, Butternut Box and us at Thinkplus.

• Simply Business promotes mental health support for small business owners on social media.
• Candy Kittens offers discounted products through The Outlet to reduce food waste.
• B&M promotes people-first causes and collaborates with businesses that share similar values.
• Butternut Box highlights its ethical values in its marketing, including low-carbon recipes and donations to dogs in need.
• Thinkplus (that’s us!) emphasises transparency, diversity, employee benefits and community support.

You can learn more about marketing an ethical business in our guide.

5. Make Use of Personalisation

Brand personalisation is one of the most essential B2C marketing strategies you can use in 2023 and beyond.

Consumers want to feel a connection with brands, and a personalised experience can help build that connection. It also gives individual consumers a better experience by focusing on the products and services that are the most important to them.

Amazon is great at this, and so is Netflix. Both businesses suggest relevant “products” to users when they visit, based on their past searches and purchases on Amazon and watch history on Netflix.

There are a few different ways you can personalise your marketing campaigns. Here are some examples:

Tailored Recommendations and Dynamic Website Content

You can use customer data and algorithms to provide personalised product recommendations like Netflix and Amazon.

This can be based on the customer’s browsing history, previous purchases or preferences they might have set up when registering with your site or signing up for your mailing list.

Your website can also dynamically display content based on visitors’ browsing history, geographic location or past interactions. For example, a food delivery app will use the user’s location to show restaurants in their area.

Personalised Email Campaigns

You can segment your email subscriber list based on customer preferences, purchase history or demographic information.

By sending targeted emails with personalised product recommendations, exclusive offers or tailored content, you can increase open rates, click-through rates and conversions. You’ll also reduce the number of people who unsubscribe because they feel the content isn’t relevant to them.

Customised Landing Pages

You can create unique landing pages for specific customer segments or marketing campaigns.

These landing pages can be personalised to match the interests, needs or demographics of the target audience, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.

If you’ve looked for local services and landed on a page that says something like “Top Plumbers in Lincoln”, even though you can see it’s a national business, then you’ve experienced this type of customised landing page.

ERG Facilities has a landing page for Lincoln with a local number for potential customers to call.

This is a different number from the one on their main homepage, meaning the landing page offers a more personalised experience.

Personalised Ads

You can use customer behaviour, preferences or demographics data to deliver personalised PPC ads. These ads are more likely to convert as they’re more relevant to the person seeing them.

This is better than running the same set of ads for everyone if you have a few different customer types — the same with email.

6. A Solid Digital PR Strategy Is Key

Digital PR will be one of the top ways to compete with AI-generated search results.

It’s the ideal way to get your brand in front of prospective customers where they already spend their time, such as reading online publications, reading the news or browsing social media.

Here are some digital PR strategies that help B2C businesses thrive in this AI world.

Publishing Original Studies or Stats

Publishing stats or studies is an old-school but effective method of digital PR.

These don’t need to be brand-new studies either — you may already have customer data you can use to inform these studies as long as no identifying customer information is used.

Not only are great studies often linked to big publications, but they may also give you an advantage regarding SGE.

If someone is searching for specific data or stats in their industry, we hope the SGE will want to credit a source, even if they don’t link to you.

For example, a search for “digital marketing statistics” could return “according to Thinkplus, 55% of marketers struggle to understand why their target audience doesn’t convert”, which was pulled from our digital marketing ROI survey as part of the AI response.

The best studies share new information or creatively share existing knowledge — or even better if it’s new info shared in a cool way.

One of the best ways to do this is through infographics.

Here’s a fantastic infographic from Household Quotes about the most popular dog breeds worldwide. This infographic has a beautiful design and is cut down into smaller sections that can easily be shared if you want to share certain countries.

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But how does this help a business that helps searchers find tradespeople to work on their homes?

Well, taking a closer look at the internal links, we can see readers are redirected to pages about how to make their homes pet safe, which may require a tradesperson to work on the house.

An infographic like this isn’t going to attract people at the bottom of the funnel, but it’s one of those where the business decided to cast a wide net with a study that will help get a lot of eyes on it.

This is the type of topic humans love — it’s focused on dogs — so people will want to share it on social media and show it to others.

It almost turns into word-of-mouth marketing, despite its roots being a digital campaign.

It’s likely that some of the people who see this will need a tradesperson at some point and may want to use Household Quotes to get quotes.

Or, they’re potentially choosing a new dog based on popular breeds and will move down the funnel after this infographic. They decide to get a dog → realise they need to dog-proof their home → then get a quote through Household Quotes.

Newsjacking

Newsjacking is another form of digital PR where brands jump on a trending topic to get eyes on the business by taking part in a meme or offering an expert opinion on recent news.

Let’s be real — we do it all the time on our YouTube channel with AI. But that’s because, as marketers, we can offer an expert opinion relating to AI news and communicate it in a way other marketers and business owners can understand.

Brands sometimes take part in newsjacking more casually, speaking about recent events or just sharing a couple of memes.

For example, local businesses in the USA recently spoke about how Taylor Swift concerts impact their business, with one hair salon in Houston, Drybar, describing how they saw an influx of bookings around the week of the concert. They took the time to learn different hairstyles that Taylor Swift is known for to appeal to customers.

If you realise your business is connected to an event or news story, you can reach out to publications with an expert or first-hand opinion, like this hair salon.

DryBar did miss a trick here — as far as we can see, there are no social media posts from around the time of the concert promoting that they were taking bookings for Taylor Swift styles that weekend. This would have been a quick and easy way to newsjack this story and get even more bookings for that weekend.

Coining a Term

If you created a new process in your industry or found a better way of doing an old process, which doesn’t have a name, you can use this as an opportunity to coin a term.

Create content around this term and reach out to publications whose readers could benefit from this knowledge.

Then, people will be more likely to search for “What is the X technique?” or “How to use the X technique”.

As you are the originator, your site will likely be used to corroborate the info — and put your brand at the top of SERPs.

Alongside that, if people are nice, they’ll credit you with the idea — “The X technique, coined by Y” — which is likely to be picked up by SGE and included in the generated results.

For example, Hubspot coined the phrase Surround Sound SEO.

Here is Semrush using the words “coined by Hubspot” while talking about the surround sound technique.

You’ll also get more backlinks if your term takes off. Remember that linked and unlinked mentions will fuel the knowledge graph, so even if sites aren’t linking to you, it will help your brand name appear alongside the term you’ve coined in the AI-generated search result.

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Link Insertion

Pay attention to the websites that appear the most often for searches around products like yours, and then see how you can get featured on those websites.

One of the simplest ways is to get featured in a top 10 list.

These lists will potentially become more prevalent in an AI search world, as consumers may want a more human opinion on the products they are considering.

It’s also likely that the more often other sites mention your product in a positive light, the more likely Google will choose it to feature in an AI-generated search response.

By doing this, you’re almost reversing the buyer journey by featuring on the websites that appear in the queries before the final transactional queries.

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Brand Blast

A Brand Blast refers to a digital PR campaign you plan to launch all on the same day.

It’s commonly called a “simultaneous launch” or “embargoed launch”. However, the gist is that you get everyone involved to wait to publish their content on the same day.

As a result, potential customers who read various publications related to your industry will see your story on all their most-read sites.

This will require some pre-planning on your part, as well as publishers agreeing to post about you on a particular day.

A brand blast will be most effective when you have a new product launch that gives publications a good reason to discuss it on a specific day.

But, if you have a story that’s big enough or interesting enough to share, you can often create a brand blast about it, too.

While these campaigns might not immediately help with Google’s SGE, your target audience becomes aware of your new product and brand’s existence while supplying new information to Google’s Knowledge Graph.

It then uses this for future SGE results, both informational and transactional.

Think of it this way; if there’s enough early positive press about your story, that positivity will fuel more mentions and comments that Google can pull into their answers as time goes on.

7. Master Video Marketing

Video marketing is an integral part of any solid content B2C marketing strategy.

We don’t mean big-budget productions, either.

One of the biggest entertainment YouTubers, Mr Beast, has said in interviews that although he could afford to make his videos into cinematic masterpieces, he opts for a homemade feel instead because his audience likes the more personal vibes.

The same goes for brands.

Look at Kylie Cosmetics.

Kylie Jenner’s YouTube channel is essentially the cosmetics brand’s YouTube channel. But because it feels like Kylie’s personal channel, the videos feel less like adverts.

And when she does share a professionally filmed ad on her channel, her audience feels like she’s sharing a cool achievement with them. It’s like, “Hey friends, look at this cool ad I made”.

So, how does Kylie make money from her more casual videos?

Well, this 11-minute makeup tutorial is just an ad for Kylie’s 24k Birthday Collection. But it has 12.2 million views.

It’s performed so well because the brand knows what its audience wants to see — Kylie and how they can look like her.

It just so happens they can look like her by buying her products.

If you’re selling a service, you can still create engaging video content.

One of our clients, Golf Course Lawn, shares regular videos about caring for your lawn.

The founder, Ron Henry, has created videos on tackling nearly every lawn problem and has gained over 50,000 followers.

Ron gives away lawn care secrets for free but suggests products he sells to help customers achieve the results he shows in the videos.

Because he’s sharing the results and his passion, it shows that his business is legitimate and that his products get results.

And most of his content is filmed with a handheld camera. It feels personal and doesn’t feel like a business has made it, which is one of the reasons why it’s so successful.

How to Start Video Marketing

Start by researching the type of video content that’s popular in your niche. Short-form video is a better fit for you than long-form, or vice-versa.

It’s also important to look at what’s popular outside your niche.

No one expected a language learning app to create content using current TikTok trends and internet memes. Still, Duolingo decided to take that leap and now has over six million followers on TikTok, with videos that regularly get hundreds of thousands of views.

Half the time, the videos aren’t about learning a language; they’re just silly videos that happen to include the Duolingo owl, which gets the brand in front of as many people as possible.

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Duolingo is quite an extreme example, but it shows how you can do excellent video marketing by replicating current trends, even if others in your industry aren’t doing the same.

8. Make the Most of Social Media Marketing

Although 2023 has been a tumultuous year for social media marketing (we’re looking at you, Twitter), social media is still an essential asset in any B2C marketing campaign.

The key to great social media marketing, especially in the B2C world, is creating organic-looking content on the channels your ideal customers are spending their time.

If your demographic hangs out on TikTok, you need to create content there. If they spend a lot of time on Reddit, you need to find a way to incorporate Reddit into your marketing strategy.

Find out more about which demographics use which social media platforms.

Another way to find the best platforms is to check out competitors and see where they’re most successful. Check out the profiles of people commenting on their posts and see if they match your target customer or buyer personas.

If you have strong ethical values in your business, this may influence your choices. For example, the ice cream company Ben and Jerry’s recently stopped running paid ads on Twitter as they noticed a significant increase in hate speech on the platform.

Air travel company Ryanair noticed a gap in the market for airline content on TikTok. Many competitors weren’t using the platform, as in their eyes, the TikTok user base was too young to be able to book holidays or flights.

But Ryanair saw this as an opportunity to connect with their future customers. TikTok users would become familiar with Ryanair, and then when the time came to book their first holiday, they’d choose the low-cost airline they’d come to know and love on their favourite social media platform.

Ryanair also used TikTok to handle objections and clarify exactly what the Ryanair experience is. If you’re paying £20 for a flight, you won’t have a luxury experience. They don’t try to pretend to be something they’re not, and they even make light of it.

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9. Incorporate Influencer Marketing

There have been rumours that influencer marketing is on the decline, but with Google releasing its Perspectives filter, we’re likely to see it have a resurgence at the end of 2023 and beyond.

The Perspectives filter lets you filter Google search results only to show perspectives from people around the internet. This could be short videos, long videos, Reddit threads, answers on Quora or more.

Because of this, brands will want to use online creators and influencers to appear in Google’s Perspectives.

With AI search on the horizon, businesses will likely see a drop in traffic, so influencer marketing is a great way to connect with customers outside of search.

Even without these upcoming changes, influencer marketing has been an important part of any B2C marketing strategy for the past few years.

To get started with influencer marketing, take a look at any influencers who are in your niche. You may want to work with a fitness influencer if you sell wellness products. If you sell tech products, you could work with a tech influencer.

But that doesn’t mean you’re limited to those niches. Family influencers will have an audience interested in tech, and gaming influencers might be a good fit for your wellness brand. Outside-of-the-box thinking can help you stand out.

For example, Loki the Wolfdog is an account dedicated to showing the life of some wolf dogs whose owners take them on many outdoor travel adventures. At first glance, you might think, “ok, dog influencer, I can’t work with them if I’m not a pet brand”.

But their biggest sponsor is car manufacturer Toyota.

Because of the owner’s travel lifestyle, their photos are often out in the wilderness — in deserts, forests and mountain ranges. In the background of many of these images is the rugged, off-road-ready car they use to get to these locations, and it just happens to be a Toyota.

Toyota identified that many of Loki’s followers aspire to live this lifestyle with their dogs. When the time comes, they’ll look to Toyota for a great adventure car that can handle pets and rugged terrain.

If you want to get an authentic look into the best influencers to work with and have a social media presence, look at who your followers follow. Check your follower’s accounts to see if they represent your ideal customer or buyer persona, and then see if any influencers pop up across a bunch of their accounts.

These are the people you want to be working with.

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10. Omnichannel B2C Marketing: Reaching Customers across Multiple Platforms and Touchpoints

The best marketing strategy includes multiple different channels with a combination of the strategies we included above.

This is known as an omnichannel marketing strategy. This approach uses multiple digital marketing channels and touchpoints to create a seamless and consistent customer experience across multiple platforms.

It also takes into consideration the experience customers have outside of the digital world, such as visiting a store or interacting with you at an event.

The goal of omnichannel marketing is to create a unified brand experience, no matter where customers interact with the company.

When running omnichannel campaigns, you must ensure consistent messaging across all channels so customers get the same info and experience every time they interact with your brand.

To do this well, you need to understand the customer journey and what they need at different touch points. If customers on social media are likely at the start of their journey, you want to avoid bombarding them with content about making a purchase then and there.

Business to Consumer Marketing Strategies for 2023 and Beyond

From these ten B2C marketing strategies, you should be able to find a way to boost your digital marketing and drive more traffic to your website.

Today we’ve looked at:

• Understanding your audience
• Repositioning your PPC campaigns
• Nailing your brand positioning
• Promoting social responsibility and good causes
• Making use of personalisation
• Using digital PR to your advantage with AI search in mind
• Mastering video marketing
• Taking your social media campaigns to the next level
• Incorporating influencer marketing
• Utilising an omnichannel marketing strategy

If you feel like you need to consume even more marketing info (good on you!), then here’s where you should go next:

• Learn how to create a NINJA content strategy in this guide
• Get more from Google Analytics 4 with our revenue-increasing data tips
• Add email automation to your strategy with our email automation guide.

The post The 10 Best B2C Marketing Strategies for 2024 appeared first on Thinkplus.

61%

That’s no small segment of your customer base.

If you’re an ethical business, you want to know how you can reach these people and beyond, without looking like you’re just cashing in on a trend.

Here’s how you can achieve that with marketing.

We’re going to explore what ethical marketing actually is, share some examples of businesses doing ethical marketing (both good and bad), and we’ll share how you can build an ethical marketing campaign from the ground up.

