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Blogs, Digital, Marketing Plan, Technology
16th April 20240

What Are The Biggest Marketing Trends For 2024

Keeping up with the continually shifting landscape of marketing can be a full-time job in itself, and just as you think you’ve got a grasp of what’s going on, it can all change in the blink of an eye. Keeping abreast of the latest marketing trends is never easy, but it’s vital to know what’s what in the marketing world.

We’ve had a look at what all the industry experts have been saying and predicting, so you can succeed and ensure you’re keeping up with the competition, if not staying ahead!

The Marketing Trends of 2024

Short-Form Video Is King

We’ve all been guilty of spending way too much time scrolling through TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels, and you may have then gone and made a purchase after watching too many short-form videos instead of working! Was it some new clothes, pet supplies, or a fancy new gadget?

But you’re not alone in this, as according to a recent survey in the US, 56 per cent of consumers admitted to making a purchase based on an ad they had seen on TikTok, and a further 36 per cent said they would be willing to make a buying decision based on short-form video ads.

These videos make a deeper connection with your customer base, and it has become simple for brands to repurpose video content into podcasts and text-based content. It’s therefore little surprise that 53 per cent of marketers are leveraging short-form videos, and 38 per cent are continuing to invest in short-form video social platforms.

While longer videos have the potential to include more information about products, brands and services, short-form use less bandwidth and appeal more to the fast-paced attention spans of online audiences across a wide demographic.

Content Creation That Aligns With Your Brand Values

According to data published by Consumer Goods Technology, 82 per cent of consumers want a brand’s values to be in alignment with their own, and a significant 75 per cent of shoppers said they had cut ties with a brand when their values conflict.

To ensure you remain on the good side of target audiences, brands need to make sure they make a point of showcasing their values on topics that have meaning to consumers. Studies found that 45 per cent of marketers will boost investment into the creation of content that shows their brand’s values, while only 9 per cent said they would be decreasing that investment.

Native Advertising And Sponsored Content Still Has Value

When a brand pays to have featured content on a third-party website, such as in the form of editorial-type content, this is an investment in native advertising. Over a third of marketers have planned to increase investment in native advertising in 2024, and over half say they will continue to invest the same amount as in previous years.

This is not too surprising, given the value that native advertising can have to brands. Unlike traditional advertising, which is designed to be disruptive and stand out, native advertising blends in and can help promote your brand to new audiences who otherwise might not have come across you before.

Native advertising ‘feels’ different to traditional advertising, and consumers are much more likely to pay attention to it, and research has shown that consumers view native advertising 50 per cent more than banner adverts.

Influencer Marketing Is Still Relevant

Influencers had a huge year in 2023, and it was nearly impossible to scroll through social media without seeing influencers promoting a massive range of products and services.

It’s highly unlikely that this trend will slow down in 2024, and 84 per cent of marketers have said they will be increasing their investment in influencer marketing this year.

By combining thought leaders with influencers in the relevant niches, brands can expand their awareness and gain new audiences from the influencer’s followers. But you don’t have to blow the marketing budget on a famous influencer, as micro-influencers with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers can be a much more affordable solution, and typically yield more success.

Leveraging AI Will Continue To Increase

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made huge leaps in the past year and is set to continue to bring changes to marketing in 2024.

In 2023, 48 per cent of marketers said they had used AI for content creation – writing blogs and website and social media copy, landing page CTAs, and product descriptions. Amazon began using AI to summarise the key points from consumer reviews to help other consumers make a more considered purchasing decision.

AI has become popular with marketers, with its ability to streamline processes and give marketers more time to do other work and pursue new projects. While there are still concerns about the use of AI, to ensure your brand remains competitive, it will be vital to look at how leveraging AI tools can help your marketing efforts.

The Return Of VR And AR

Way back in 2021, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) were being used by 35 per cent of marketers in the strategies, half of whom planned to increase their investment into 2022.

However, by 2023, a quarter of marketers had stopped using VR and AR altogether, with bulky headsets and pricey equipment being slow to be adopted. But in 2024, there seems to be a comeback on the horizon, with 84 per cent of marketers planning on increasing VR and AR investment, as VR glasses and AR apps become more accessible.

Content Marketing Trends

According to statistics, nearly half of all buyers view between three and five pieces of content before they engage with a sales rep, and brands are expected to create even more content to grab the interest of consumers, which is why, globally, brands have increased investments into content marketing.

But what are the best content marketing strategies to be investing in? Let’s have a quick look.

Podcasts And Audio Content

Podcast popularity has massively increased, and 2023 was a golden year for the format. According to a 2023 US report by Edison Research, 42 per cent of people ages 12 and older listened to a podcast in the month previous, which was up 5 per cent from 2020 and 30 per cent from 2013.

Also, 75 per cent of Americans aged 12 and older listened to online audio in the previous month, and 70 per cent in the previous week, so it’s no surprise that marketers have been keeping an eye on this trend, with 82 per cent planning to increase investment in podcasts and audio content this year.

Blogging Is Here To Stay

According to studies, 92 per cent of marketers plan to either maintain or increase investment in blogging in 2024.

Blogging has been a core component of many marketing strategies since brands first started building websites, but the tactic is far from looking out of date. Blogging has been used by marketers for so long simply because it works, with one in three marketers leveraging blogs in their marketing strategies.

According to Hubspot, most consumers read between one and four blogs every month and have then gone on to make a purchase after reading a brand’s blog. Blogs can provide consumer engagement and potential conversion, but they can also provide crucial benefits to websites by way of search discoverability.

Websites with blogs have greater search potential and can implement SEO strategies far more easily than websites without blogs.

Case Studies To Continue To Drive Leads And Brand Credibility

Case studies can help establish transparency and trust between a brand and the target audience, offering a much deeper look into how a brand’s products or services can benefit the consumer, and over a quarter of marketers leverage case studies as part of their content strategies.

Some brands may publicly publish case studies on their websites to help persuade consumers, while others offer them as a free PDF that requires a lead conversion in order for it to be downloaded.

But regardless of how it is done, marketers are still seeing a great deal of value in case studies in 2024, with 87 per cent increasing or maintaining investment this year.

Feeling Overwhelmed?

