What a Healthy Marketing Plan Looks Like
At WatermelonSeed we believe a healthy marketing plan includes “a little of everything.” Only doing one activity or a specific prepackaged program, just isn’t going to move the needle in a way that will be worth your investment. Building your marketing around campaigns, and the services or products you offer, allow you to develop infrastructure for your business that will last and run even in the hardest of times. After campaigns are created and launched continued refinement, or conversion optimization, is vital to increase your return on advertising spend, ROAS. While developed campaigns are running you can begin to create new campaigns for other services.
Current Infrastructure Assessment
We always start with an assessment of your current marketing and infrastructure. This includes a general audit for things like website design, seo, social media accounts, video, online reputation, ad spend, analytics and tracking. From there we can identify strengths and weaknesses to determine what we can build out, expand or scale.
- Website: These
- Social Media: These
- Lead Generation and Traffic Strategies: Goal
- Conversion Metrics and Tracking: Having clearly defined goals
Core Marketing Activity
Your core marketing activity is always running and is a part of every subscription. This is the activity that actually generates traffic and visits to your website. It has a direct relationship to everything that’s created, written, programmed, or edited. It drives web visits that increase leads, form submissions, downloads and phone calls. This activity includes ads or boosted posts on Facebook, AdWords, YouTube, syndication and other content distributors or platforms. What you spend on your core marketing needs to be more than what you are spending on your subscription.
Decisions about campaign tactics and strategies are all driven by analysis and reporting.
Analysis is when conversion optimization begins. This could be adjusting words or images on an ad, rewriting a web page or re-editing video. Having clearly defined goals really is key to determining success. Tracking goal completions, goal conversion rate, transactions, time to purchase and assisted conversions lay down some markers of success.
There is specific types of advertising that require specific content to be created. One example, if you do not have video, then you can’t do YouTube advertising. This is where our subscription model really works in our clients best interest. Subscriptions are based on hours of work that are designed around your goals and current infrastructure. Core marketing services generally produce around 10 ads per month and consume about 5 hours of work. This varies depending on the clients marketing infrastructure. Refinement or reworking ads is a part of that time. So, instead of getting 10 new ad’s we may rework 10 ads. The time element is what’s important, we focus on quality targets advertising.
Optimal Growth of a WatermelonSeed Client
WatermelonSeed works with you to deliver everything you’ll need to execute any possible digital campaign. Things like branding, video, photography, written content and website design are the foundation of your digital marketing and are often the first things a customer sees. After you have a solid foundation, you can begin creating campaigns for launch. Properly developed campaigns can include content like automated emails, content downloads, before and after photos, and blog posts. This whole process working toward developing specific customer journeys. There can be multiple customer journeys for the same service and customer journeys extend outside of the content you have direct control over. With campaign infrastructure in place you can focus on refinement and conversion optimization.
Operating as described creates a model of a heavy investment in time and energy up front that tapers off as work is completed. That is reflected in how we operate and advise our clients. Generally clients can be put into three phases of development.
Phase 3 – Phase 2 – Phase 1
Investing in your foundation saves you money in the long run.
Your creative needs to be designed, programed, edited
Core marketing activity is always running and works in conjunction with your subscription.
Phase 3 (Planting Seeds)
This is the level where all of your core content is created. These are the seeds that will be used to distinguish your brand from everyone else. At this level you will be able to unlock all of the core marketing activities offered by WatermelonSeed.
Web Development
Video Production
Photography
Typically a 6 month or more commitment.
Level 2
Not every client is ready to jump into a video production and wants to “play the ball where it lies.” These clients usually have a website, without video, and use stock graphics for their website and social media images. All of these choices impact your brand and the type of connection you’ll have with customers who see your advertising.
At this level you can expect around 15-20 hours of work. Clients that fall into this range usually need more time for web design work, graphics, optimization or content generation. Clients usually have a website that needs modifications to layout or structure. They already have content like video or photography available that can be edited and used in core marketing activities.
Increased activities
Web Development – Structure and Design
Video/Photography editing
Custom Graphic editing
Stock Graphics
Conversion optimization
Typically allows for the creation of 1 or 2 campaigns per month with a 3-6 month commitment that moves to month-to month, with a 30 day opt-out, after the term.
Level 1 (seedling?)
This is the baseline program for all clients. At this level you typically get around 10-12 hours of work. Work is customized based on goals that are identified in our weekly or bi-weekly meetings. You are no locked into one specific type of work. The work at this level relies heavily on your already available infrastructure and the speed at which you want to move forward.
Content Generation
- Web Page, Blog Post
- Email Marketing, Automations
- Downloadable Content or Gated Content
Search Engine Optimization
- on new generated content
- slower on past content
Social Media Calendar
- Scheduled posts
- Schedules content
Typically allows for the creation of 1 campaign per month and has a 3 month commitment that moves to month-to month, with a 30 day opt-out, after the term.
If you’re looking for help finding your relevant KPIs to get deeper understanding of your data and identify opportunities for conversion optimization, give us a call today: 918-558-7001