What is an Ethical Business?

An ethical business is one that:

• Sells ethically sourced products or considers sustainability when carrying out services
• Treats its staff well – above and beyond just what the law asks of businesses
• Treats its customers well and is transparent and honest with them
• Doesn’t make any false marketing claims
• Owns its mistakes and strives to improve constantly.

What is Ethical Marketing? (And Why It Matters For Your Business)

Ethical marketing is used to describe any marketing activity that not only promotes your products or services (which are produced or carried out in an ethical way) but also promotes environmental or social causes your business cares about.

Ethical marketing practices also include being honest with customers and protecting customer data and privacy.

Ethical causes

The causes you promote in your marketing will most likely be connected to the values of your ethical business.

If you strive to sell the most environmentally friendly products, then it makes sense for you to promote environmental causes in your marketing.

That said, you don’t have to stick to one cause. For example, you can promote LGBTQ+ causes alongside your environmentally friendly products if inclusivity is an important value in your business.

The environmental or social causes that you include in your marketing should be reflected in your business practices to make your marketing, and your business, truly ethical.

If you’re promoting environmental issues in your marketing but doing nothing to cut down on your own waste in your business practices then your marketing could come across as false – which could cause customers to lose trust in you.

What not to do

When it comes to ethical marketing, misleading your customers is a huge no.
There have been cases in the past where companies have claimed to stand by an ethical cause but behind the scenes, it hasn’t been reflected in their business practices or products, even if the business was started as an ethical one.

You may have fallen victim to this yourself if you’ve ordered something that was marketed to you as eco-friendly and it arrived covered in non-recyclable plastic.

Or maybe you supported a business because of its values around inclusivity then found out that behind the scenes things were very different.

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Choosing your channels

Some businesses even decide to choose their marketing channels carefully. For example, if a publication or social media platform has acted unethically or against a business’s values they may decide not to promote their product or service in that space.

Ethical cosmetics brand Lush felt that social media as a whole didn’t align with their values, so they decided to remove all their accounts from social media.

As an inventor of bath bombs, I pour all my efforts into creating products that help people switch off, relax and pay attention to their well-being. Social media platforms have become the antithesis of this aim, with algorithms designed to keep people scrolling and stop them from switching off and relaxing.”

– Jack Constantine, Inventor and Chief Digital Officer at Lush

Now, we’re not saying you need to be this extreme, but this is an example of a brand that really wanted to embody its values to the fullest.

That said, if you do your research before acting you may well find that your target audience will react to this type of extremism well. Lush has a history of being rebellious and standing for causes, so taking a stance like this is likely to resonate well with its target audience.

Right after leaving social media, Lush saw a 20% increase in sales compared to the same period the previous year. If we’re looking at overall growth, they saw a drop in store sales but an increase in eCommerce sales.

There are lots of different elements that make up an ethical marketing strategy and different ways of marketing your ethical business. Here are some examples of businesses that embody their values and causes both inside and outside the business.

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Examples of Ethical Business Marketing

All the businesses we’ll be talking about are B Corps, just like Thinkplus. B Corp is a certification for businesses that want to make a positive impact and improve the world. It involves a thorough evaluation of how businesses treat their workers, customers, community, and the environment.

Learn more about what being a B Corp means to Thinkplus.

Simply Business (B2B)

Simply Business is a business insurance provider that has been a Certified B Corporation since 2017 as a result of its positive social impact and has also been voted the Sunday Times Best Company To Work For twice in a row.

So how does this reflect in their marketing?

Because it scores highly with B Labs for employee treatment and well-being, let’s take a look at whether it’s promoting this to its customers – small business owners.

Landing on the Simply Business Twitter we can see that it’s running a campaign alongside Mental Health At Work to highlight the mental health problems small business owners face and offering genuinely helpful advice and resources that small business owners can use right away.

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Not only does it care about the well-being of its own staff, which is reflected in its B Corp score, but it’s also offering well-being advice and support to its customers.

What can you learn from Simply Business?

Simply Business could easily just shout about how well it takes care of its staff, and this would be good marketing for the brand.

But, the insurance company takes it to the next level by using what it’s learnt by caring about the well-being of its own staff and using that to educate small business owners on taking care of themselves and their employees.

Candy Kittens (B2C)

Candy Kittens is a gourmet sweet company who have been B Corp certified since October 2023 and score highly in the environmental category.

The homepage explains how its products are vegan, made with real fruit juice, palm oil free, and use all-natural colours and flavourings. The products are also carbon neutral.

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These are big statements to make, but the brand backs these up with proof.

If Candy Kittens were claiming all these ethical elements because it’s “trendy” but not acting on them, then this might do more harm to the business than good.

One way it embodies its ethical values is with initiatives on its website like The Outlet, where it sells off products which are safe to eat but are past their best-before date so they don’t go to waste.

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This means they can embody one of their values (caring for the environment) while also offering customers a great deal.

They’re very transparent on the product page about why these products are discounted so that no one is buying them under false pretences.

What can you learn from Candy Kittens?

Candy Kittens identified food waste as a problem in its industry, and by being transparent and honest with customers, has been able to offer them products at a discounted price which is great for customers, great for the environment and aligns with the business’s ethical values.

B&M (B2B)

B&M is a construction consultation company that has been B Corp certified since April 2023 and scores highly for workers, community and the environment.

This is reflected in the values the business shares on its website. By including a link to the business’s philosophy and values in the main menu customers can hold the company accountable if it’s not embodying these values.

The values also offer huge benefits to customers. Who doesn’t want to work with a business that values people, collaboration, growth, expertise and partnership?

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The business regularly promotes people-first causes, such as a charity football match to raise money for suicide awareness, sponsoring local pride events and celebrating International Women’s Day in a traditionally male-dominated industry.

It’s likely B&M aren’t afraid to lose customers due to this stance because it wants to work with other businesses that embody similar values and who want to work with B&M because of its stance on ethical issues.

This is reflected in its past projects. B&M has worked with many schools, particularly on projects to help students with disabilities, and local community projects like helping to restore the Leas Lift alongside huge residential, commercial, and healthcare projects.

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Butternut Box (B2C)

Butternut Box is a dog food company that has been a B Corp since August 2022. It’s committed to doing better for the planet, people and dogs.

Butternut Box is proud of its low-carbon recipes and Europe’s first nutritionally complete vegetarian and plant-based meals (for dogs). It also donates a meal to a dog in need with every sign-up.

So how are these ethical values reflected in Butternut Box’s marketing?

There’s a page on the website that explains how the meals are cooked step by step. Each stage of this process embodies at least one of the brand’s values, which will help consumers decide whether or not this is the right brand for them. This isn’t the only monthly dog food subscription, so making the company values and ethics clear is one way to stand out from the crowd.

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For example, step 2 explains how the products are better for the planet and dogs – the business only gets the best ingredients from suppliers it trusts.

Step 4 explores how the products are better for people, dogs and the planet – dogs are healthier, there’s less food waste and customers don’t waste money on food their dog doesn’t need to be eating.

Being transparent about its production process is a great way that Butternut Box can prove that its products fit its values of being better for dogs, people and the planet.

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What can you learn from Butternut Box?

The more transparent you can be about your production process, the better. If you’re making ethical claims about how your products are produced or how your service is carried out, you need to back this up with easily accessible proof.

Butternut Box could have listed all the specific vitamins included in its products but that would have left most of its audience confused. Instead, it conveys its values in a way that anyone can understand.

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Thinkplus (B2B)

The team here at Thinkplus recently became B Corp certified. It seemed like a natural thing for us to do as we have always run the business in an ethical way, and we know that pursuing B Corp certification would only help us improve the foundation we’d already built.

When it comes to clients:

• We’re always transparent about how our campaigns are performing, and our clients always have access to the data.
• We’re honest about what our campaigns can achieve, based on past data. We’re optimistic, but we will always be realistic and communicate what’s achievable using language our clients can understand.
• When selecting imagery and language for ourselves or our clients, we’re careful to be inclusive and sensitive to underrepresented communities.
• We vet our suppliers across different areas to make sure they’re not doing anything dodgy or underhand, as well as that they have good ethical standards in their business and are committed to environmental issues.

When it comes to employees:

• We have really clear pay reviews and we’re transparent about salaries across the business
• We regularly measure our diversity and inclusion and take steps to improve this
• We ensure we pay all our staff above the living wage and have a responsible difference between the highest-paid earner and the lowest-paid earner
• We offer a health subsidy as well as an employee assistance programme which extends to the families of staff as well.
• We also have a great sick leave policy and a generous maternity and paternity leave policy.

When it comes to outside the business:

• We run a mentorship programme each year to help budding marketers, of any age, build their marketing skills and set goals that will help them become self-sufficient once the programme has finished.
• We make donations to charities that are thoroughly vetted by our team and suggested by Thinkplus employees. We also match donations to charities made by our staff.

You can learn more about what being a B Corp means to Thinkplus in this article.

As always, alongside the businesses that are ethical from the roots up, some brands want to jump on being ethical like it’s a trend. Here’s how not to do “ethical” marketing.

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Bad Examples of “Ethical” Business Marketing

We’d like to preface this section with this: sometimes brands start with good intentions and get lost along the way.

If you put out a campaign that falls flat, it could do huge damage to your business, but it might not be the end, as long as you strive to do better.

BrewDog

Beer brand Brewdog is known for, and has built a customer base around, being disruptive.

Being rebels.

Standing up for the little folk and doing things differently.

But, as the company has grown, it seems that decisions have had to be made to scale this back. To the point that it lost its B-Corp certification.

Ouch.

Brewdog has done multiple marketing campaigns that have missed the mark ethically. One of the most recent was a campaign “protesting” against the World Cup being held in Qatar.

The campaign was against the World Cup. But, not against showing said World Cup in their bars all across the UK.

That said, Brewdog did make a big statement against the World Cup and donated 100% of profits from any Lost Lager sales in its bars… but the campaign still fell flat.

It felt as though BrewDog were scared of following through with their convictions, which meant that protest felt hollow.

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The brand reasoned that “People are still going to watch the games – so giving them the opportunity to watch the games both to raise awareness and raise money to drive positive change at the same time is worthwhile.”

Bud Light

Another beer brand, Bud Light, recently ran a campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. As part of this collaboration, Bud Light sent Dylan a can of Bud Light with her face on and also made plans to release Pride-themed cans to celebrate Pride Month in June.

Dylan Mulvaney has 1.8 million followers on Instagram

As a result of this, people who are against the LGBTQ+ community decided to boycott the brand… and some even shot cans of Bud Light beer.

Many of these same people uploaded videos of themselves replacing Bud Light with other beers, that they didn’t realise also had their own pride initiatives. But that’s a story for another day.

So where did Bud Light fail here?

They issued a vaguely apologetic statement for the campaign, with the CEO stating “We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” the statement continued. “We are in the business of bringing people together over beer.”

If you want to take a stand, sometimes you do need to be in the business of dividing people.

This statement feels like Bud Light is saying “we thought we’d make a bunch of money from this pride campaign and working with one of TikTok’s most popular influencers, but we’re worried we might lose money instead so we’re back peddling.”

The thing is, Bud Light has lost money since this campaign launched and the apology happened, because they’ve alienated themselves from both anti-LGBTQ+ people and LGBTQ+ groups.

VW Clean Diesel

This next example shows how lying to your customers can cause more than backlash or a drop in revenue, but can result in legal trouble too.

Volkswagen installed software on more than 11 million of its cars worldwide that could detect when the vehicle was being emissions tested. When the cars were being tested, the device would switch to a testing mode which produced fewer emissions than in normal driving conditions.

And by fewer, we mean that while driving normally the cars would emit 40 times more nitrogen oxide pollutants than are allowed in the USA.

At least VW owned up to the mistake, with VW America boss Michael Horn saying “We’ve totally screwed up” and the company has “broken the trust of our customers and the public.”

H&M Conscious Label

Back in 2018, it was revealed that H&M’s “Conscious” line of clothing only contained a small amount of recycled materials, and across all its lines, H&M only uses 0.7% recycled materials.

The Conscious line, launched in 2010, featured green labels and promises of sustainability… which were, based on the stats above, misleading.

Luckily, H&M seems to have learnt from its mistakes and is making an effort to champion sustainability. The H&M website includes a sustainability section which shares guides on taking care of your clothes, as well as offering outfit rental at some stores.

How to Create An Ethical Marketing Campaign

You may be wondering how an ethical marketing campaign differs from any other marketing campaign, and the answer is that it takes ethical elements into account from the start. A lot of what you do in your campaign will be the same, but you may have to consider some different areas than you have done in the past.

Start with your values

Start your campaign by deciding which values you want to convey. You may want to focus on one cause at a time, instead of trying to do everything at once, or you may find a way you embody your values together in a campaign.

For example, if your business values people of colour and LGBTQ people, then you could do a separate campaign for each, or do a campaign based around inclusivity.

This doesn’t need to be confined to one campaign either. You can include the theme of inclusivity in every campaign you run.

For example, razor brand Estrid champions diversity in all its marketing, not just specific campaigns, but it may decide to do specific campaigns to lift individual communities or people.

Screenshot of Estrid’s Instagram

Do first-hand research

If you want to run a campaign championing an ethical cause, make sure you do first-hand research.

If your campaign focuses on a community then speak to that community inside and outside your business. Ensure that the community is being treated well within your business too.

If your campaign focuses on sustainability, speak to experts in the field and make sure your own business is finding ways to be sustainable.

Ethical campaigns and decisions need more than a quick Google. They need to be based on first-hand experiences and well-researched facts.

Otherwise, cracks will show and consumers won’t trust your authenticity.

Review your existing content

Before you launch an ethical campaign, check your existing content.

It won’t be a good look if you’re recommending readers reuse products in a new campaign while promoting heavy use of single-use plastics in an old how-to guide on your site.

If your campaign is focusing on specific products, ensure your landing pages match your messaging. If you’re promoting that your products are ethically sourced and produced, then you should include that on your product pages.

If you’re promoting the diversity of the workforce that carry out your services then the images on your service pages should reflect that.

Consistency is key.

Review your channels

This is an often overlooked step in building an ethical marketing campaign, but it’s important to consider the platforms you want to promote your message on.

For example, Ben and Jerry’s recently decided to stop running paid ads on Twitter due to an increase in hate speech on the platform.

Image Source

You may choose not to use certain social media platforms. You might even stop actively trying to get featured in publications that don’t align with your morals. You may even blacklist some publications in your Google Display Ads campaigns.

Test your messaging

Finally, before running an ethical marketing campaign, you should test your messaging with the people it impacts. If you’re running a campaign about diversity, test the finished product with the community or communities you’re including, even if members of that community worked on the campaign.

If you’re running a campaign about sustainability, speak to sustainable charities about whether or not your ethical campaign really is ethical.

Expect to pay people for their time here. They’re human beings after all.

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Ethical Business Marketing – What To Do Next

Remember, if you’re a truly ethical business then you will need to have lots of elements in place before you can run an authentic campaign.

• You can only run a mental health focused campaign if you champion mental health in your business.
• You can only run an inclusivity campaign if you cater to a diverse range of customers.
• You can only run an environmental campaign if your products and services are sustainable.