Marketing will continue to change, and it’s important to keep your thumb on the pulse of the latest trends, as well as always being open to change to ensure your business doesn’t fall behind.

But if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the thought of trying to keep up with everything, don’t worry, Tonic will always be here to help, advise, and make sure your marketing efforts are always relevant and on-trend.

An image representing AI - there is a dome consisting of wire/neurone-like connections linking computer parts to look like a cityscape
Digital, Marketing Plan, Technology
9th April 20240

AI in Marketing

How Can Artificial Intelligence Help Boost Your Marketing?

Advances in technology mean that the world is changing at a dizzying pace, and it is set to have a tremendous impact on marketing. With tools such as ChatGPT, artificial intelligence (AI) is assuming a much larger role and helping to create a wealth of opportunities for marketers to be able to do even more with what they already do best.

By combining AI technologies with customer and brand data, marketers can gain access to highly precise insights into marketing trends and the customer experience. AI technologies such as natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and others can help guide marketers’ decision-making, helping to stay ahead of the competition as well as helping to prepare for the challenges faced in a dynamic marketplace.

Let’s have a closer look at how AI can benefit marketers and how it can be leveraged successfully.

AI in marketing

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, AI-based marketing looks set to drive 45 per cent of the total economy by 2030. This will happen in a variety of ways, including data-driven product enhancements, personalised services, and influencing consumer demand. Let’s look at how this will be achieved.

Social media listening

With AI-powered social media, your efficiency will be significantly increased as social media listening is taken to a new level. AI tools will help to provide a range of suggested terms to include in your social media tracking to help marketers reveal essential audience insights far faster.

AI algorithms will help to identify and extract the relevant details from social media listing data that can span millions of data points in real-time. This will help marketers see the wood for the trees to gain a better understanding of the customer’s thoughts via social media sentiment analysis. Marketers can then anticipate their customers’ next move, and make strategic decisions and actions.

Content generation

AI social management tools can help analyse the voice of customer (VoC) data in social media posts to help inform marketers of the content that is of most interest to the target audience.

The same tools can also help to identify keywords and triggers so that marketers can devise and develop compelling posts, respond better to customer comments, and inspire better and more impactful product descriptions for websites and e-commerce. All of this will add marketing efforts towards brand engagement for an increase in market share and better earnings.

AI can also help generate ideas that can nurture and make campaigns more successful, as well as help create more compelling communications that will reinforce relationships with potential customers at all stages of the sales funnel.

AI prompts can help devise email subject lines that will achieve a better open rate, develop personalised content that can be adapted to buyer personas, and drive conversations based on intent, engaging with each customer/client on an individual basis, ultimately leading to stronger connections and loyalty that will stimulate sales.

Automation

By leveraging AI-driven smart automation, social media managers and customer service teams are empowered to improve operational efficiency via lexical and statistical-based triggers that can help drive intelligent workflows.

This can help marketers achieve their business goals better by removing the guesswork out of tasks such as scheduling posts at the optimal times for improved impact and better engagement, or by categorising incoming messages.

It can also help unify the brand voice in customer communications and reduce response times by half.

Audience segmentation and personalisation

Omnichannel business strategies based on market segmentation can be driven by AI marketing, helping to align campaigns with customers are are more likely to be interested and buy your product or services.

Programmatic advertising can be leveraged to help streamline the process of selecting and setting up digital advertising for the best return on investment (ROI), enabling more personalised marketing strategies and tactics to grow brand loyalty and develop powerful brand awareness campaigns.

Data analysis for customer insights

AI and machine learning can provide critical customer insights on a variety of aspects to help marketers make better informed strategic marketing decisions, with deeper insights into audience sentiments concerning your brand, full audits of customer care team performance, and social media engagement metrics.

This means marketers can quickly adapt to changing marketing trends, prioritise budgets based on what aspects require the most investment, and improve customer relationships.

Reputation management

When considering brand reputation, there will always be certain elements within the control, of marketers, while there will be some aspects that are not. Brands are subject to more scrutiny than ever in the social media age but with AI-based brand reputation management, potential threats can be averted before that can become a much larger issue.

With real-time monitoring of customer sentiments, using the right influencers and brand ambassadors, and providing proactive customer care, this can all be achieved easily.

Competitive intelligence

AI can help marketers identify opportunities that can help improve products and services and help fill in gaps in the market. It can help discern competitors’ share of voice and help find intelligent ways to become more agile in the competitive market. AI can also compare your social media performance to that of competitors via competitive benchmarking, enabling marketers to adjust strategies accordingly.

Multilingual advantage

A global marketplace means marketers need to take into account any cross-cultural aspects, as well as provide prompt and efficient customer care. With AI marketing tools, marketers can extract essential customer insights from multilingual data with ease, providing data that can inform strategies for particular regions.

It can also help ensure that target audiences are easily able to find social media posts, responses, and advertisements that they find relatable and adhere to their cultural standards.

Which AI technologies enable marketing?

Intelligent social media platforms will combine powerful AI technologies to provide marketers with the insights they need to succeed. With capabilities such as semantic classification, named entity recognition and aspect-based sentiment analysis, marketers can gain specific insights into their niche, while social media content can be optimised and customer engagement can be improved with the help of natural language processing, which all leads to a greater competitive edge.

Build impactful business strategies with AI

Marketing insights provided by AI are helping to empower brands to build a stronger foundation for growth and success by exploring new marketing, product and customer engagement opportunities.

AI tech such as sentiment analysis, NLP, virtual agents, chatbots and more are helping to determine how efficiently business goals can be achieved, in everything from revenue optimisation to navigating unpredictable market scenarios.

With access to targeted AI-driven insights, marketers can develop more proactive social media marketing tactics to help drive customer engagement, loyalty and retention, and ultimately market growth.

If you’re looking for help with AI marketing, brand growth, and social media marketing, come and talk to us at Tonic today.

Blogs, Marketing Plan
14th November 20230

Avis’ “We Try Harder”: Branding For Underdogs

It must be easy when you’re at the top. Those big companies have household brand names, with instant recognition, even with just their logo. The three stripes of Adidas. The silhouette of an apple with a bite out of it? Obviously Apple. The golden double arches of McDonald’s. The list goes on and on.

These multinational firms have the marketing budgets to hire the biggest and best advertising and marketing executives, placing their flashy, expensive ads in prime positions and prime-time TV slots.

But what if you’re not number one? How do you compete with these gargantuan companies?

It’s something that car rental firm Avis needed to consider back in the early 1960s and became a masterclass in humblebrag marketing. We wanted to take a look at the story of what happened and see what lessons can be learned, and how to turn being an underdog to your advantage.

We’re Number Two!

Avis is one of the oldest and most well-known car rental companies in the world, but in the early 1960s, they were seriously lagging behind their major competitor Hertz.

Avis and Hertz had a rivalry that dated back to the 1940s when US Air Force officer Warren Avis spotted an unexpected opportunity for the car rental industry as he travelled around America. What if he put car rental offices inside airports?

At this time, most car rental firm locations, including Hertz were in the downtown areas of cities, but Avis thought it would appeal to the ever-growing numbers of business travellers who wanted to fly into cities, drive to meetings, and be able to drive back and fly out the same day.

“Even as we grew by leaps and bounds, the Hertz people vowed up and down that our approach wouldn’t work,” Avis recalled in his 1986 autobiography, Take a Chance to Be First. However, that all changed. “They jumped in and began to copy everything that we had pioneered. I honestly don’t think that Hertz has come up with an original idea yet in the airport car rental field.”

In 1962, Robert C. Townsend, the president of Avis began looking for ways to increase the company’s market share, starting by hiring famed Madison Avenue ad men Doyle Dane Bernbach.

What did Avis have that could set it apart? Newer cars than Hertz? More rental locations? Lower rates? No, none of that.

DDB spent months learning all about Avis’ business by interviewing employees, and reduced their research down to one question – Why would anyone want to hire a car from the number two rental agency?

The answer became a world-famous ad slogan: We Try Harder.

Instead of putting all the focus of the new campaign into claiming to be the best or undermining the competition, DBB highlighted Avis’ position as the second-best car rental firm, and as such, knew it always tried harder, strongly implying that the number one firm Hertz was resting on its laurels, too big to care about its customers.

The ads cleverly played on the fact that Avis was not the biggest in the world, but it was determined to be the best, always striving to provide the best service and value to its customers.

Taking A Risk

The idea of promoting a brand’s weakness would have been a most unthinkable tactic for the ad men of Madison Avenue. Why on earth ask customers to think about why you’re the runner-up? It seemed more logical to project unflappable confidence in your business.

It was DBB copywriter Paula Green, a real-life Mad Men Peggy Olsen, who devised the ‘When you’re only No. 2’ tagline, which was a revolutionary move, and as she later said in interviews, “It went against the notion that you had to brag.” Green also said, likely in reference to her workplace obstacles, that “We Try Harder” was also the story of her life.

According to famed ad man David Ogilvy, the ‘Father of Advertising’, Green’s ads were a feat of ‘diabolical positioning’, and DBB became the masters of the humblebrag advertising campaign.

While American cars were being marketed with massive flashy campaigns – much like the cars themselves – DBB pitched a now legendary 1961 print ad for the Volkswagen Beetle. The copy simply stated ‘Think Small’ and featured a tiny image of the car floating in an expanse of white space. Another ad stated ‘It’s ugly but it gets you there’.

DBB seized up the cultural moment, as Americans were becoming weary of the bigger-is-better, 1950s consumerism, and were receptive to a humble message that threw shade at authority.

We Try Harder

Hertz made a point of ignoring Avis’ campaign, likely furthering the notion that they were too big to care. However, they couldn’t ignore the fact that the company’s market share dropped from 61 to 49 per cent. Meanwhile, the market share for Avis grew from 29 to 36 per cent.

By 1966, Hertz fired back, with a series of ads wanting to explain why they were (still) number one. But the damage had been done, and Avis had considerably closed the gap on their competition.

While Avis dropped the ‘We Try Harder’ slogan in 2012, 60 years after it was coined, the company still retains that ethic and has been an innovator in the car rental industry, such as being the first company to introduce computerised reservations, the first company to introduce a frequent-renter program, and the first to offer a wide variety of speciality vehicles, like luxury cars, SUVs and vans.

Underdog Brand Biography

Green’s campaign established what is now known as an underdog brand biography, a rhetorical device used by marketers to chronicle a brand’s humble origins and life experiences, its evolution, its hopes and dreams, and noble strategies against adversaries.

It’s a strategy used by many companies since, such as the, albeit apocryphal, Apple ‘We started in a garage’ story, or Adidas’ ‘Impossible is Nothing’ campaign telling the story of a ‘simple shoemaker from a small town.’

So what is your underdog brand biography? Can not being the top dog help you find a way to better market your brand?

Why not come and talk to the team at Tonic? We’re not number one, but we always try harder.

Christmas clock countdown
Blogs, Marketing Plan
30th October 20230

The Final Christmas Countdown For Your Brand

It might only be October, but no one can deny that it’s that time of year when Christmas starts showing its festive face everywhere you turn. The perfume adverts are back on TV, shops are slowly filling with gifts and decorations, and it won’t be long until Mariah Carey is revived from her deep slumber to announce all she wants for Christmas is you.

For many brands, all the festive marketing will be well underway, and, no judgment, some of you might even have the office Christmas tree up and decorated already. But while many employees are already looking forward to and planning their Christmas breaks, for brands and marketers, there’s still a long way to go and lots to get sorted.

We thought we’d have a look at some tips and advice to help get you organised for the final Christmas countdown, as a little preparation will make sure that you can enjoy the Christmas break and keep your business on top of the festive fury!

Prepare

Taking time out from work is important, as we all need time to recharge, relax, and spend precious time with loved ones, and there’s no better time to do all of that than at Christmas. A good first step is to decide when your business is going to shut down and reopen, and it’s important to make sure that’s clearly communicated to everyone who needs to know, from employees and clients to customers and suppliers. It allows everyone to know when you will be available, and for you to prepare.

Think about when you will be able to take some time out from work and consider any temporary cover you might need to keep your business ticking over if it doesn’t shut down completely over the festive period, or if you can operate with a skeleton crew of staff.