But, if you have these things in place then running ethical marketing campaigns will be a breeze.

Further Reading

• Check out our guide on how to run an authentic pride campaign
• Find out more about what being a B Corp means to Thinkplus
• Explore ways you can create the best content marketing strategy for your business.

The post Ultimate Guide to Marketing an Ethical Business appeared first on Thinkplus.

This guide covers five digital marketing strategies that you can use to turn your website into a lead generation machine and drive more traffic to your site.

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Content Marketing-led Strategy

As an IT support company, you have a huge scope for the type of content you can share to attract more clients.

You’re in a position to target the kind of questions your ideal customers search for before they convert, as well as targeting keywords and phrases colder leads may search while they’re fixing their own tech, and then entice them in with a compelling call to action or a great mailing list offering.

Depending on whether your ideal customer is someone looking for an IT support company for their personal tech, or someone looking for an IT support company for their business, your content will be slightly different.

Later in this guide, we’ll cover how you can conduct keyword research to find out the type of questions your ideal customer is searching for.

Blogs and Guides

Blogs and guides will be one of the cornerstones of your content marketing strategy.

Potential customers will likely find your website looking for basic tech support for their company and then realise that they need to hire an IT support company full time.

Start by thinking about the types of questions your customers ask you or the questions they ask before becoming your customers.

This could be things like “work PC won’t boot up” or “office Wi-Fi problems”.
These are relatively simple queries, but they could be the start of someone realising their company needs IT support.

They may make other adjacent searches too, such as “best company PCs” or “best office printer”. These searches show someone who could be about to upgrade their business’ tech and may need ongoing support.

Even if you don’t sell PCs and printers as part of your service offering, you can use your blog to make recommendations to these searchers and include CTAs throughout your guides to encourage the reader to consider an ongoing tech support service for all their new kit.

If you’re stuck for topics to write about, a great place to start is Also Asked or Answer the Public.

These websites give you a list of frequently asked questions on search engines based on the keywords you type in. The questions aren’t always phrased perfectly, but you can use them for inspiration.

By typing “business tech support” into Answer the Public, we already have at least one blog title to work from.

• “What is business technical support?”

We also have multiple key phrases that we might want to rank service pages for, such as:

• “small business tech support near me”
• “IT support for business near me”
• “business technology support”

If you don’t find what you’re looking for on websites like these, your keyword and competitor research will help you identify other content topics you should focus on.

Infographics

Infographics are the ideal way to explain complex ideas in a way that’s easier to understand. This can be great for sharing a step-by-step tutorial on how to do simple tech repairs yourself or explaining the complexities of installing a server in an office.

Here’s an infographic that would fit into a guide about setting up a server for your business. It will help your audience understand your guide better.

Image source: Lucidchart

Including useful infographics in your blogs can also help you to get quality backlinks in the future. If you have a great infographic, others who share it will link back to you when they share it in their own guides.

Backlinking is covered in more detail further down this guide.

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Website and Search Engine Optimisation-led Strategy

Your website is a key element in your wider marketing strategy. Without a good website, your digital marketing efforts could go to waste.
Your website needs to represent your best salesperson. Keep this in mind while adding your calls to action and unique selling points.

Conversion Rate Optimisation

Improving the digital marketing strategy for your IT support company will drive more traffic to your website, so you want to make sure your website is optimised to convert that traffic.

There are a few ways you can convert the traffic that lands on your website, depending on the stage of the buyer’s journey they are at.

For your main CTA — we suggest having two — one for those who are ready to convert and those who want to learn more.

These work well for those still unsure — they’re no-obligation and will help move your potential customer down the sales funnel.

Good IT support CTAs

• Learn more about our support options
• Get a free, no-obligation, tech support quote
• Get a free IT audit

Bad IT support CTAs

• Start now
• Sign up
• Call us

For those who are ready to convert, it’s crucial that you have your contact details on your homepage. We recommend adding them to the top right corner of your homepage and making them click-to-call or click-to-email.

As the top right corner is the standard location for contact details on many websites, your customers will know exactly where to look. There are times to innovate, but this isn’t one of them.

Search Engine Optimisation

Now you’ve got a conversion-optimised website; you need to increase your traffic. One way to do this is via search engine optimisation (SEO), which will help you appear higher in search results for various search terms.

As covered in the content section, targeting the right keywords is essential when it comes to SEO.

Keyword Research

You will need to target a variety of keywords, including both short and long. Shorter keywords are around one to two words, whereas longer keywords are often the phrases your target customers search while looking for IT support services.

Shorter keywords are usually best suited to service pages and longer keywords work best for blog content.

There are several different SEO tools you can use to find keywords. Our personal favourite is Semrush, which you can try for free for 30 days with our link thankyouninjas.com.

Starting by searching for the keyword “IT support”, we can already see that this keyword is searched nearly 10,000 times a month by UK searchers.

With this data and the relevance of the keyword in mind, we will decide to target this keyword.

The next step is to type the keyword into Google in an incognito window to ensure your past searches don’t influence the results.

The first thing we notice is that there are a lot of ads on this search term, two of which target a location. This shows that this is a competitive keyword that businesses are willing to spend money on and that multiple businesses are targeting searchers in their local area.

In Semrush, we can also see an estimation of how much these advertisers are spending per click, which is $11.22 or around £10.

Below this is a map pack showing local businesses. If your business services a local area, it’s important that you set up your Google Business Profile to give you a chance to appear here. If you are local, take a look at regional variations of your keywords, such as “IT support in Nottingham” or “IT support near me”.

Below the map pack are the organic results. There are also some questions that people also ask related to your keyword. Make a note of these, as they could be ideal phrases to target with blog content.

Pay attention to the type of content that is ranking. The top organic result is a service page, as are the ones below it, so you will want to optimise a service page to compete with these other businesses.

There are also some results for people looking to work in IT support. If all the search results were IT support jobs, you would want to consider targeting another keyword, as the search intent here would not match your business.

Now that you’ve looked at these results, you will know if you should or shouldn’t target this keyword and the type of content you should create in order to rank.

We recommend you find between 25 and 50 keywords that you want to rank for. You can do this by typing your main keyword into an SEO tool which will generate a list of keywords for you. They will not all suit your business, so it’s important to repeat the above process for each one.

You can also use an SEO tool, like Semrush* or the Moz Keyword Research Tool, to see which keywords your website is already ranking for. Using Air IT as an example, by typing their domain into the Semrush domain overview, we can get a closer look at their top organic keywords.

You can see which pages are ranking for each keyword. This tool is also useful for seeing which keywords your competitors are ranking for and the type of content ranking.

SEO Competitor Research

To refine your keyword research even further, you can take a look at what your competitors are doing. Using just one to five keywords, you can identify your online competitors — businesses who rank for your keywords.

Take a look at:

• Their content
• The other keywords they are ranking for
• Their backlink profile

This will influence your own strategy and will help you find additional keywords. The goal is to take inspiration from your competitors and create better content.

Not only will it help you with organic traffic, but it can also help you with your PPC keywords, which we’ll cover later in this guide.

Backlinking

With a good content marketing strategy comes good backlinks. Or so you’d hope. Backlinking often takes additional effort on your part, but it’s well worth the returns.

Backlinking is when another website links back to your website. This could be because they found your content or service useful and wanted to link back to your site.

The main way to get backlinks is through outreach. This outreach could be requesting that publications link back to your article or offering a guest post they can upload to their own site.

It’s nice to think that these publications will find your content by themselves, but 99% of the time, you need to reach out to them first.

Start by researching some publications that suit your business. For IT support companies, these would be publications your ideal clients read. For example, if you mostly serve businesses, you’d want to be featured on business websites. If you serve schools, you want to reach out to education publications.

You can also find out which publications are linking to your competitors via a backlink tool, such as the Small SEO Tools backlink checker, or by using an SEO tool like Semrush*. Search for your competitors’ URLs and look at the results.

Small SEO Tools Backlink Checker

Semrush Backlink Checker

You can then take a look through the websites that are linking back to your competitors. Analyse the content that these publications are linking back to. Is it well-researched, in-depth content with video guides? Is it a study with interesting statistics?

You also need to look at the other content shared on the publication’s website. How could you create something that would fit in with the rest of their content?

Link Building Email Outreach Templates

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Email Marketing-led Strategy

Email marketing as an IT support company is the perfect way to cultivate your audience, both existing clients and cold leads.

By offering downloadables on your website, you can gather the emails of potential leads and send them helpful emails that also help move them along the sales funnel.

These downloadables could be included in articles about certain topics or on service pages as a secondary call to action for those not ready to convert.

Examples include:

• A “guide to office servers” downloadable on the office server service page.
• An exit popup offering a guide on “how to pick the best IT support company”.
• A guide explaining “how to create an IT strategy” on the IT strategy service page.

You can adapt your blog content for emails, as you’ve already identified that these topics are ones your audience are interested in. You can send a shortened version in the email and link to the full article.

Examples of email topics could be:

• Send a quarterly email reminding your email list to run a large security check.
• Send a yearly email about “spring cleaning” your PC.
• Send emails about password safety with horror stories, including how you helped your customers with this.
• Send emails about IT blackouts and how they can affect businesses, again with examples of how you saved the day and got your client back online.

Think about the type of content that would make your ideal customer open your email.

Video Marketing-led Strategy

When it comes to tech issues, video content is a must-have. It’s a great way to physically show someone how to resolve a tech problem themselves, and if they watch your video and still can’t fix the problem, they will be more likely to call you if you include a good call to action in the video. Just a simple, “if this didn’t solve your problem, get in touch.” can go a long way.

A quick YouTube search for a problem that may seem simple to tech-savvy folk — “how to make a new folder”, returned a top video with over 1 million views.

You can use your blogs as a script for your video content. If people search questions on Google, the search engine may give them video results too, so your keyword research works for both platforms.

Look at the content other tech support companies share on YouTube, take inspiration from them, and then create something better.

Popular YouTuber LinusTechTips started as a tech advice channel, explaining the intricacies of motherboards and setting up your PC at home.

Now, he has over 14 million subscribers, and his full-time job is YouTube rather than tech support.

That doesn’t stop him from sharing tech support tips from time to time.

PPC Advertising-led Strategy

There are two different audiences you’ll want to target with pay-per-click advertising across social media and search engines.

The first audience is those looking for an IT support company in an emergency. Their office’s server just went down and they don’t know what to do. No one can do any work, and there’s a huge project due today. They’ve typed “IT support emergency” into Google, and your ad is the first one that pops up.

You’ve included that you can offer on-site or remote support instantly, that you’re experts in helping businesses and you’ve included your phone number in the ad.

They get in touch, you help them and then, after a few automated emails and follow-ups to make sure they haven’t had any problems with the server since, you convert them into a contracted customer. All because your ad was in the right place, at the right time, targeting the right keywords.

It’s great if you offer a free quote or a free IT audit, but people looking for an IT support company in an emergency don’t care about that. Pitch these things when you follow up with them instead.

Your other type of customer is those looking to hire an IT support company on a retainer. They’re looking for clear USPs and reasons why they should click your ad over the other results. If you offer free quotes or a free IT audit, include that in your ad.

For social media ads, it’s best to retarget those who visited your website but didn’t convert. Without this, your ads will likely be shown to individuals who aren’t interested in IT support. By retargeting those who have visited your site previously, you know there’s a level of interest there and they’ll be more likely to click on your ad and convert.

How to Find Keywords for PPC

Your keyword research for your pay-per-click ads will be very similar to the research you conducted for your organic traffic.

The main difference is focusing on the ads running on those keywords when you type them into Google. If there are no ads, this may be a low-value keyword that won’t get you any clicks. On the other hand, it could be that you’re serving a niche and no one is advertising for that keyword yet. If there are a lot of organic search results above yours for this search term, PPC could be a good short-term way to make sure you rank on page one for these more niche searches.

If there are lots of ads, assess how vital this keyword is to you and if you believe you’ll be able to compete in the space. If not, it might be worth targeting a different keyword.

Competitor Ad Analysis

You can improve the quality of your ads by identifying what is working for your competitors.
Using a tool like Semrush, you can see your competitor’s estimated ad spend and the ad creative they are using.

By looking at how much traffic these ads are receiving, and the keywords they are targeting, you will have an idea of whether this is a good keyword to target.

Summary — 5 Digital Marketing Strategies for Tech Support Companies

We’ve identified five areas of your digital marketing that you can use to bring more traffic to your website and turn leads into sales.

These strategies are:

• Content marketing
  • Adding blogs and guides to your site
  • Sharing infographics with your audience
• Website and Search Engine Optimisation
  • Improving your call to action and improving your conversion rate
  • Search engine optimisation and keyword research
  • How to analyse your competitor’s SEO strategy
  • Improving your backlink profile
• Email marketing
• Video marketing
• PPC Advertising
  • Search engine ads
  • Social media ads
  • PPC keyword research
  • PPC Competitor research

Implementing any of these strategies will take time, and you don’t need to do all of them at once. Pick the ones you believe will serve your business best and then branch out from there.

What to Read Next

• Not sure who your target audience is? Find out using these six target audience questions.
• Learn more ways to optimise your website’s sales funnel to convert your new visitors into leads.
• Spice up your lead generation further with these 20 B2B lead generation ideas.

*Some links within this article are affiliate links which Thinkplus receives a fee for promoting (these links are not sponsored). Thinkplus only promotes services we already use within our marketing stack.

The post 5 Digital Marketing Strategies for IT Support Companies appeared first on Thinkplus.

Shein’s marketing strategy uses aggressive pricing and discount codes to market a huge product selection via its website, driving huge volumes of traffic from social media. Shein has a huge following on its own social media pages and also uses an army of micro-influencers to promote its products.

It also spends heavily on pay per click advertising – in excess of $3M per month on search adverts in the US alone. Its website uses a range of psychological triggers to persuade visitors to purchase. In short, this is one of the most aggressive digital marketing campaigns we have ever studied.

Fashion powerhouse SHEIN has come a long way since it were founded in 2008. Well known for its cheap clothing, SHEIN gained traction in 2020, where it saw an increase in sales by 250% compared to the year before.

So how did Shein achieve this huge success, and what can other businesses learn from it?

This guide explains SHEIN’s marketing strategy, and how you can replicate it.

We’ll be covering:

1. The History of SHEIN
2. SHEIN’s Website and App
3. SHEIN’s Pay-Per-Click Ads
4. SHEIN’s Social Media Strategy

In each section we’ll explain how you can replicate SHEIN’s marketing strategy for your own brand, even if you’re not a fashion retailer.

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The History of SHEIN

SHEIN is an online fast fashion retailer, founded in 2008 by Chris Xu. The company is most well known for their cheap clothing apparel as well as other items such as technology or home goods.

SHEIN is based in China but ships to 220 countries. As of 2022, SHEIN is the world’s largest fashion retailer, after a $100 billion funding round in April 2022

In 2011, SHEIN was focused on selling wedding dresses, with some women’s apparel on the side, functioning in a similar way to a drop shipping company.

In 2012, SHEIN began running social media marketing campaigns with fashion bloggers for giveaways and advertising products on Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram.

Changing their strategy in 2014, SHEIN began to acquire their own supply-chain system, moving them away from the drop shipping model and towards being a fully integrated retailer. The company also purchased Romwe, another Chinese eCommerce retailer.

Let’s dive into the SHEIN digital marketing strategy and see what sets this clothing brand apart from other fast fashion retailers.

SHEIN’s Website and App

SHEIN has both a website and an app, and it appears that they are trying to drive desktop visitors towards the app by offering a 25% discount to app users. This strategy is working well, as the SHEIN app was the second most downloaded shopping app globally in 2021, and in May 2022 it became the most downloaded app in the USA.

High app downloads haven’t meant low traffic for the SHEIN website. According to Semrush* SHEIN is estimated to be getting 50 million visitors a month via organic search worldwide.

Pop Ups

This might seem like a strange place to start – aren’t pop ups universally panned? Not if they are done right, and offer value to the visitor.

As soon as you land on the SHEIN website you’re immediately met with multiple discount vouchers that you can “collect” with one click and use across your order. This immediately positions SHEIN as a cheap fashion retailer while also giving the impression that they’re cheap because of the vouchers, rather than the products themselves being cheap.

When you close this first popup, you get another one offering further discounts if you register with the site. This is extremely clever as it gets visitors onto the SHEIN email list right away. They’re offering £3 off, free shipping on orders over £35 and free returns up to 60 days, all in return for the visitors email address, which they can then use for automated email campaigns and retargeting visitors with ads on other websites.

How does this look on the SHEIN app?

The first thing you are greeted with is a pop up asking you to turn on app notifications. SHEIN has included that you get exclusive vouchers and will be notified about the latest promotions, as well as order status updates and notified about daily check-in. The daily check-in is an interesting feature which we’ll cover further down this guide.

We are also greeted with the same pop ups as we saw on desktop, minus the £3 off email sign-up. This is likely because they have opted to focus on getting people to register for notifications rather than emails, and including both would be a bit excessive.

How can you use these same tactics in your marketing strategy?

Give people a reason to make an account with you or to join your mailing list.

If you can offer a discount in return for a mailing list sign up or account creation, that’s great. If not, create perceived value other than just “sign up to our newsletter for news”. You can offer an extended returns policy to those who make an account with you, or offer free shipping for a lower order value than those without an account.

If you have an app, offer people reasons to turn on notifications. Our phones are bombarded with notifications daily, and people are becoming more choosy as to which notifications they want to leave on. If you do send notifications, be careful not to overdo it. Testing notification frequency and monitoring how many people keep notifications switched on is a great way to find the ideal number for your business and customers.

Benefits Bar

SHEIN has the main benefits of shopping with them in a benefits bar just below their menu, and the benefits here are directly related to their wider marketing strategy.

SHEIN have played heavily into the hype surrounding “shopping hauls” that are popular on social media. Because SHEIN products are cheap and often take a while to be shipped, customers like to put a large order all in one go rather than smaller orders that they’ll need to wait longer to receive.

Because of this, SHEIN offers free shipping on orders over £35 and free 60 day returns. They know that customers are likely to be spending an average of £35, as the items are cheaper, and by ordering more items that they might need to send back because they want to hit the £35 free delivery threshold.

This benefits bar also handles objections too. When typing “Is SHEIN” into Google, several of the results are asking about free returns and quality. By putting free returns in the benefits bar, they’re making it clear right away that they do offer free returns, with an extended return period as well, compared to many fashion retailers who only offer 30 days.

On the app, we see a couple of changes in the benefits bar, the main one being that the app discount has been replaced with “Check-in“.

The check-in system is a clever way to get users to open the app daily. By checking in each day, the user is rewarded with points that can go towards purchases. Not only are they being incentivised to open the app daily, they’re also going to be thinking about making a future purchase using the points they have accumulated.

This page also includes items of clothing tailored to the user’s search or purchase history. When it comes to encouraging users to make a purchase, SHEIN is willing to innovate and this is one of those ways. Considering their huge valuation, it’s likely these tactics are working well for them.

This type of customer engagement isn’t suited to a B2B business model, or a service based industry, but works excellently for eCommerce businesses.

How can you use a benefits bar on your own website or app?

Write down three of the benefits of shopping with you, or hiring your services, and include them in a benefits bar at the top of your website. Benefits bars are most commonly seen below the menu bar.

Consider your USPs, especially the ones that set you apart in your industry. If everyone offers free quotes, you could sweeten the deal by reinforcing that you offer no obligation quotes, to take the pressure off the customer down the line if they reject your services.

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Discount Codes

Further down the homepage, we see that not only is SHEIN having an 80% off sale at the time of writing, they also have another section below this with more discount codes, and then below that they have more codes for new users.

At this point, we actually haven’t seen any clothing items.

If SHEIN was a new brand, this is not the strategy we’d suggest, but because of the way they have positioned themselves in the market, this strategy makes sense. SHEIN is the discount clothing brand, and they want to make that loud and clear.

This is the same on the app too – the above the fold section is taken up by discount codes unless you are logged in. In that case, the new user zone discounts are removed, which is the same on the website.

How can you apply this to your own website or app?

This is less about discount codes, and more about SHEIN being loud about their USP.

The mistake they have made here is making their entire above the fold section about discounts and sales, with no clothes in sight. Someone landing on the website for the first time, with limited knowledge of the brand, would likely become overwhelmed and bounce back to search.

The lesson here is that it’s good to make your USP obvious, but don’t let it overpower your homepage. If in doubt, ask someone if they can tell what you offer from your homepage. If they can’t, you need to rethink your website.

Category Pages

SHEIN has category pages and sub category pages.

The category pages are fairly standard – Women, Curve + Plus, Kids, Men, Beauty and Home.

At the time of writing, the Women, Curve + Plus, Kids and Men pages are all the same as the homepage above the fold, with the homepage defaulting to womenswear. Below the fold, we see variation in the sub categories.

This is surprising, as with this current promotion, a user may not realise at first glance that they’ve changed to a different category page. Even just changing the colours on the “summer sale” banner will indicate to the user that they are on a different category page.

The change between categories is more obvious on mobile, with the app using motion to “slide” across to the next category.

The pages looking the same is not as prominent on mobile and smaller screen sizes, but different screen sizes should be taken into consideration when making changes to the above the fold section of the website.

Sub Category Pages

SHEIN’s sub category pages can be accessed as a drop down menu, or from different parts of the category page. They use images to illustrate the subcategories further, promoting new lines and releases.
They also use the colour red to emphasise additional subcategories.

A downside here is that there are a lot of subcategories – they’ve even included categories for daily new releases. We already know that SHEIN encourages users to check-in daily on the app, so it’s possible that these same people also like to check out daily new releases too.

Product pages

Let’s move onto SHEIN’s product pages. They’re fairly well optimised, but there’s certainly room for improvement. This experience is similar on both desktop and app, so we’ll stick to the desktop website for this section.

Let’s take a look at this popular dress from the Curve + Plus category.

It has multiple product photos, and they all look more like user generated content than studio shots, which can often be appealing to consumers.

The price of the item is hugely prominent, tying in with SHEIN’s goal of being an affordable fashion retailer. The name of the product is so small compared to the price that you barely notice it to start with.

The next area of the page that grabs your attention is the add to cart button – it’s designed to stand out on the page. You know exactly where to go if you want to make a purchase.

These are the three most attention grabbing parts of the page – the photos, the price and the add to cart button. We can predict that SHEIN has identified these three things as being most important to their customers.

Next we have different dress colours. A great design choice they’ve made here is to add the word “hot” to the colours that are selling well. This helps guide unsure customers towards a purchase, even if they can’t decide on a colour.

A downside here is that when you change the colour selection the colour of the dress does change, but the same photos are used. It’s a good bit of photo editing, but it could put off consumers who are concerned about SHEIN’s quality. They’d rather see actual photos of the product they will receive, rather than just seeing the colour of the image change.

Photo reviews are a big part of SHEIN, so it’s possible that SHEIN finds it more effective to edit their original photos, then let the reviewers show off the colours of their clothing when it arrives. SHEIN’s loyalty points model even rewards reviewers who include a photo.

Reviewers are also encouraged to include their personal measurements, as well as how they felt the overall fit was.

This dress alone has 2,618 reviews. You can sort by reviews with photos if you want to see how the clothes look in real life. You can also see reviewers asking readers to like their reviews so they can get more points to go towards more clothes.

Really, SHEIN has created the perfect review model. By encouraging users to leave reviews with points they can use to spend on more SHEIN products, they get lots of reviews for their products, lots of user generated content and the reviews handle common objections that SHEIN visitors have, such as the quality of the clothes.

The product descriptions are surprisingly short, but there’s certainly an argument for this. Why try and explain your product in an adjective-filled paragraph when you can show the product in photos and leave the reviewers to offer a more detailed description, with more photos?

Lastly, SHEIN has done a great job of optimising these pages to encourage visitors to spend more. They include a “Get The Look” section so that those who like this dress can add other products to their basket that will go well with it.

Not only that, when you click on these “Get The Look” products, a popup appears to get you to add the product to your basket then and there, without needing to leave the page. So if you want everything in the “Get The Look” section, you don’t need to go back and forth between pages.

The checkout process on SHEIN is fairly straightforward, but we’d like to spotlight one specific aspect.

SHEIN are so dedicated to their discount codes that they include the codes on the checkout page, so that if you missed them before you have the chance to use them. SHEIN doesn’t expect you to go hunting round the internet for a discount code, they put it right there in front of you.

How can you apply this to your own business?

Include reviews to show the integrity of your product or service, and if possible, incentivise your customers to leave a review. SHEIN offers points, but other companies offer different incentives. Secret Labs offer an extended warranty on their chairs if you share the product on social media. You could do something similar in return for a review.

Make the ideal path you want your visitors to take clear. SHEIN wants customers to look at the photos, look at the price then add the product to the basket. They do this by making the price larger than the other text and making the add to cart button a different colour to the rest of the page, helping it stand out.

If you sell a product in multiple colours or styles, highlight best sellers to your customers. This will not only encourage those who aren’t sure which colour to pick and want to be on trend, as well as those who don’t want to buy the colour everyone else is buying. Seems small, but if that’s what is important to your audience (picture a birthday party of kids who have all picked the same SHEIN dresses arguing over turning up in the same outfit – speaking from experience here), then these little additions to your product pages can make a huge difference.

If you offer different service packages, you can add a “popular” tag to those services. Let’s say you offer three levels of car detailing, a basic clean, a luxury clean and a deluxe clean. If the luxury clean is your most popular, or it makes you the most profit, then you can identify it as the most popular. Don’t try and use this trick just to promote your most expensive service though, as consumers will see straight through it.

SHEIN has a very well optimised website, which can be cluttered at times but is optimised to get bigger spends out of consumers. So how are they getting traffic to this website? Let’s dive into their PPC strategy, as well as their well established social media channels.

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SHEIN’s Pay-Per-Click Ads

If you spend time on social media, it’s likely you would have seen an ad for SHEIN’s products.

They are everywhere.

Search Advertising

According to Semrush*, SHEIN is estimated to be spending over $3 million monthly on search ads worldwide. This spend is estimated to be netting them around 1.8 million monthly visitors.

Their search strategy is fairly straightforward – for the most part, they are advertising on their brand name, misspellings of their brand name, as well as competitor brand names. They also target generic clothes keywords, such as “graphic tees” and “summer dresses“.

The ad copy we have access to in Semrush for the keyword “shein” pushes one of their USPs right away – the daily new arrivals and changing stock.

Typing the same search term into Google we get a SHEIN search ad for the UK site. The headline includes “85% Off and Free Shipping“, letting potential customers know loud and clear that they have a sale on. They also use ad extensions to highlight popular pages and product ranges on their site, including “Plus Size Clothing” and “Kids Clothes“.

Some of the text used in the ad could be optimised better, as “Up to 85% Off Wait There’s More” isn’t the most inspiring headline. It’s likely that because of the size of the business, SHEIN are using smart ads which will take pre-written lines and serve them up to a customer based on their search history. This saves time but isn’t always the most effective.

How can you use search ads for your business?

Take a look at your target keywords and analyse the search results. If there are a lot of ads there, it could be worth running ads on that search term, depending on how competitive the space is.

If you’re going to be competing with massive household names, it could be a challenge and potentially a waste of time and money. If there are no ads, this could mean that the keyword isn’t profitable.

Take a look at the search volume for your search terms and use that as a guide too – if the term is getting millions of views then it will be highly competitive and it will be a challenge for smaller businesses to win the ad spots from the big brands. If the search volume is really low, it might not be worth running ads on that term if no one will see them.

If you’re a smaller business, we’d suggest writing each individual search ad rather than letting Google auto generate them to ensure those who see your ads are getting the best experience.

Finally, add your USPs into your ad – give people a reason to click on your ad over the other ads and organic search results.

Social Media Advertising

Looking up SHEIN on the Meta Ad Library, which shows us ads from Facebook and Instagram, we can see that SHEIN is currently running around 540 ads across these two platforms.

To put that into perspective, online fashion company Boohoo is currently running around 22 ads on Facebook and Instagram.

As SHEIN has so many different products, and are adding new products daily, they need to be running a lot of ads to cover everything. The oldest ads they are still running date back to April 2022, so we can see that they change their ads frequently. It’s important to note that two of their old ads still reference spring, so it could be that these ads were left running by accident.

SHEIN are running multiple ads with the nearly the same ad creative – where it differs is in the text and call to action. The first two ads in the image above have a different first image and a slight difference in the copy. One links to the SHEIN desktop site and one links to the mobile site. The third ad has the same imagery as the second, but different text. This one looks like it should link to the mobile app, as it uses the CTA of “install now”, but it also links to the mobile site.

Scrolling through a selection of their other ads, the images change but the text stays very similar. It’s surprising to see that the copy, and in fact the imagery on most of these ads doesn’t mention the discounts. Some ads include it in the imagery, but a majority don’t. With what we’ve seen from SHEIN’s messaging, we definitely expected them to include discount codes in their ads as well as promoting sales.

From their ads, we also can’t tell who they are aimed at, other than “people who wear dresses” or “people who wear gym wear“, and even then that’s only from looking at the imagery used. The copy doesn’t include phrases that allude to a certain audience, like “10% off your first purchase” for those new to SHEIN.

The ads are all quite generic, and this is possibly because they are running so many. By running this many ads, you don’t have time to craft them to suit an audience – instead they are likely generated from different lines and images that SHEIN have added to their ad database.

What can we learn from this?

Less can sometimes be more. Crafting a targeted ad which uses terminology related to your audience, and which relates to the product imagery, is likely to be more effective than letting Facebook randomly generate them for you. Although this way of running ads will save you time, and can be effective if you’re running ads on a massive scale, it’s less effective for smaller ad campaigns.

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SHEIN’s Social Media Strategy

SHEIN is a social media powerhouse. Across five platforms they have over 61.5 million followers.

Instagram

@sheinofficial

Followers: 25.3 million

SHEIN uses their Instagram exclusively for product shots. A majority of these are user generated content, although they do share flat lay images of their products and outfit inspiration too.

The engagement on their posts is about average for a fashion brand- they have an engagement rate of around 0.3% according to SocialBlade, with their last six posts getting between 6,000 and 11,000 likes. They don’t get many comments and a large amount of their comments are inappropriate spam.