If you have children, will you need to organise childcare over the school holidays? While you might able to work at home and look after the kids, keep in mind that balancing work and parenting might prove tricky at this busy time of year. Maybe get extra cover at work so you can truly enjoy the spirit of Christmas with the family instead of trying to juggle everything!

Communicate

Once you know your shutdown period for the end of the year, you will need to make sure it is communicated thoroughly. Update your website and social media so that all of your current and potential customers know when you will be available.

If your brand sells products, then ensure you clearly communicate the last order date to customers for a pre-Christmas delivery, as well as letting them know when any orders placed over the festive period will be processed, if your business is shutting down completely.

If you provide a service, then it’s more about managing expectations, and letting your clients know when you will be available. Make sure you are crystal clear about this, and don’t leave things open to assumptions.

Call your clients to have a wrap-up of the year, and do a review on how the past 12 months have gone for them and you, as well as chat about their plans for the next year.

Christmas Marketing

Regardless of whether your business is busy or quiet during the Christmas period, it’s always a good idea to plan some well-thought-out festive marketing to help give your brand a boost. Christmas provides a great opportunity to develop a festive theme for your marketing, no matter what your niche or industry.

If your brand deals with B2B, then keep in mind that while many companies will also be closed over the holidays, they will still be spending time online, so make sure you are still visible to them with your marketing. If you sell to consumers, then you know they will always be spending time online too, so make sure you keep visible on the socials.

If you’re planning on sending Christmas cards and/or gifts to clients, plan well in advance and don’t leave it to the last minute.

Scheduling

It’s always important to plan and create marketing content well in advance, but even more so for Christmas, as well as getting things planned for the new year to get you back up and running as quickly as possible on a cold January morning.

Consider any blog posts, email marketing, and social media posts that you will want to send in line with any specific or special Christmas products, services, or offers. Create your content well in advance, and be as inventive as you can be!

Why not share some behind-the-scenes content of your office preparing for the season, such as staff in Christmas jumpers, or decorating the office Christmas tree? You can then schedule your content to go out via your email marketing or cosily media scheduler, and make sure you keep your online presence while you wrap your Christmas presents!

Prepare for the New Year

Part of your plan to take some time out for yourself is to make sure you’re prepared for the return to work in January. Your customers and clients will be expecting business as usual, so plan ahead to ensure you don’t find yourself snowed under.

If you think you may find yourself neck-deep in emails or an influx of orders, then think about outsourcing some of the work to help ease you back in. A little extra support in January will help everyone get back in the swing of things while maintaining your clients and customers’ expectations.

2024 Planning

It’s not just the Christmas countdown to think about, there’s the countdown to the new year to consider too.

The festive period is a great time to start thinking and planning for the year ahead, and if you get to December and haven’t yet thought about your or your brand’s goals and budgets for the coming 12 months, try to find time to put thoughts on paper about the direction you want to take your business, instead of losing clarity and time thinking about it in January.

Think about any new products or services you want to launch and develop a framework for 2024 that includes key dates, events you may be attending, and the goals that you have set yourself.

Winter Clear Out

Good preparation for the new year should include a good clear-out for your business. Tidy your desk, delete any unnecessary emails, update your filing system, or cull your social media groups and platforms to help you hit the ground running after the new year.

Take Time Out After The Christmas Countdown

Even if it’s just for a short break, it’s important to take time out from your business. It will help you reset, give your body a break, and help adjust your focus. But most of all, it allows you to spend time with those closest to you.

Coming back to work in the new year with a clear mind and feeling refreshed will be a big step in helping you achieve your goals in 2024, so make the most of your festivities and enjoy!

Self care habits (journalling and coffee)
Blogs, Marketing Plan
24th July 20230

Three Steps To Help Create Consumer Buying Habits

Whether you’re trying to get fit or learn a new skill, forming new habits doesn’t happen overnight, and the same goes for forming buying habits. However, they can be developed through a systematic application of prompts, rewards, and repeat behaviour.

Our modern lives can be hectic, with so many choices and decisions to make every day, from trivial matters such as what to have for lunch or which shoes to put on in the morning, to deeply profound matters that can have lasting consequences. But if we agonised over every single decision we had to make in our day-to-day lives, we’d never get anything done.

When it comes to the more trivial choices we face, such as what to buy, we are more likely to rely on the habits we have formed, and simply do what we did last time when in the same situation. Do you tend to grab the same sandwich from the shop every lunchtime, stick to the same brand of coffee at the supermarket, or make other trivial purchases simply out of habit?

The Importance Of Habits

In 2002, psychologist Wendy Wood, the author of Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science Of Making Positive Changes That Stick, conducted a study that involved 209 participants who were promoted by an alarm every hour to write down what they were doing, where they were, and what they were thinking about.

The study found that if people were repeating the same action in the same place while thinking about something different, then their behaviour was characterised as habitual, and by that criteria, 43 per cent of behaviour was habitual.

Marketing And Forming Habits

With habits accounting for a significant proportion of consumer behaviour, marketers need to know how to leverage this, as well as how to successfully create buying habits.

Most psychologists concur that to form successful habits, there are three basic elements required: a cue, prompt, or trigger, a reward, and repetition.

These three elements are often used to help form habits in other areas too, such as prompts to exercise or workout to help build up streaks, for example, on the Peloton app, or the infamous slightly threatening aura of the Duolingo Owl, reminding you to keep up with your Spanish lessons.

However, passive-aggressive multi-lingual birds aside, let’s have a look at the three aforementioned elements for successful habit forming.

The Trigger

To develop habitual behaviour, motivation alone will not be sufficient, and successful habit forming needs a prompt or cue, whether that’s a place, mood, or time that will trigger the behaviour.

In a study at the University of Bath in 2002, psychologist Sarah Milne recruited 248 volunteers, who were then divided into three groups. A control group were instructed to record their levels of exercise over a two-week period, of which 35 per cent recorded 20 minutes of activity at least once a week.

The second group were also asked to record their levels of exercise in the same period but to also read a motivational leaflet about the benefits of exercise. Only 38 per cent exercised at least once a week, despite the leaflet providing motivation, barely changing their behaviour.