We’d love to see SHEIN innovate more on their Instagram feed, mixing up the shots of similar looking women and somewhat generic product shots with more creative photoshoots showcasing more diverse models.

From these images you also don’t get an idea of the USPs – that the clothes are cheap and there are always plenty of discount codes on offer.

Their Instagram Reels however nail this. They reshare customer videos showing off SHEIN hauls, a bigger variety of body types and fashion inspiration. They’re really played into the SHEIN “haul culture” here and it’s paid off well – their last 6 videos received between 23,000 and 107,000 likes.

X

@SHEIN_official

Followers: 478k

SHEIN’s X takes a very different approach to their Instagram account. This account is focused more on company news and recruitment than anything else. The clothes take a back seat – they’re featured in the posts but they’re not the main focus.

Sophistication takes inspiration from street style cutouts, straps, and crops in our SHEIN X designer MAY ‘G’s new collection⁠! Through SHEIN X, designers like MAY ‘G are empowered to share their work with the world. Explore their designs here: https://t.co/P0rpqMtxEq pic.twitter.com/YqTanbEh40

— SHEIN News (@SHEIN_News) July 5, 2022

Recent posts include information about one of their designers, and a job post from SHEIN Türkiye.

Calling all fashion buyers! Looking for your next opportunity? Our new opening could be your next career move! We are looking for professional, talented fashion buyers to join our team based in Türkiye. Check out the job description and grow your career with us! pic.twitter.com/n9Oiy19DpF

— SHEIN News (@SHEIN_News) June 28, 2022

Their engagement level isn’t very high – it’s around 0.01% based on the engagement on their last 5 posts compared to their follow count. The industry average for fashion brands is 0.04%.

At first glance, we expected this to be because a smaller audience who were invested in the more corporate side of SHEIN were interacting with meaningful comments, but it turns out the comments are mostly made up of customers asking where their orders are.

It looks like SHEIN has decided to take an alternate route with their Twitter account, which is refreshing to see, but it’s possible the audience isn’t there. It’s also possible that SHEIN started this Twitter account with a different approach, and now they’re not engaging their existing followers by switching to this corporate angle.

SHEIN has nothing to lose by taking this approach on Twitter. They have a large number of followers across other platforms. We can’t know for sure, but it could be that Twitter has resulted in some fantastic hires in the past and they want to ensure they keep getting the best people on their teams around the world.

Facebook

@SHEINOFFICIAL

Followers: 26.9 million

SHEIN’s Facebook content is very similar to their Instagram content. They share a lot of user generated content and model shots of their clothing. Their engagement is around 0.03% (based on the engagement on their last 5 posts compared to their follow count). This is low compared to the industry average of 0.07%

We’ve also got a classic case of Facebook spam comments here, and SHEIN isn’t deleting them.

There are also several unhappy customers complaining in the comments. SHEIN does reply to most of these comments though, which is good to see.

SHEIN could certainly boost their engagement on Facebook by sharing more interactive posts such as asking fans to comment their favourite product out of several items or asking them to react to vote on a poll. Facebook is the ideal place to get interaction from fans.

They could treat this page as more of a community space, rather than just a copy of Instagram. If they encourage SHEIN fans to make recommendations to other users in the comments and have conversations about the brand, they could easily generate sales organically without too much effort.

TikTok

@shein_official

Followers: 4.6m

SHEIN have certainly found their place on TikTok. Their brand appeals to Gen Z consumers who want to be on trend but don’t have lots of expendable income. According to VidIQ, SHEIN has an engagement rate of 4% on TikTok, with the industry average being 1.45%.

The SHEIN TikTok account may not be their biggest account, but it’s getting the most engagement of any of their accounts.

They play into the haul culture of SHEIN by sharing their customer’s haul videos. As a result, they fit onto the TikTok For You Page feed nicely – you wouldn’t know right away that this content was from the official SHEIN account, or that it’s a promotion.

At the time of writing, the SHEIN hashtag has over 30 billion views, and the sheinhaul hashtag has over 5 billion views, going further to prove their popularity on the app.

Social media is a huge part of the SHEIN marketing strategy, and we expect that they will continue to grow and refine this strategy.

What can we learn from SHEIN’s social media strategy?

SHEIN, for the most part, has figured out which audiences they want to cater to on each platform.

Instagram is for beautiful product shots.

Twitter is for corporate posts.

TikTok is for user generated content and massive hauls of clothes.

They could be doing more with Facebook to set it apart from Instagram, but they are posting different images there.

You can replicate their strategy by identifying the audiences you want to engage with, and then choosing your social media platforms based on this. If you want to speak to a more corporate audience, LinkedIn and Twitter are a good fit. If you want to share beautiful imagery, Instagram is the place you want to go.

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Key Learnings and Takeaways from SHEIN’s marketing strategy

SHEIN are masters of the eCommerce website. They know how to bring their customers back on a regular basis, and how to get them to spend more, whether that’s through discounts, free shipping over £35 or other tactics.

They have taken ownership of the “fashion haul” trend, encouraging their customers to spend more, share their haul online, and in turn inspire other shoppers to do the same.

Here are some key takeaways from SHEIN’s digital marketing strategy that you can use for your own business.

1. Give people a reason to make an account with you or to join your mailing list
2. Use a benefits bar on your website
3. Offer rewards to those who visit your website daily or leave thorough reviews
4. Run PPC ads on your competitor’s brand names and your own brand name (if others are running ads on your brand name)
5. Include your USPs in your PPC ads
6. Target different audiences on different platforms
7. Go all in on current trends that could benefit your business

You don’t need to try out all these strategies at once, and not all of them will fit your business. Decide which strategies you want to prioritise and start from there.

What To Read Next

• Learn how Fintech company Wise made a stance against big banks with their marketing strategy.
• Convert your traffic into sales by optimising your website’s sales funnel.
• Use these six quick questions to identify your target audience, and use this to tailor your social media strategy towards those people.

*Some links within this article are affiliate links which Thinkplus receives a fee for promoting (these links are not sponsored). Thinkplus only promotes services we already use within our marketing stack.

The post SHEIN’s Digital Marketing Strategy appeared first on Thinkplus.

LinkedIn has grown and changed over the past few years but is still the standout leader in the professional social networking field. The way people use LinkedIn is different to other social networking sites, and so are the ways you market yourself on the platform.

In today’s guide, we’ll be covering three different strategies you can use to build your company’s presence on LinkedIn, as well as connect with your customers.

What kind of marketing happens on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a different landscape from other social media platforms – users have joined the platform to look at professional content rather than entertainment content, so it’s important to keep that in mind when creating your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

The curated product shots and promotional videos you see regularly on Instagram might not perform well on LinkedIn, but the behind the scenes of how you created those photos and videos might get some traction.

What you post is very much dependent on the type of audience you want to reach on the platform.

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Who uses LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has over 830 million members across the world, so it’s likely some of your customers, or those you want to learn about your brand, do use LinkedIn.

If you’re trying to reach customers on LinkedIn, first we need to establish if they’re likely to be spending their time on the platform.

There are two ways you can get this information – either by asking your existing customers or looking at data online.

Don’t be afraid to send out surveys to your existing customers to find out which social media platforms they spend the most time on. You can use an incentive, such as a discount, to encourage more of your customers to fill in the survey.

If you’re just getting started and don’t have enough customers to survey, you can always look at demographic data online.

The average LinkedIn user is aged between 46 to 55 years old, is male and earns over $75,000 a year.

To be more specific than that, let’s take a look at a full breakdown.

US internet users who use LinkedIn, by age (source)

• 15-25 years old: 16%
• 26-35 years old: 27%
• 36-45 years old: 34%
• 46-55 years old: 37%
• 56+ years old: 29%

US LinkedIn users by age

Global internet users who use LinkedIn, by gender (source)

• Female: 42.8%
• Male: 57.2%

At this time, LinkedIn doesn’t have data for those users who are outside of the male/female gender binary, although they have taken a step in the right direction by adding a dedicated pronouns section.

As the platform is aimed at professionals, LinkedIn has user income demographics. (source)

• <$30,000: 13%
• $30,000-$49,999: 20%
• $50,000-$74,999: 24%
• $75,000+: 45%

LinkedIn user income demographics

They also have data on the education level of their users.

• High school or less: 9%
• Some college: 22%
• College and more: 50%

Setting goals for your LinkedIn marketing strategy

There are various goals you might set when it comes to your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

It’s always important to set goals so that you have something to work towards with your strategy.

It’s best to set SMART goals too – goals which are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based.

Examples of SMART goals

Common LinkedIn marketing goals include:

• Building brand awareness
• Generating leads
• Increasing sales
• Enhancing brand reputation
• Engaging with your target audience

So how can you hit these goals? Today we’re sharing step-by-step tutorials to help you get the most out of LinkedIn

1. The power of personal branding on LinkedIn
2. Boost engagement with LinkedIn Documents
3. Hosting LinkedIn live streams

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Strategy 1 — The power of personal branding on LinkedIn

Many of your team members likely have their own LinkedIn profiles, and it’s also likely many of them are not using these profiles to their full potential.

Using their LinkedIn profiles to help drive traffic towards your company page not only helps with your company’s LinkedIn marketing strategy but also helps them build a professional profile which will position them as experts in their field.

Why are personal LinkedIn profiles so effective?

People prefer hearing and seeing content from people. It’s just a fact of life. People want to connect with others, read their personal work successes and struggles, and see photos of them in action.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for company pages on LinkedIn, but working with your team members to help build their own LinkedIn profiles will help add a personal side to your business.

Potential customers will be able to put a face to a brand and feel more affinity for your brand as a result. Being more involved with the promotion of the company can help boost team member morale too. Wins all around.

How can you get other team members on board?

Getting other team members involved with your LinkedIn marketing strategy might be a challenge, but there are several ways you can make this easier for yourself.

Step 1 – Come up with a few content ideas/templates

Get the ball rolling by coming up with a few content ideas that your team members can use for inspiration. If you want them to stick with your branding guidelines, make sure you have templates they can use or guidelines that are easily understood by team members who aren’t from a design background.

Examples of content could be:

• Offer free value in the form of a LinkedIn text post, for example, explaining how to do something or offering free advice
• Share personal insights into your industry
• Asking questions or starting discussions to engage with your audience
• Answer common client questions in the form of a post. You can make each question or topic a separate post
• Make a prediction about the future of your industry (bonus points for backing it up with stats)
• Share a quote that resonates with you, as a text post or as a graphic
• Share a quick video recording of you covering one of the above points “in person”. It doesn’t have to be studio quality, sometimes more “casual” style content works on LinkedIn, as long as it’s related to your industry. Casual as in, “I’m sitting at my desk and got inspired to record a quick video for LinkedIn”, rather than “here’s what I’m having for breakfast” or “here are my holiday snaps”.

Step 2 – Practice what you preach

If you’re asking other team members to post about the business on their personal LinkedIn accounts, you should be doing the same. It shows everyone that you are just as committed as them.

Step 3 – Explain the benefits

When asking team members to take part in your LinkedIn strategy, they must understand the benefits.

Try and focus on what’s in it for them while also explaining why you want to promote the business on LinkedIn. If they understand how it will help them too, they may well be more willing than if you just focused on the business.

Step 4 – Come to terms with rejection

There will be some team members who don’t want to use their LinkedIn for this type of marketing strategy. It could be that they’re shy, that they don’t have time, or that they don’t feel comfortable doing it.

It will also help here if you have worked on step 2 and can show them the benefits, or offer to coach them on making their content. If they say no initially, you could ask them a few months into the LinkedIn marketing strategy and see if they would be open to giving it a try.

Step 5 – Test different content types

Make sure you test out a few different content types – some team members may prefer to record quick videos to post, some may enjoy sharing longer text posts, and others may love getting to flex their creative skills in Canva.

Some post types will work better than others, so testing is key.

Step 6 – Review as a team

Set a time limit for your first personal branding focused LinkedIn marketing campaign and once you hit that date, take some time to review.

Take a look at what performed well, as well as what team members enjoyed sharing the most. Also look at what didn’t perform well and identify some reasons why. These could be:

• The time the content was posted
• The opening line to the post
• The imagery
• The message behind the post

Step 7 – Adapt

Once you’ve run your first LinkedIn marketing campaign and reviewed what did and didn’t work, you can adapt and refine your next campaign to perform better.

Get input from your team and see if any adjustments need to be made. Has someone got a heavier workload this quarter so they won’t be able to post as much? Have you got a new product launch coming up and need all hands on deck?

Adapting your campaign for various reasons is important to the success of your personal profile campaign.

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Strategy 2 — Boost engagement with LinkedIn Documents

Have you ever wondered how to upload carousel posts to LinkedIn like you’ve seen other accounts do? It’s not obvious how to do this from the get-go, but it’s fairly simple.

These “LinkedIn carousels” are multiple page PDFs that you can easily scroll through. They are called documents on LinkedIn as you can upload lots of different types of content as long as it’s in PDF format.

Some businesses may use this to publish PDF guides or whitepapers. Here at Thinkplus, we use this to create posts similar to our Instagram carousel posts.

These posts intend to get readers to scroll through to learn more information. Our main goal is to educate, but we include a CTA on the final page to direct those who have read to the end to find out more on our website.

These document posts are becoming a core part of our LinkedIn marketing strategy. Not only do they look great, but they also get high engagement and help educate our audience.

Why are LinkedIn documents so effective?

LinkedIn documents are a great way of sharing more information than you would in a normal image post, but in an engaging way.

They’re a great alternative to sharing a long text post. Another benefit is that due to the content being multi-page, the post engagement goes up and your content is shared around more by the LinkedIn algorithm.

How to make a LinkedIn Document PDF in Canva

There are plenty of programs you can use to create graphics and PDFs, but our personal favourite on the marketing team at Thinkplus is Canva.

Canva is an online design tool, full to the brim with templates, graphics, photos and more. At Thinkplus, we use Canva Premium, but you get a lot on the free version too.

Step 1 – Create your image in Canva

Simply select “Create a Design” and search for “LinkedIn Post” in the search bar. You can also use the main Canva search bar to find a template.

Create a new LinkedIn post in Canva

Step 2 – Create your pages

Now you have a LinkedIn template in Canva, create each of your pages.

If you’re brand new to Canva, Design with Canva is our go-to resource for learning how to create awesome posts in Canva.

When creating your pages, make sure to include a leading sentence at the end of each page to encourage the reader to move to the next page. This will help you get more engagement on your content and lead your reader to the CTA at the end.

There’s no limit to how many pages you can include in your document, but make sure you’re not adding pages for length’s sake – if you can say the same thing in fewer pages, then fewer pages is your best option. Take a look at other similar posts on LinkedIn and see how long they are and the style they are in.

Step 3 – Include a CTA at the end of the content

Adding a CTA at the end of your document means you can connect with the readers that were invested enough to read to the very last page.

For example, you might not want to upload your entire whitepaper as a LinkedIn document – you might decide instead to include some highlights and direct your reader to the whitepaper to read more.

Example of a LinkedIn document CTA

Step 4 – Export as a PDF

You can easily export your LinkedIn document as a PDF. Simply select the “Share” button in the top right corner of Canva, and change the download type to “PDF Standard”

Save your document in Canva as PDF standard

Step 5 – Upload to LinkedIn using the ‘document’ function.

Now you can upload your document. You need to use the “document” button, highlighted in the image below. Give your document a title, upload it, and then write your post as normal.

Create a document on LinkedIn

Step 6 – Review your document’s performance

Give your document a week on LinkedIn, then review how it performed.

Take a look at:

• Impressions
• Click-through rate
• Engagement rate
• Reactions
• Comments
• Shares

You might start by tracking everything, and then over time decide which metrics are most important to you and your business goals.

Step 7 – Improve

As always, the final step is to use your analysis to make a better document next time.

Don’t be afraid to ask other team members for feedback to help you improve even faster.

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Strategy 3 — Hosting LinkedIn live streams

LinkedIn live streams are the perfect way to host a mini virtual event and will bring your LinkedIn strategy to a whole other level.

Why are LinkedIn live streams so effective?

Live streams are a great way to connect with your audience in a more personal way.

Live streams have a personal feel as your audience can interact with you live, responding to what you say in the live stream and asking questions.

Another great part of LinkedIn live streams is the invite feature. As live streams are set up on LinkedIn as events, you can invite your followers and connections to tune into the live stream. This means that if they accept the invitation, LinkedIn will send them notifications in the lead up to your live stream, keeping you top of mind.

Your live streams also stay up on your LinkedIn company page indefinitely, so those who couldn’t watch live can still watch the stream later.

Screenshot of a LinkedIn live video

How can you use LinkedIn live streams to promote your business?

LinkedIn live streams are a great way to communicate with your audience. You can:

• Host webinars to educate your audience
• Do product or software demonstrations
• Do live Q&As about your industry
• Promote individual team members as experts in their field

Examples of some of the live streams we’ve hosted on the Thinkplus LinkedIn include:

• How To EXPLODE Your Business’ YouTube Channel’s Growth
• TikTok Marketing Ideas ANY Business Can Use
• Get Your Website Reviewed LIVE
• 12 Important Parts of Your Website (and How To Optimise Them)

You might be wondering how we make our live streams look so snazzy, and the answer is Streamyard*.

How to live stream on LinkedIn

Step 1 – Set up an account with Streamyard

Setting up an account with Streamyard is very easy to do. You just input your email and they send you a login code. You then use this to access your account.

Set up an account with Streamyard

Step 2 – Add your branding to Streamyard

Streamyard streams are highly customisable – you can add images, banners, lower thirds and music.

This video from Think Media covers the details of how to set up all the above in Streamyard and more.

Step 3 – Get to grips with the platform

Streamyard is easy to use, but practice never hurt anyone.

Before you take any more steps or host your first LinkedIn live stream, take some time to play around with the platform.

Change scenes while you are talking, add presentation slides and change banners mid “stream“. It’s always worth doing a practice run so you can get a feel for what it’s like to go live.

At Thinkplus, we prefer to have two people on the live stream, one to do most of the talking, and one to do more of the technical side and moderation.

In time, you will be able to handle both the talking and technical side without having to think about it too much.

Step 4 – Come up with a topic and title

Your topic and title will be what drives the content of your live stream, and also what draws viewers in. Make sure you host a live stream covering a topic your audience wants to hear about, not just a topic you think sounds cool.

At this stage, you should also create a thumbnail for your live stream that looks professional and draws your audience in alongside the title.

Researching the type of title and topic you should use is similar to keyword research for blog and website content – take a look at what your target audience is searching for and use that for inspiration. This guide teaches you how to do keyword research like a pro.

Step 5 – Decide the format

Depending on your title, your live stream may take a different format, which could include:

• Webinar
• Q&A
• Live product or service demonstration
• Interview with an expert

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Step 6 – Schedule your live stream and invite connections

Now it’s time to schedule your live stream. You can do this directly through Streamyard, and then use LinkedIn to invite connections.

To invite your connections, view your company page as a member, click “attend” on the live stream event, and then click “invite“.

A. View your company page as a member

How to view your LinkedIn company page as a member

B. Find your event and click “Attend“. Once you’ve clicked the attend button, it will change to the “Invite” button.

Select attend on your LinkedIn event so you can invite your connections

Now you can invite your connections. If you filter them by country or another filter, you can select everyone in the list with one click. This is extra helpful if you want to invite people who are located in a certain country or work in a certain industry.

Invite your connections to your live stream event on LinkedIn

Step 7 – Promote your live stream

Make use of existing marketing channels, such as your other social media channels, your mailing list and your LinkedIn company page. Ask your team members to invite their connections, and to share your promotional posts.

Make sure your promotional posts are clear about the date and time of your live stream.

Step 8 – Host your live stream

Now it’s time to host your live stream. Remember that your viewers know that this is live content, so don’t worry too much about vocal stumbles or small technical issues. Just bring your best self and your wealth of knowledge.

Step 9 – Review your live stream

Finally, review your LinkedIn live stream. Watch the recording back and see how you could have improved. Areas live streams often need improvement in are:

• Getting the balance of audience interaction right (interacting with the audience too much and not getting to cover all your planned topics, or ignoring them.
• Keeping up the same level of energy throughout, no matter your view count
• Background music is too loud, or microphone audio is too low

Reviewing your live stream recordings after every stream will help you improve in the future.

If you want some inspiration for your live streams, why not check out the previous live streams Thinkplus has hosted and the ones we have coming up.

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3 Step-by-Step LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for SMEs

There are more than these three strategies, but these are the three we like the most here at Thinkplus, and the ones that have gotten us great results.

1. Making use of personal LinkedIn profiles and personal branding helps you direct more traffic to your company page while also getting team members more involved with promoting the business and building their own LinkedIn presence.
2. Sharing documents on LinkedIn helps you share information in an interesting way while boosting your engagement rate and allowing you to hit engaged users with the perfect CTA.
3. Hosting live streams on LinkedIn helps you build your brand image while allowing you to educate and interact with your target customers.

If you implement all three of these strategies, you’re bound to see an increase in LinkedIn followers, website traffic and lead generation.

What to Read Next

• Take your start-ups’ marketing to the next level by creating an effective startup marketing strategy.
• YouTube is the second-highest used search engine in the world. Find out how businesses like yours should be using it as a marketing channel.
• Are you not getting enough B2B leads? Here are 20 different ideas that you’ve (probably) not tried yet.

*Some links within this article are affiliate links which Thinkplus receives a fee for promoting (these links are not sponsored). Thinkplus only promotes services we already use within our marketing stack.

The post 3 Step-by-Step LinkedIn Marketing Strategies for SMEs appeared first on Thinkplus.

You’ve got an awesome product or service, you have loads of knowledge about what you’re selling and you just generally do a great job.

And now, you’ve got to market your fantastic business.

But wait.

How does social media, a website, digital PR, paid ads, blogging, SEO, and a whole host of other things, help your business?

And more importantly, where do you even start with all this?

Take. A. Deep. Breath.

That’s exactly what this guide is here for.

We’re going to teach you how to create a marketing strategy for your startup, from scratch.

This guide covers:

• How to set SMART goals
• How to identify your target customers
• How to create and communicate your brand’s message
• How to identify your best marketing channels
• How to get started with SEO
• How to do competitor research
• How to create a content strategy
• How and where to distribute your content
• How to run PPC ads
• How to build a brand image

It looks like a lot, but this will be the foundation of a successful marketing strategy for your business.

Successful marketing = successful business.

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How to set SMART goals

Setting goals can feel like a big challenge, especially when you’re just starting.

Common mistakes we see are people creating goals that are too vague, too big, not setting goals, or setting too many goals.

So before we start anything else, let’s set some goals using the SMART method.

SMART stands for:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-based

Here’s each of those parts broken down:

Specific

Be specific about what you want to achieve.

Saying “I want to get more leads a day” is better than “I want to make more money”.

The more specific, the better.

Measurable

You need to be able to measure your goals, else you won’t know when you’ve hit them.

Keeping with the example above, it would become “I want to get ten leads a day”.

Achievable

Is your goal achievable? If you currently get zero leads a week, then a goal of increasing this to ten leads a day might be too high. Make sure your goals are realistic, otherwise you won’t be able to hit them.

Our example will change to “I want to get ten leads a week”

Relevant

Make sure your goals are relevant to your wider business. Give some thought to why this is important and how it will benefit your business.

If you’re getting leads, but they’re not of the right quality, then they’re less relevant to your business.

Our goal becomes “I want to get ten sales qualified leads a week”

Time-Based

Setting a deadline for your goals makes it easier to focus on them and hit them. Without a deadline, you won’t know when the goal should be achieved, so how will you know if it’s been hit?

This section should also keep in mind the achievable element of your goal, so be realistic when it comes to the timeframe.

Our example has now become “Get ten sales qualified leads a week by the end of the quarter“.

We’ve gone from “I want to make more money” to a solid, clear, achievable goal.

By using the above framework to help you set your goals, you’ll create better goals and find that you hit them more often.

Don’t be downhearted if you don’t hit your goals to start with, just adjust them and try again. It could be that you just need to give yourself more time or be more specific with what you’re trying to achieve.

Table describing SMART goals

The rest of this guide will explore different areas of marketing that you may want to set goals for. There’s a lot here, so you might not want to set goals for all of them right away. Start by deciding which sections are your priority, and then go from there.

If you’re struggling to prioritise your goals, download our 90 Minute Marketing Masterplan. We built it to help you get your marketing in order, especially when you have lots of marketing tasks but can’t decide where to start.

How to identify your target customers

There are several questions you need to ask when it comes to identifying your target customers.

It’s tempting to just say “everyone“, but that’s going to hinder your sales rather than help them.

You might have more than one target customer, which is completely normal. You may just need to have separate marketing strategies focusing on these customers.

You can get a better idea of who your target customer is by answering these six questions.

Table covering the six target audience questions

1. How old is your target customer?
2. Where does your target customer live?
3. What’s your target customer’s gender?
4. How do you promote your product to those individuals?
5. Where do they get their information? Social Media? News?
6. Which type of content works best?

Check out our guide, How To Define Your Target Audience in 6 Quick Questions, to help you get the most out of these questions, and sign up to our mailing list to download our easy-to-follow buyer personal checklist.

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How to create and communicate your brand’s message

Now you have your target audience in mind, identifying or adjusting your brand’s message will be much easier.

Think about why you started your business.

Now think about why that reason is important to your target audience.

Ask yourself the following questions:

1. What hobbies does your target audience have?
2. What keeps your target audience up at night?
3. What are your target audience’s values and beliefs?

Not all of these need to play into your brand’s message, but they will help you see if your messaging aligns with your ideal customer.

Let’s say you sell car insurance.

The way you communicate with someone who drives an electric car because they see it as a climate-conscious choice will be very different to how you communicate with an audience who wants the biggest and best car as a status symbol.

This will help set the stage for not only your brand’s message but also your tone of voice.

Think about how your tone of voice will impact your target audience. For example, if you’re connecting with a Gen Z audience, you may want to use a lighter, more fun tone.

Make sure you combine this with your product offering too. Your tone of voice will be different if you’re selling life insurance to if you’re selling perfume, even if your audience demographic is the same.

Here are two examples of life insurance providers with completely different tones of voice.

Screenshot of the DeadHappy website

DeadHappy is a life insurance company aimed at a younger audience. They’ve opted for a more casual way of speaking, including words and phrases like “in a jiffy” or “we hear ya” to come across as more friendly and conversational.

Screenshot of DeadHappy’s life insurance brand messaging

From their brand messaging, we can tell that DeadHappy identified some clear pain points their target customer experiences – life insurance forms being too long, needing to pick up the phone to get life insurance and being confused about pricing options.

They’ve got a very clear target customer, and they’re going all-in on matching their brand message and tone of voice to this customer.

Another life insurance provider with a clear target audience is Polly.

Polly’s life insurance is aimed at mums, and everything about their brand messaging and tone of voice reflect this.

Screenshot of Polly’s life insurance brand messaging

They use easy to understand language and pull on the heartstrings a bit. They want their audience to think about the consequences they might face (or their family might face) if they don’t buy this life insurance.

By focusing on this target audience of mums, they can easily identify pain points and base their offering around this, rather than trying to create a brand message that appeals to every person looking to buy life insurance.

It’s important to note that your brand messaging and tone of voice will evolve along with your business. If you always want to target 18 to 15-year-olds, then you will have to adjust your tone of voice based on current trends and changes in culture.

This goes for all parts of your startup marketing strategy.

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How to identify your best marketing channels

By identifying your target audience and brand messaging, you now have the foundation on which you can build the rest of your marketing strategy.

Your audience demographics will help you identify the best channels for your business. You want to be focusing on the places your ideal customers are already spending their time.

Some of the most popular digital marketing channels are:

• Website
  • Homepage
  • Blogs
  • Category Pages
  • Product / Service Pages
• Mailing list
• External websites
  • Guest Posting
  • Digital PR
  • Local Directories
• Social Media
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube
• PPC (Pay Per Click) Ads
  • Search
  • Social
• Google Business Profile

This isn’t a definitive list. If you are aware of other places you can connect with your audience in your industry, for example, forums, then feel free to add those to your marketing strategy.

Graphic showing the different marketing channels

So how do you choose which platforms to go with?

As a startup, it can be easy to fall into the trap of using channels that you like personally, rather than the ones your audience uses.

When it comes to social media, you should take a look at the largest demographic on that platform. Make sure you don’t focus on just one social media platform but don’t overstretch yourself. Start with two or three and work upwards from there if you need to.

According to Sprout Social, these are the largest demographics on each social media platform.

Facebook

Largest Age Group: 25-34

Gender Split: 43% female, 57% Male

Instagram

Largest Age Group: 25-34

Gender Split: 48% female, 52% Male

TikTok

Largest Age Group: 10-19

Gender Split: 61% female, 39% Male

Twitter

Largest Age Group: 18-29

Gender Split: 38% female, 62% Male

LinkedIn

Largest Age Group: 25-34

Gender Split: 48% female, 52% Male

Pinterest

Largest Age Group: 50-64

Gender Split: 78% female, 22% Male

YouTube

Largest Age Group: 15-35

Gender Split: 46% female, 54% Male

It’s a good idea to have your website set up before you branch out into any other channels so that you can direct all your traffic back to one place.

How to get started with SEO

Search engine optimisation can sound very complicated when you first get started with it, but we can reassure you that it’s not.

We’ve broken it down into sections to help you understand it more easily.

SEO is the process of optimising the pages on your website to appear in the search results for certain search terms relating to your business.

You can find these search terms and keywords by conducting keyword research, which is the best place to start with SEO.

Keyword research

Good keyword research is the foundation of any SEO strategy.

Starting off with the right keywords means you’ll be connecting with potential customers at different parts of the sales funnel, rather than spending your time on very broad keywords that aren’t going to get you any sales.

Let’s say you sell BPA-Free, recycled plastic water bottles. You’re going to have far more success with a key phrase like “recycled water bottles” over trying to optimise for “bottles” or “water“.

There are seven steps you should take when undertaking keyword research.