To demonstrate the importance of triggers in habitual behaviour, the third group had the same conditions set as the second group but were also asked to state when and where they would exercise. This was termed by Milne as an implementation-intention, a trigger to remind them to exercise.

The third group received the same levels of motivation as the second, but their behaviour was significantly changed, with 91 per cent recording exercise at least once a week.

To develop habitual buying behaviours in consumers, there needs to be more focus than solely on providing motivation, with a trigger that will prompt the desired behaviour.

An excellent example of this is when Claude Hopkins, the creative ad genius behind Pepsodent toothpaste, encouraged better dental hygiene in the US in the early 1900s, instead of suggesting brushing your teeth twice a day, his adverts recommended brushing in the morning after breakfast, and again before going to bed, creating one of the most successful public health campaigns in over 100 years.

The Reward

Following the trigger is the reward, which of the three elements in forming habitual behaviour is the broadest. Here we will look at the most relevant area, the power of uncertain rewards.

In 2014, an experiment by Luxi Shen asked if a reward of an uncertain magnitude can be more motivating than a reward of a certain magnitude. Shen recruited 87 volunteers, who were then set a challenge. Some of the participants were incentivised with a reward of $2 – a certain condition – while the others were offered a 50:50 chance of winning either $1 or $2 – an uncertain condition.

It was found that 70 per cent of the participants completed the challenge in the uncertain condition, while a mere 43 per cent completed the task in the certain condition scenario.

The participants in the uncertain condition reward scenario were motivated by the excitement of the uncertainty, which had a higher value than the actual reward of the money.

Marketers can learn from this when seeking to shape consumer behaviour by harnessing uncertainty. For example, if your brand has a loyalty scheme, instead of offering every customer that same incentive, try adding a random element.

This can be seen in action at the coffee and sandwich chain Pret-a-Manger, which doesn’t have a requirement for its customers to collect stamps to earn a free coffee, instead, allowing baristas to randomly award customers with a free drink at random.

The Routine

As stated at the very beginning of this article, habits are not formed overnight, whether that’s going to the gym or placating the Duolingo owl by practising your Japanese every day. To truly embed habitual behaviour, it needs repetition.

How long it takes to form a habit is a widely discussed and studied area of psychology, with 21 days being a commonly quoted figure, and others saying much longer.

According to a study by Philippa Lally at University College London, it takes 66 days to form a habit. In 2009 she recruited 82 participants, who were tasked to form a simple new habit, for example, drinking a glass of water every day with their lunch or doing a press-up after they brushed their teeth.

The results demonstrated that it took 66 days until these new behaviours were completed without needing to be thought about, Lally’s definition of a habit. However, there was a significant variation, with 95 per cent of participants forming the new habit somewhere between 18 and 254 days.

To reshape human behaviour and develop lasting habits, there is more needed than short bursts of activity, and sustained repetition is required.

In Conclusion

Marketers can find a lot of help and evidence-based advice from behavioural science, especially when it comes to developing consumer buying habits. To successfully alter your customer’s buying habits, do not forget the three essential key ingredients – a trigger, a reward, and sustained repetition.

If you’re looking for help developing new consumer habits with your marketing, then get in touch with Tonic today.

Typewriter with paper saying 'Tutorial'
Blogs, Digital, Marketing Plan, Out of home
6th February 20230

A Guide To Marketing Terms For Beginners

Whether you’re getting your start-up venture off the ground or seeking to grow your established company, marketing is an essential part of every business. But if you’re not a marketing professional, there can be an awful lot of acronyms and terms flying around, and trying to keep up can make your head spin!

But don’t worry, if you don’t know your CTA from your CMS or your buyer persona from your brand awareness, we’re here to help! The number of terms and acronyms seems to grow every day, but we have compiled some of the most common terms, abbreviations, and concepts into a handy glossary for you.

Basic marketing terms

Lead

A lead is a potential buyer who has engaged with a brand previously and has a likelihood of making a purchase in the near future.

Content
Content refers to any piece of information that has been created to be seen by an audience, and typically includes blog posts, email newsletters, social media posts, videos, and direct mail.

Infographic

Infographics are a type of content (see above) that presents statistics, data, and other information
in an easy-to-understand and well-designed image.

Analytics

Analytics in marketing is the process of analysing data so that the ROI (return on investment – see below) of a specific marketing activity or campaign can be determined. Marketers also use the term analytics when referring to the dashboard or system they use to track and review this data.

Brand

A brand is how a company is perceived and experienced by an audience and customers. Branding – the elements of a brand – include its logo, design elements, and the tone of voice used when interacting with customers and its target audience.

Buyer persona

A buyer persona is an imaginary customer that marketers target when they are developing ads, campaigns, and content. Buyer personas are not actual people but are built from the data of real customers. Marketers use these buyer personas to help inform the audience, tactics, and tone of the message they are wanting to convey.

CTA (Call To Action)

A CTA is a prompt that aims to encourage website visitors to perform a certain action, whether that’s to subscribe to a newsletter, submit a contact form, or make a purchase. A CTA is typically used to help guide a customer to the next step in the sales funnel (see below).

Customer journey

Rather than it describing the bus ride into town to your retail outlet, in marketing, a customer journey is a phrase used to describe the process from when a customer first shows interest in a product or service to the point at which any interaction is completed.

B2B

B2B is marketing shorthand for business-to-business. A B2B company markets its products or services to other businesses.

B2C

B2C is marketing shorthand for business-to-customer. A B2C company markets its products or services directly to the end consumer.

Engagement

The relationship developed between marketers and customers is referred to as engagement. In digital marketing, engagement can be measured as actions a visitor makes online, for example, clicking on a link or posting a comment on a blog or social media post.

Qualified lead

This is the name given to an individual that marketers have decided is a viable prospect when it comes to marketing a product or service. This is determined when marketing efforts have found that this individual has shown interest in the product or service.

ROI (Return On Investment)

Marketing campaigns require an initial investment of time and/or money, and the ROI is the metric that measures whether marketing efforts have earned enough money to be worth the initial investment.

Sales Funnel

A sales funnel refers to the buying journey that potential customers take before they make a purchase. The sales funnel includes multiple steps, from the initial discovery of a brand right through to becoming a loyal repeat customer.