1. Make a list of topics related to your business
2. Find keywords your site is already ranking for
3. Find keywords your competitors are ranking for
4. Find questions your customers are asking
5. Find related keywords
6. Identify local keywords
7. Analyse your keywords

You can learn more about each step in detail in our guide on how to do keyword research (like a pro).

We suggest you focus on 25 keywords to start with, with no more than 50. If you have too few, you’ll struggle to get any reach on search, but if you have too many, you’ll be overwhelmed and will have less time to optimise for your best keywords.

There are plenty of tools you can use to help you with your keyword research. Our favourite is Semrush, which you can get for free for thirty days by using our friend’s link, thankyouninjas.com*

This list of keywords and phrases will build the basis for your content strategy.

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Local SEO

If you’re a local business, make sure you target local SEO by covering keywords such as “plumber near me” or “plumber in Nottingham“.

It’s important to sign up for a Google Business Profile, and then fill it with as much information as you can, as Google will use this when deciding where to rank you in the search results for local searches.

Screenshot of the Google Business Profile sign-up website

How to do competitor research

Feeling nosey? Now’s the time to take a look at what your competitors are up to.

You may have a list of competitors in mind, but if not, start by typing your product or service into Google search.
Let’s say you offer project management software.

Screenshot of search results for project management software

By searching for this term on Google, we can already see that multiple companies are running ads on this term, including:

• Monday
• Teamwork
• Top 10
• PC Mag

The first two, Monday and Teamwork, are your direct competitors who offer the same software that you do.

Top 10 and PC Mag, however, are publications that are talking about software similar to yours. It’s just as important to take note of these publications, as you may want to reach out to them in the future when it comes to digital PR and backlinking.

Now you have some direct competitors, we can start the competitor research.

The type of things you will want to take a look at are:

• Homepage, category and product page layouts
• Amount of text used on site pages
• Media usage – do they use photos, graphics, videos, or a combination?
• Which social media platforms they are on
• Their mailing list – sign up and read the emails they send you over the next few weeks
• Use a backlink checker to see which websites and publications are linking back to them
• Use an SEO tool to see which keywords they are ranking for
• Use a marketing tool to see how much organic and paid traffic they are getting

You can use a tool like Semrush* to take a look at your competitor’s traffic, keywords and backlinks.

Let’s use Teamwork as an example here.

Screenshot showing Teamwork’s traffic in Semrush

Teamwork is estimated to be getting 31,500 visitors via organic search, and 10,100 visitors as a result of PPC. They also have over 518,100 backlinks from 11,900 different websites.

As a startup, you don’t need to be aiming this high, but it does give you an idea of what you can achieve.

You can also see the keywords that your competitors are ranking in position 1 for on Google, giving you an idea of what type of content has worked for them. You can see the pages that are ranking for these terms, and use them for inspiration for your own content.

If you see one of your competitor’s category pages is ranking in position one for a key term, take a look at the page and try and figure out why. Does it have a lot of good, informative text? Is the layout intuitive and easy to follow? Identify several great things about the page and then improve on them in your content.

Screenshot of Teamwork’s top keywords in Semrush

You can learn even more about competitor SEO research in our SEO competitor analysis guide.

How to create a content strategy

Once you have your goals, audience, brand message, chosen marketing channels, a basic SEO plan and you’ve conducted some competitor research, you’re ready to put a content plan in place.

As a startup, you want to make sure you’re being as efficient with your time as possible. Having a content plan based on your goals will help you stay on track.

If you have more than one target audience, you may want to create several content marketing strategies, although there is likely to be some crossover.

To break this down further, we’ll follow the AIDA sales funnel. This gives us four stages of content to work with, at four different stages of the customer journey.

1. The awareness stage
2. The interest stage
3. The desire stage
4. The action stage

We also like to consider a bonus stage – the customer retention stage.

An infographic showing the 4 stages of the sales/conversion funnel

If you want to learn more about creating or improving your sales funnel, we created a detailed guide on exactly how to optimise your sales funnel.

Consider each of these stages and the type of content that would suit your customers best at each stage. We’ve also included a handy cheat sheet of the type of content you can use at each stage.

At the awareness stage, your potential customers are new to your business. You need to get a precise, clear and understandable message across to them.

They may see your content on social media platforms, see a PPC ad or be searching for questions or terms that your business can help them with. You could even try to create a digital PR campaign, focusing on something newsworthy, or share-worthy, related to your industry or business.

At the interest stage, your potential customers want to learn more about your business and your product.

Your category pages and product or service pages should be clear and easy to navigate. You want to include some social proof on your website in the form of testimonials or reviews.

Customers may want to connect with you via a live chat, which you can set up to be automated to answer the most common questions.

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At the desire stage, you want to give your potential customers extra reasons to buy from you.
Is it clear that you offer free shipping over a certain spend? Do you offer a discount if someone signs up for your mailing list? This is also a great time to retarget them with PPC ads on social media.

At the action stage, make sure you follow up with them after their purchase.

Send an automated email asking for a review a few days after purchase or a few days after you expect the product to arrive. Referral codes are also a great way to get your customer to bring in even more customers – you could offer them a discount on their next purchase if they make a successful referral.

Finally, the retention stage. Keep the customer thinking about your business with follow up emails.

If your product is the type of thing that needs to be repurchased or renewed on a monthly or yearly basis, send out reminder emails.

Content Marketing Cheat Sheet

Here are some of the most common types of content used at the various stages of the sales funnel. You don’t need to use all of these, just pick the ones that fit best based on the research you’ve done into your audience and competitors.

Save this image to help you keep track of the content you want to focus on at each stage, or use the text below it to create your own checklist for your content marketing strategy.

Content marketing cheat sheet

Awareness

• Social media posts
• PPC awareness campaigns
• Blog content
• Video content (for example, YouTube)
• Digital PR

Interest

• Blog content
• Downloadable content
• Automated email campaigns
• Social media posts
• Video content (for example, YouTube)
• Targeted PPC (for example, browse abandonment)
• On-site quiz or tool
• Well optimised category pages
• Optimised product pages
• Reviews and testimonials

Desire

• Downloadable content
• Bespoke landing pages
• Optimised product pages
• Benefits bar
• Free shipping over a certain spend
• Reviews and testimonials
• Automated email campaigns
• Basket abandonment
• Discount codes
• Automated chat-bot
• Giveaways and competitions
• Video content (for example, YouTube)
• Targeted PPC (for example, basket abandonment)

Action

• Streamlined checkout
• Suggest related products
• Discount on recurring subscriptions

Customer Retention

• Automated email campaigns
• Discount on recurring subscriptions
• Community spaces (for example Slack, Facebook Groups, Discord)

Content marketing does involve testing, so don’t be put off if some of these suggestions just don’t work for you. It’s also important to note that some types of content have a faster pay-off than others, for example, PPC will be faster than SEO optimised content.

Stuck on writing content? Here’s our very own content process that we use with our clients.

How and where to distribute your content

You’ve got all this great content that you’ve started uploading to your website, so what’s next?

How do you get it in front of more people?

You can use social media to share tips and tricks from your content while directing your audience to your website’s blog to learn more. We do this all the time at Thinkplus, with the goal of offering enough value in the social post that our audience can’t get to our blog fast enough.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Thinkplus (@exposureninja)

Another way to get your work out there is through guest posting.

Find some websites in, or adjacent to, your industry. Let’s go back to our example earlier of project management software.

One of the online publications we saw reporting on project management was PCMag, which focuses on technology as a whole rather than just business or project management.

They know that their audience will be interested in this topic as an aspect of technology, so have created content based on it.

Have a look at the types of websites that have featured your competitors and see if you’d be a good fit too.

Reach out to these publications and offer them a piece of content for their website. It’s best if this is a cut down version of your existing content that has been edited to fit your target publication’s audience and tone of voice.

Not only will a guest post get you a high-quality backlink back to your site, but it could result in referral traffic, which will hopefully lead to more customers.

Not sure how to get started with emailing publications? Download our free email outreach templates.

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How to run PPC ads

As much as we’d love for all our customers to find us through search engines and social media, it’s just not always possible, especially for a startup.

Running pay-per-click ads on social media and search engines can help bring an audience in faster than SEO, but some of that traffic may not be as high quality as the traffic you get from organic search. Pros and cons, as with anything.

PPC is great for connecting with customers at different parts of their journey. You can use ads to raise awareness of your business, as well as retarget your website visitors for different reasons.

When to use search ads

Search ads are great for connecting with your audience when they’re already searching for terms around your product or service.

Type in a keyword or phrase you’d like to get traffic from and see if ads are being run there. If so, and they are advertising a product similar to yours, then this is potentially a good term to run ads on.

Screenshot of Google Ads for Best Accounting Software

Pay close attention to the type of language being used, the benefits that are included in the text and if they are using any extensions, such as click to call straight from the ad.

When to use social ads

Social ads are great for raising awareness and retargeting customers. They’re especially good for products which are more of an impulse buy – people aren’t actively looking for these ads or products on social media.

They are perfect for very visual products but can be used by any business, no matter what product you offer. You may just need to get creative.

Semrush, for example, sells an SEO and marketing tool. It’s hard to show this off in an ad, so they use illustrations and text to help convey their message.

Screenshot of a Semrush Facebook ad

You can retarget your customers on social media based on different things, such as if they visited your website, if they browsed certain products or if they added products to their basket but didn’t complete the purchase.

If you want to take your PPC ads to the next level, check out our ultimate guide to PPC.

How to build a brand image

So you’ve got a bunch of content.

Your ads are performing well, and your website is getting traffic.

You just feel like something is missing.

How can you stand out from everyone else?

This is a common challenge faced by many startups. Once you have a marketing strategy in place, you feel like you need to find your place in the industry.

There are a few ways that you can build a brand image for your startup, that go beyond a nice logo and good website.

First, think about why you started your business. Was it because you wanted to help certain people? Was it because you needed a product or service like yours but no one provided it?

Whatever your reason was, don’t be afraid to shout about it.

Brands like Beyond Meat find a way to combine their product with their brand message. Don’t let one overpower the other.

Screenshot of Beyond Meat’s website and brand message

Patagonia is an example of a brand that has a message which has overpowered its product offering. We made an entire video explaining how Patagonia could find that balance again.

But, what if you didn’t have a particular reason why you created your business?

Maybe you just had a cool idea and ran with it.

Here’s where your customers come in.

It’s ok if you haven’t got any customers yet. Either you can wait until you have built up a customer base before taking this step, or you can make a list of all the qualities you’d like your perfect customer to have.

Take a look at your customers and see what’s important to them. You can do this by holding focus groups or simply sending out an email survey with a nice discount code for anyone who fills the survey out.

By doing this, you can then adapt your brand’s image to attract more of these types of customers.

Your brand’s image will likely grow and develop over time. It’s completely fine if it changes too.

Brewdog started as a rebellious and edgy company. Now they’ve moved their focus to promote sustainability and environmental issues.

When it comes to your brand’s image, it’s not the be-all and end-all. But it can help you stand out in your industry.

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Recap – How To Create a Startup Marketing Strategy

You should now have all the tools you need to market your startup.

Some of this may have felt like a lot to learn, but remember, it’s ok to take your time.

Nearly all businesses find themselves in the situation you’re in now.

But you’re one step ahead by taking the time to plan.

Today we covered:

• How to set SMART goals
• How to identify your target customers
• How to create and communicate your brand’s message
• How to identify your best marketing channels
• How to get started with SEO
• How to do competitor research
• How to create a content strategy
• How and where to distribute your content
• How to run PPC ads
• How to build a brand image

If you haven’t already, write down at least one action you’re going to take for each of these sections in the next week. Even if it’s just to think about part of it. here’s an example:

How to set SMART goals

• Set a goal to complete in the next two months

How to identify your target customers

• Identify the age, gender and location of my target customers
• Identify some hobbies my ideal customer has

How to create and communicate your brand’s message

• Think about why I started my business
• Speak to friends and family about why I started my business

How to identify your best marketing channels

• Use my audience demographics to pick the best social media for my business
• Set up a blog on my website

How to get started with SEO

• Find at least 10 keywords that I want my website to rank for
• Optimise my homepage for one of these keywords

How to do competitor research

• Identify my three main competitors
• Analyse their website content

How to create a content strategy

• Decide which content is best for my business
• Write one blog

How and where to distribute your content

• Make a list of websites I’d like to guest post on
• Connect with some journalists and writers in my industry on Twitter or LinkedIn

How to run PPC ads

• Research my competitor’s PPC ads

How to build a brand image

• Take a look at the messages and missions my competitors have

Now you’re well on your way to creating a solid and successful startup marketing strategy.

You just need to put in the work.

What to read next

• How To Optimise Your Website’s Sales Funnel
• 20 B2B Lead Generation Ideas (You’ve Probably Not Tried Yet)
• How to Do Keyword Research Like a Pro
• SEO Competitor Analysis Tutorial
• How to Get to the Top of Google in 2022

*Some links within this article are affiliate links which Thinkplus receives a fee for promoting (these links are not sponsored). Thinkplus only promotes services we already use within our marketing stack.

The post How To Create a Startup Marketing Strategy appeared first on Thinkplus.

All these tactics are tried and tested by the team at Thinkplus and we’ve used them in the past to…

• Increase website traffic to a takeaway packaging business by 478% in 9 month
• Earn an accountant 293% more search traffic (on a tight budget!)
• 3775% Increase in Estimated Search Traffic for E-Learning Platform in the Education Sector

… so you know the following info is coming from a place of experience!

We’ll be going over both paid and free tactics that you can use to generate traffic, so no matter your budget, you’ll be able to make changes and see an improvement. Paid tactics often see faster results, whereas free tactics see good results over time.

This article covers;

• • Content Marketing
  • Social Media
  • Search Engine Optimisation
  • Digital PR

Prefer to get this info in video form? We have you covered:

Digital Marketing Jargon

Throughout this guide, we’ll refer to some technical jargon which is often abbreviated in the marketing world. If you’re experienced with these, then feel free to skip to the next section. If you’re new to digital marketing or need a refresher, the top abbreviations used are included below.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): The art of optimising your website’s content and technical structure, as well as your off-site content marketing efforts, to improve search engine rankings and increase organic traffic
• Organic Traffic: The volume of people visiting your site following a search on Google, Bing or another search engine, without any paid advertisements being involved
• SERPs: Search Engine Results Pages, which appear when someone initiates a search for a term or phrase on Google, Bing or another search engine
• Rankings: Where you currently place or are ranked in the SERPs for your target keywords
• Optimisation: The act of optimising your content for particular key terms or phrases so that search engines recognise your content as relevant to these terms and rank it
• Keywords or Key Phrases: The words, phrases or terms you are optimising your content to rank for in the search engine results pages
• PPC: Pay Per Click advertising is a method of online advertising that gets your website to the top of Google quickly by allowing you to bid on certain keywords you want to rank for in an ad auction against your competitors

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Put The Foundations In Place

Increasing your website traffic is fairly straightforward, as long as you have a good foundation to work from.

This section will focus on:

• Your traffic and SEO goals
• Your target audience
• Your competitors
• Your website’s health and performance

Even if you feel like you’ve got these all figured out, a refresher never hurts!

Define Your Traffic and SEO Goals

Increasing website traffic and improving SEO can feel like an overwhelming task.

By setting goals for your organic and paid traffic, you’ll have something to refer back to and check that you’re on track.