USP (Unique Selling Proposition)

Your USP refers to what exactly it is that makes your product or service stand out from the competition. This could be a unique feature of your brand or product, its superior quality, pricing, or more.

On-site content

This refers to all of the content that a company has produced and shared on its website. It is designed to provide a potential customer to your website with the best experience possible while visiting your website.

Off-site content

Conversely, off-site content is all the content that is shared away from a company’s home website and designed to be eye-catching and help draw a potential customer to the company’s website, product, or service.

Campaign

A campaign is a set of marketing activities that have been designed to achieve a specific goal, for example, increasing sales for a particular product or increasing awareness of a product or service.

Brand awareness

This refers to the extent to which a potential customer is familiar with your company, and the distinct images and qualities – the branding – that are associated with your company, products, and services.

Types of marketing

Inbound marketing

Inbound marketing makes use of content and social media marketing to help attract new customers. This is the opposite of pursuing customers with the ‘hard sell’ or outbound marketing (see below), as inbound marketers develop relationships with an audience by meeting them where they are already in the purchase process, ideally, drawing them in to learn more about the brand.

Outbound marketing

This is the more traditional ‘hard sell’ type of marketing that tries to get the attention of potential customers by interrupting their daily lives with cold calling or direct mail campaigns.

Social media marketing

This is a digital marketing method that leverages various social media channels to help create brand awareness (see above) to help develop a relationship via regular interaction.

Email marketing

Content sent via email to current or potential customers who have subscribed to a marketing email list is email marketing. You’ll likely have received half a dozen of these by the time you’ve finished reading this article!

Content marketing

This is a marketing method that is centred on creating interesting, relevant, and consistent content to help attract new leads and convert them into becoming customers. See ‘content’ above for examples of what is used in content marketing.

Omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing is the process of integrating all the different forms of marketing used by a company to make sure that a customer receives a consistent brand experience across all the various channels.

WOM (Word-of-mouth marketing)

Widely considered to be the most effective form of marketing, WOM is the oral or written testimony of a product or service from a satisfied customer to a potential customer.

Digital marketing terms
Landing page

A landing page is is a webpage optimised for lead generation. It is a stand-alone website page that will typically include a strong CTA (see above) or a lead magnet (see below) as part of a marketing campaign, such as offering a discount in return for providing customer information such as an email address.

Chatbot

Chatbots are automated tools now found on more and more websites and are usually used to address common customer questions. By scanning chat messages from customers, chatbots can identify potential keywords (see below) and topics of interest to be able to provide pre-populated messages. If needed, chatbots can escalate enquiries to a human representative.

Keyword

Keywords are words or short phrases that are entered by users into search engines to help find
relevant information. Digital marketers can then incorporate these keywords into web pages and
content to help boost their website’s visibility in search engines – see SEO below.

Bounce rate

This is a metric that shows the percentage of visitors who left the website after viewing only one
page. A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can be a sign for marketers to adjust
their websites so that visitors are enticed to stay longer and see more of the site.

CTR (Click-through rate)

The CTR is a metric that measures how many people click on an ad when they see it.

CMS (Content Management System)

A CMS is a type of web publishing tool that is designed to manage the content that marketers have created for their websites.

UX (User Experience)
UX is the design process of making a website or app easier for visitors to understand and navigate.

Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is an incentive for potential customers to provide their information, such as a discount code or a free eBook download.

Clickbait

We’ve all seen clickbait on social media, where content creators try to manipulate individuals to get them to click a link. It typically uses provocative titles to pique the interest of viewers. Marketers Use This One Weird Trick That Will Instantly Boost Your Engagement!

Social proof

This is a psychological phenomenon in which people are more likely to trust a brand or make purchases if they have seen positive reviews or news from their peers on social media.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

SEO is the process of using keywords and other strategies to help boost the visibility of a website to search engines and increase the likelihood of a website or specific web page being among the first shown in a list of each engine results.

An ever-growing list

As mentioned, the number of terms and acronyms in marketing continues to grow, and like many trends, some will stick around, while others may simply vanish before they gain any traction. But we hope we have helped clear up some of the most common forms of marketing lingo for you here.

If you’re looking for no-nonsense marketing and don’t want to feel left out of the loop when growing your business, then come and talk to Tonic today!

Audience research, Blogs, Digital, Marketing Plan
4th January 20230

Why You Should Use LinkedIn As A B2B Marketer

When marketers are considering which social media platforms to use for their businesses, many will automatically head for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. But when it comes to generating B2B leads, then the most powerful social media platform has to be LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is possibly the most important social network for marketers to be able to reach business buyers and connect with professionals and has become one of the major social media platforms for B2B media and content marketing.

When looking at the Monthly Active Users (MAU) of the popular social networks, LinkedIn, with 310 million MAU may not be the biggest platform available, compared to 330 million MAU on Twitter, one billion MAU on Instagram, or a massive 2.7 billion on Facebook.

But the LinkedIn audience is one of the most lucrative ones for B2B marketing.

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can become noisy and crowded, and while LinkedIn was once much quieter, it has become busier. However, unlike Facebook, where people go to connect with friends and family, watch funny videos, or post irreverent content, LinkedIn is the place where people go to network with like-minded people within their industry.
If you are looking to drive qualitative B2B traffic to your website or blog, then LinkedIn is the platform for you. The social network allows users to build relationships, establish thought leadership, generate B2B leads, gain insights, improve a brand’s reputation, conduct market research and help to build online communities.

LinkedIn now has over 875 million members, from 200 countries all around the world, and members can interact with each other, share their views, and boost their professional profiles.

It is a powerful social media platform that allows professionals and businesses to easily connect, boost brand identity, and engage in B2B marketing, and it should be part of any comprehensive social media strategy.

Using LinkedIn for marketing can be an effective way of raising for brand or business’s profile, if it’s done right. Overly ‘salesy’ marketing methods are typically not well received, and businesses that achieve success on the platform tend to leverage their industry expertise and knowledge to set themselves up as thought leaders in their field.

What is LinkedIn marketing?

LinkedIn Marketing is the process of using the social media platform to promote businesses or individuals and draw attention to their profiles. Not only can individuals create their own profiles, but business can also establish their own company pages, and subpages for specific departments or products, on the platform, which they can use to:
Build brand awareness
Drive traffic to websites or blogs by sharing content
Create new connections or continue to develop existing business relationships.

Let’s have a look at six reasons why you should be using LinkedIn in your marketing efforts.

  1. Create awareness and improve reputation

It has been estimated that more than two professionals sign up to LinkedIn every second, meaning that businesses have an increased opportunity to be able to network with an increasing number of diverse interesting contacts. It means that LinkedIn is the ideal platform to help boost your online presence.
By making use of the different personal and group features on the platform, businesses and the people representing them can improve their visibility and credibility.

The status update functionality is an underutilised feature that should not be forgotten about, however, the latest design means that updates are more prominent on the homepage.

  1. Thought leadership and influencer marketing

Several features on LinkedIn allow users to position themselves as thought leaders. As well as providing high-quality content, you can improve your personal profile and participate in LinkedIn communities to answer questions.

The platform is ripe for thought leaders and can lead to businesses and individuals becoming trusted advisors. Leadership and reputation go hand in hand with influence, and with the main purpose of the platform being networking, it can help you to identify and engage with other influencers.

  1. Generating leads

Of all the social networking platforms, LinkedIn is probably the best for lead generation. As well as traditional marketing techniques such as providing content that potential customers can download or driving traffic to blogs and websites, LinkedIn offers personal ways of helping to identify leads, engaging with them, and converting them into customers.

This can be achieved through a combination of listening, analysing, participation, sharing information and content, networking, and responding. Finding potential customers on the platform and networking and marketing to them indirectly through LinkedIn will boost the opportunity to make sales and increase revenue.

Potential and existing customers are likely to post questions and needs. Group-related posts and questions allow B2B marketers to identify new leads, while shared and liked content will give marketers insight into what LinkedIn users find interesting.

By providing answers to questions on the platform, it is possible to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge. If your answer to a question is what a potential customer is looking for, then they will likely initiate contact.

  1. Social CRM

In a CRM (customer relations management) context, LinkedIn is ideal; it allows for a better view of prospective customers and other contacts and can be done by using Social CRM applications and other connectors such as Outlook.

While most Social CRM applications provide integration with LinkedIn, you can also set up a basic integration of your contacts as LinkedIn has support for Google Contacts.

The main benefit of using a social CRM tool is that you are then able to see what your contacts are doing on LinkedIn in real-time, which provides valuable insights and information on their behaviour and preferences.

  1. Traffic building

One of LinkedIn’s strengths, which can often be forgotten about, is its power in link building and traffic driving.

Just as with most of the other social networks, LinkedIn has a social sharing button so you are able to share content in your status updates, which are visible on the homepage, and in LinkedIn Groups – the communities of which you are a member.

This can prove particularly useful for business-related content and can lead to viral content status. Business-related content is far more likely to be shared on LinkedIn than on Facebook, for example.

  1. Listening and gaining insights

LinkedIn is the ideal place to listen, ask questions, and gain insights, which is the case for all social media marketing. Take time to engage with your contacts, ask questions as well as answer them, and pay attention to what people are saying, posting, and asking.

Need help with your LinkedIn B2B marketing?

Here at Tonic, we know the ins and outs of marketing on LinkedIn, from helping set up your business profiles to developing engaging and interesting content to helping identify leads and new customers.

If you’d like to know more about how we can help grow your business, then get in touch today.

Blogs, Marketing Plan
12th December 20220

10 Bad Marketing Habits to Kick in 2023

As 2023 rapidly approaches, brands, creators, influencers, and social media managers will be striving to discover and develop new marketing strategies for the next 12 months, as well as keeping a keen eye on the latest trends.

But before you launch into new and untested social media waters, we wanted to have a look at some of the things you should stop doing on your social platforms in 2023, and what you should be doing instead.

So as well as cutting back on takeaway food, taking part in Dry January, and remembering to go to the gym, resolve to quit these 10 social media habits in 2023.

1. Neglecting video content

With TikTok hitting the 1 billion monthly users mark in 2021, becoming the seventh most globally popular social media platform, and Instagram continues to update Reels to keep up, if you aren’t making the most of video on TikTok or Instagram Reels, then you could be missing out on a huge audience.

You don’t necessarily need to be using both platforms, but content can very easily be repurposed for cross-promotion, and supercharge your success in the new year. Read up on Instagram Reels and TikTok to learn all you can, so you can promote your brand and find and engage with new audiences.

2. Not defining your niche

The attention spans of social media users are notoriously short, meaning that your window of opportunity to make that vital first impression is minuscule at best.

This means that you need to define your niche and target market quickly, as soon as someone views your profile. Ensure that your social media bio defines who you are, whom you serve, and what you share, and inject a dose of personality and credibility to help hook people into your content. It will give your social media marketing strategy a well-needed boost.

3. Content that’s irrelevant to your audience

It’s vital that you know your audience in order to increase your followers, engagement, and website traffic, and boost sales. In 2023, make sure you know the needs, challenges, aspirations, and pain points of your audience, as they will want to know what’s in it for them, and whether your brand understands what matters to them.

Self-serving content is great for helping develop a personality for your brand, but instead of simply posting a photo of your tasty salad, share the recipe, or instead of boasting about gym gains, detail your fitness regimen.

4. Forgetting the hook

The hook is the carefully crafted opening statement that immediately grabs your readers’ attention, enticing them to read more – see above about short attention spans!

Carefully develop the copy on your social media posts so that people stop and read instead of scrolling past your Reels and TikTok posts and entice them to read the full caption, turn on the sound and listen to your video, and engage with your stories.

5. Neglecting the analytics tab

If you want to take a deep dive into the best and worst-performing content in the past 12 months, then you should make yourself more familiar with the analytics tab, and start the new year on the right foot.

Check to see which posts had the most and least likes, shares, saves, comments, plays, and highest/lowest reach. Did you find there were common themes for top-performing or worst-performing content? Investigate what works and what doesn’t, and you’ll soon discover what your audience wants more of, and what you should drop going forward into 2023.