At Thinkplus, we’re big fans of SMART Goals: goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-Bound.

It’s all well and good saying ‘I want to increase my website traffic!‘ but if you don’t know how much traffic you want, or how achievable it is, or how long it’s going to take, you will find it more difficult to see where things are working, and where they’re not.

It’s also often a good decision to focus on actions rather than numbers, for example;

‘I want to optimise the most important pages on my website over the next 90 days to help triple my website traffic’, rather than, ‘I want more traffic’.

Identify Your Target Audience

If you’re not sure who your target audience is, now is the time to define them.

Try and be as specific as possible, and keep an actual person in mind. You may have more than one target audience.

You can use these questions to help you define this audience;

1) How old are they?
2) Where do they live?
3) Which is the most common gender?
4) What’s the best promotion style?
5) Where do they spend their time?
6) Which is the best type of content for them?

This video will guide you through each question.

Once you’ve got a target audience in mind, check out your Google analytics to see if the traffic currently coming to your website matches this target audience.

If not, don’t panic! This could be a great opportunity to expand your audience and reframe your marketing strategy.

This could also be why you’re not seeing much traffic – if your analytics don’t match your target audience at all, it could mean your site is reaching the wrong audience entirely.

Identify Your Competitors

You may have already identified some competitors in your mind, but it’s always worth checking who is appearing top for your keywords on Google. If you aren’t sure about keywords just yet, we’ll cover keyword research in further detail later on in this article.

For example, if you are selling plants, by typing ‘plant shop‘ into Google you can see who is already ranking highly for that search term – these are your digital competitors and the ones you will be competing for search traffic with.

Assess Your Website’s Current Health and Performance

If you don’t know where you’re starting from, it will be a lot more difficult to measure progress in the future.

Knowing where you are now will also help you set realistic goals. It’s no use setting a goal of 1000 visitors to your site a day within the next 3 months if right now you’re only getting 10 visitors a week.

Google Analytics is one tool you can use to check how your site is performing, and which pages are getting the most traffic.

Google Search Console is another tool that can give you information about how your site is ranking in search, as well as any performance and health concerns your website may have.

It ranks them in terms of importance, so you’ll know exactly which changes you should start with.

There are also some free tools you can use to get some top-level insights about your website’s performance, including SEO Analyser and Nibbler.

At this point, you should be more clear on:

• Your traffic and SEO goals
• Your target audience
• Your competitors
• Your website’s health and performance

So with these foundations in place, onto the traffic generating tactics!

Get to the top of Google

Learn how to get your website to the very top of Google (and turn that traffic into revenue).

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Content Marketing

Content marketing is a long term web traffic strategy that will pay off in high-quality organic traffic.

Blogs targeting keywords

If you don’t have a blog on your site already – you need one.

A blog is a perfect place to add value to your audience by offering them tips and insights, as well as giving you a chance to target keywords your ideal customers are likely searching for to find products or services like yours.

If you’re unsure which keywords you should be targeting, this video is for you.

Your blog will also be used to reach potential customers at different stages of their buyer journey.

For example, if you are selling computer keyboards, there are a few different search terms that your potential customers will search for, depending on how ready they are to buy.

You can use a keyword search tool to help you find keywords. We’ll be using SE Ranking* for this example.

Step 1. Enter your keyword. For this example, I’m using ‘keyboard’.

Step 2. Exclude any unrelated words. We are getting results for ‘piano keyboard’ which is not related to this search, so this term has been excluded.

Step 3. Read through the keywords, and see which ones you can use to create blogs.

It can sometimes be difficult to write blog posts based just on these keywords, so you can use tools like Answer the Public to see the types of questions searchers are typing into search engines that are related to your product.

Back to the keyboard example. By using Answer the Public, we already have several blog titles focused on what people are searching for when they are deciding to buy a new keyboard, at different stages of their buyer journey.

• Which keyboard is best?
• Which keyboard is best for beginners?
• Are keyboard wrist rests good?
• Which keyboard switches are the best?
• Are keyboard keycaps universal?
• Which keyboard should I buy?

Now you have some keywords and questions to use for blog topics, the next step is to write your blog!

If you’re not sure where to start, here’s a helpful video about starting a blog for your website.

Video Content

Throughout this article, we’ve linked back to video content and a lot of it is our own!

We recognised that there was a space on YouTube for actionable marketing advice, so we started creating videos to help our audience.

Now you have several blog topic ideas, or maybe even some blogs written up, why not turn some of those into videos?

These will help you gain organic traffic from YouTube, as well as get your brand name out there. If you create content related to your business that your audience will find helpful, they may visit your site directly later on when they’re ready to make a purchase.

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Competitor Analysis

While researching content ideas for your site, it’s always worth looking at what your competitors are doing.

There may be content on their site you can take inspiration from, and create something even better with more value to your potential customers.

There are several steps you should take to analyse your competitors:

Step 1. Identify who your competitors are
Step 2. Categorise your competitors
Step 3. Review competitor websites
Step 4. Monitor competitor social media
Step 5. Analyse your competitor’s website traffic

There are multiple ways to take a look at how much traffic your competitors are getting to certain pages and blog posts. This comprehensive guide walks you through steps 1 to 5 in more detail.

Landing Pages

If you’re running ads on social or on search, you may want to send that traffic to specific pages on your website.

This video explains how to create landing pages that not only look great but also convert the traffic you’re sending to your site into leads.

Social Media

Using social media to drive traffic to your site might seem obvious, but it’s how you use social media that is going to make the most impact.

Firstly, now you have an idea of your target audience, it’s important to look at where they’re spending their time on social.

If your audience is Gen Z, TikTok is the ideal place to connect with them.

If you’re selling a B2B product, LinkedIn may well be the platform for you.

This data from Sprout Social will give you an idea of where your audience is spending their time:

Facebook

# of monthly active users: 2.7 billion
Largest age group: 25-34 (26.3%)
Gender: 44% female, 56% male

Instagram

# of monthly active users: 1 billion
Largest age group: 25-34 (33.1%)
Gender: 57% female, 43% male

Twitter

# of daily active users: 187 million
Largest age group: 30-49 (44%)
Gender: 32% female, 68% male

LinkedIn

# of total users: 738 million
Largest age group: 46-55
Gender: 51% male, 49% female

Pinterest

# of monthly active users: 400+ million
Largest age group: 30-49
Gender: 78% female, 22% male

TikTok

# of monthly active users: 100 million
Largest age group: 18-24
Gender: 59% female, 41% male

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Free Social Media Traffic

Once you’ve chosen the social media platforms you’d like to use, now’s the time to create some content!

The type of content you create will depend on your product and audience.

For example, if you’re a sportswear brand, you should make sure all your content has people wearing your clothes and showing them in action.

Fitness clothing brand Gymshark uses lots of action shots of people working out in their clothes on their Instagram page and also harness the power of user-generated content to add variety to their feed.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Gymshark (@gymshark)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Gymshark (@gymshark)

If you’re a SaaS company and don’t sell a physical product that you can show off, presenting your software in a more interesting way can make your social media more exciting.

Teamwork shares informative content related to their product to engage their audience.

Do you struggle to stay focused at work? Check out our tips for staying focused at work

Document your to-dos & deadlines
Prioritize your tasks
Eliminate needless meeting
Maximise your productivity by batching your tasks

Get more tips https://t.co/PVEdOMbdeU pic.twitter.com/ZWQRjfclKe

— Teamwork (@teamwork) November 23, 2021

Take a look at what your competitors are doing on social and see what type of post is getting the most engagement.

If you’re new to design, Canva is a good place to start.

They have lots of templates and inspiration on their site, for every type of social media platform.

Organic social media is a long term traffic strategy but will help you build a community and reach new audiences on the platforms they are spending most of their time on.

Paid Social Media Traffic

Paid social media tactics get you traffic faster than organic social, but that traffic may not be of the same quality.

With some trial and error, you can make the most of your PPC ads and make sure you’re reaching the right audience on the right platforms.

If you use social media at all, you’ve come across an ad in one way or another.

Social media ads are run across feed posts, stories, and even within some messenger apps too!

Depending on your product offering and goals, social media ads could be a good fit for your business.

If you’d like to increase your traffic and raise awareness for your product or service, social media is great for putting you in front of your target demographic while they’re spending time on their favourite social platforms.

It’s also great if your product is somewhat of a spontaneous purchase – someone scrolling through social on payday may see your ad and decide to click straight through to your site and make a purchase.

On the other hand, if you offer a practical service, such as locksmith services, social media ads may not be for you – someone who is locked out of their house is very unlikely to scroll social media in the hopes of seeing a locksmith ad.

You’d be much better suited to Google Search Ads, which will be covered further down in this article.

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Search Engine Optimisation

We’ve covered content that is very customer-facing, now we’re going to head behind the scenes with SEO and how to get the most out of SERPs. We’ll also cover Google PPC ads in this section.

Metadata

Metadata is what you see when you search for something in Google or another search engine.

The meta title is the larger blue text, whereas the meta description is the smaller, grey text.

If you don’t fill these out yourself in the back end of your website, Google will pull its best guess from your webpage, which will rarely have good results.

It’s crucial to include your keywords in the meta title, as close to the start as possible, as Google uses this to rank you for the right keywords.

Meta descriptions don’t help towards SEO, but they are key to getting traffic to your website.

The meta description is like a mini ad explaining why someone should click on your page when you appear in search over other websites.

Featured Snippets

Featured snippets are those helpful little boxes that appear on Google search and give you the information you’re looking for without needing to click through to the website.

Because the featured snippet is above the rest of the search results and because of this prominent placement, websites with featured snippets can expect a higher CTR and more traffic.

Here’s an example of a featured snippet.

(Sorry if you don’t like broccoli)

Depending on the search term, different types of featured snippets can appear.

It’s worth checking if the keywords you want to rank for have a featured snippet on Google, and try and replicate this in your optimised content, such as a blog.

If the featured snippet is a list, include a list in your blog. If it’s a table, include a table in your blog.

Backlinking

Backlinking is a fairly deep topic.

What it essentially means is to get other, trustworthy websites to link back to your website.

This could be linking to a product or, more likely, a blog article with good information.

The Google algorithm sees these websites linking back to you and concludes that the information you’re sharing on your website is of high quality if multiple sites have chosen to link back to you.

There are lots of ways to get backlinks, and different techniques work for different businesses, but here are some of the main methods.

1. Writing guest posts
2. Unlinked brand mentions
3. Creating infographics
4. Writing testimonials
5. Becoming a source for reporters

Avoid ‘Black Hat’ SEO techniques – if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is.

To learn about these backlinking techniques in more detail, and for 12 more techniques, check out this video.

Site Speeds

Have you visited a new website and the load speed has been so slow you’ve gone back to search to find somewhere else?

Waiting for websites to load is annoying. We did our time back in the 90s, we don’t want to have to wait.

If lots of visitors to your site are experiencing slow load times, they could well leave before the site has loaded, showing Google that your website is ‘unhelpful‘, as if the visitor had a good experience they wouldn’t have left so fast.

You can use Test My Site from Google to see how fast your website is loading on both desktop and mobile.

Here’s what the reports look like, using HelloFresh as an example.

Paid Search

You can get more traffic to your site by running paid search ads on search engines.

These ads appear as text above the rest of the organic search results.

Google Ads

If you’ve ever used Google, you would have seen Google Search Ads.

They appear above the organic search results and have ‘Ad’ written next to them.

The more you pay in the auction, the higher up your ads appear. How much you will pay depends on how ‘competitive’ your search term is.

If lots of people are searching for a keyword, and lots of companies are trying to advertise on that keyword, the cost per click will go up.

Google Search Ads are ideal for reaching customers while they’re searching for products or services like yours, for example, ‘electrician in my area’.

Get to the top of Google

Learn how to get your website to the very top of Google (and turn that traffic into revenue).

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Digital PR

Digital PR is like traditional public relations – all about sharing a story related to your business that grabs media attention.

At Thinkplus, we’ve used digital PR to increase conversions for a Saas company by 500% in 12 months and to get a client featured on the BBC.

Digital PR is sometimes described as an evolved form of PR, focusing on online publications.

It often includes the following:

• Publishing articles and press releases
• Working with bloggers and influencers on product features and reviews
• Affiliate marketing
• Nurturing journalist and content writing contacts to secure press hits
• Using social media to gain exposure
• Building brand trust through online reviews

These strategies not only help with brand awareness, they also help with link building and boosting your position on Google.

How to Create a Digital PR Strategy

Step 1. Set your Goal

This might seem obvious, but what do you want to achieve with your digital PR campaign?

Is it increasing traffic to your homepage, growing your email list, driving traffic to a new offer or promotion, or something else?

Having a goal in place will guide the rest of your strategy.

Step 2. Review your target customers

Think about who you are trying to reach. Is this campaign directed at your main target audience, or are you trying to reach someone new?

Step 3. Content ideation and research

Creating a good story for your PR piece takes time, and will need research.

It’s important to see what competitors have posted in the past, as this could inspire you, or show you what to avoid.

Create a list of ideas based around your business and put them in order of which has the best hook.

Step 4. Identify target publications

Take a look at the publications your target audience are reading and see if your PR story would fit in well with the rest of their content.

Make sure you’re providing value and a fresh story that will engage the publication’s audience.

Decide on a few – you’ll be very lucky if you only contact one and manage to get a feature.

Step 5. Design the Strategy

There are several different types of digital PR, including:

• Publishing articles or unique data pieces online to gain high-quality backlinks
• Networking with journalists and editors to gain backlinks
• Publishing press releases and syndicating newsworthy content to earn press features
• Publishing a content piece such as a calculator, online tool or interactive webpage
• Blogger outreach to gain backlinks and mentions on relevant blogs
• Influencer marketing to gain mentions on influential social media accounts
• Affiliate programmes that pay a commission to bloggers who refer customers to your business
• Offline press events or blogger events that aim to gain online coverage
• Sharing and syndicating infographics
• Reclaiming links by asking for a link to be added if your brand/business is mentioned on another website without a link

Think about which will suit your story and your audience best.

Step 6. Content Creation

Now the foundations are in place, you can create your content!

This is where you flesh out the details and ensure what you write is interesting to both your target audience and the publications you will be targeting.

Remember to include images, videos, and even gifs in your piece to make it more engaging.

Step 7. Outreach

For the final step, you need to reach out to your target publications and convince them to run your story.

Make sure you explain what’s in it for them and how their audience will benefit from the content you’re sending across.

This video from Head Ninja Tim will help you get started with digital PR.

Final Thoughts

Once you’ve implemented some, or all, of the traffic tactics above, you should be well on your way to tripling your traffic in the next 90 days.

As a recap, the key areas you should be focusing on are;

• Content Marketing
• Social Media
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Digital PR

Adding great content to your site, creating a social media strategy and improving your SEO will help you get more traffic to your website, and help you convert that traffic into customers.

If you read all these steps and thought ‘I still don’t know where to start!‘, why not request one of our website and marketing reviews?

They’re free and will help you identify exactly where changes need to be made on your website and digital marketing.

*Some links within this article are affiliate links which Thinkplus receives a fee for promoting (these links are not sponsored). Thinkplus only promotes services we already use within our marketing stack

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