6. Forgetting to use social media as a sales tool

It can be easy to forget that Instagram is a powerful sales tool, packed with features that can help you make sales right within the platform, and in some cases, you might not even need a website to generate revenue through sales.

The basics for any online-operating business are a way for consumers to find you, a compelling offer, product, or service, and a means for people to send payment, and you can find that on most social media platforms.

7. Quantity over quality

We’ve all seen those posts with messages such as ‘Want to grow on Instagram? Simply post Reels every single day for 30 days!’

It might work for some accounts, but it isn’t going to work for everyone. It’s more important to be consistent with your social media content. Instead of testing every day for the sake of posting, post three times a week, but use your A-game content to help build a sustainable social media marketing strategy that will last all year.

8. Competition over community

You should care about other creators’ work, especially within your niche. Like, comment, and share other creators’ work, and develop mutually beneficial relationships. You likely share similar audiences, and their followers will also love your content.

However, ensure any relationships developed are meaningful, not just service-level, as you want value-driven, genuine, and authentic connections. Your audience will quickly see through anything that appears superficial.

Community over competition is a mantra to remember in 2023, and it’s not just about chasing clout, but supporting each other and growing together.

9. Not driving people to your website

If the main reason you’re on social media is to redirect people to your website, eCommerce shop, or blog, then you will need to remind your audience from time to time and give them a nudge in the right direction.

If you find you’re being asked the same questions in comments and DMs, then why not write a FAQ blog that can go into greater depth? The next time you get asked a question, you can redirect to your website.

Remind people at the end of posts to tap on the link in your bio so they can find out more about your product, service, or offer, or use the link sticker in Instagram Stories to drive traffic even easier in one tap.

Don’t forget to add a call-to-action on your blog to help get people more engaged with your content and your brand. Once you get a ‘yes’ to opt into an email list, then it becomes easier to elicit another ‘yes’ when making purchasing decisions.

10. Selling a product not a lifestyle

No matter how good your product or service is, consumers are not interested in it. What they are looking for is how it will transform their lifestyle.

No one cares about the capacity or number of pockets that designer handbag has, but they will certainly care about it elevating their level of status, the sense of accomplishment, belonging to an elite group, or even how it could boost their self-esteem.

You should think about your product or service in the same way and develop a narrative around your brand that people will buy into. Sell them the lifestyle, not the product.

Onwards into 2023!

New Year’s resolutions always seem doomed to fail. A few weeks into a dark, grey, and cold January, getting up early to hit the gym feels like a terrible idea, while a bottle of wine and a takeaway pizza on a Friday night becomes increasingly more tempting.

But if you take note of these marketing resolutions, and stick with them, you can help make 2023 your year, grow your business, increase your audience, and get on the road to success!

If you’re looking for assistance with your marketing this year, then we’re here to help at Tonic, so get in touch today, and have a very happy, and fruitful, new year!

Marketing Plan
Blogs, Digital, Marketing Plan, Out of home
3rd November 20220

How to Develop a Marketing Plan

No matter whether you’re dipping your toe into the world of marketing for the first time, or you’re a seasoned professional, trying to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of marketing trends can be overwhelming.

Even during this year alone, there has been a shift to short-form videos, new platforms arise, while others fall out of favour, and the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to impact the world. In most cases, what was a tried and tested marketing strategy yesterday simply might not be working for you by tomorrow.

To ensure that your marketing efforts continue to be successful, and to maintain a sense of relevance with your increasingly picky audience, you must stay ahead of the curve, and one means of accomplishing that is to develop a marketing strategy that covers all the bases.

We wanted to have a look at how to develop your marketing strategy in 2022 and beyond, and how to put it into practice with a marketing plan.

The Importance of a Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy
A robust marketing strategy will help you gain traction with your target audience, which includes those who are unaware of your brand as well as your most loyal repeat customers.

By neglecting to create a defined marketing strategy, you’ll be taking potshots in the dark, and keeping your fingers crossed that you manage to hit your target, which ultimately costs time, money, and precious resources.

A marketing strategy needs to:
Align your marketing team to specific goals
Help align your marketing efforts with the brand’s business objectives
Allow you to identify and test your marketing efforts to see what gets the best response from your target audience

In developing a successful marketing plan, there are seven steps to take into account. Develop your marketing plan, create buyer personas, identify your goals, choose the right tools, review existing recourses, audit and plan campaigns, and implement your strategy.

  1. Develop a marketing plan

While a marketing strategy will determine why your marketing team needs certain resources, take certain actions, and set certain goals, a marketing plan lists the set of actions you need to take to achieve it.

Your marketing plan is your roadmap to help organise, execute, and track your marketing strategy over a given period. It will help you deliver your strategy, as well as determine what works and what doesn’t, as well as tie in with your business goals.

  1. Create buyer personas

Defining your target audience can be tricky, and if you discover that you are unable to pin it down in a simple sentence, then creating buyer personas is a way to develop a snapshot of your ideal customer.

For example, clothing retailer H&M, despite an extensive product portfolio, primarily targets women aged between 20 and 34, who are looking for fashionable, up-to-date, and trendy apparel at a low price. They could define a buyer persona as Budget Brenda, a stylish working-class urbanite in her late 20s, who wants to have a wardrobe full of designer clothing at low prices.
Keeping Budget Brenda in mind, the brand’s marketing team have a clear definition of whom they want to target. Buyer personas include psychographic and demographic information, such as age, income, location, and interests, which Brenda has listed in her description.

Of course, while Brenda might be H&M’s primary focus in this fictional example, other buyer personas can be developed for young male shoppers, families with children, and even homeowners for their homeware ranges.

Buyer personas should be at the core of your marketing strategy.

  1. Identify goals

Your marketing strategy goals need to reflect the brand’s business goals. For example, if one of the business goals is to have 200 people attend a conference you are holding in the next quarter, then one of the marketing goals should be to boost online registration of the conference by 10 per cent by the end of the month to ensure you stay on track.

Other goals could include increasing brand awareness, generating high-quality leads, or growing thought leadership within your industry.

You need to identify what your goals need to be as well as how your marketing department can work to achieve them.

  1. Choose the right tools

Once you have defined your goals, then you need to use the right tools to measure their success.

There are many different software suites such as social media schedulers that can provide analytics that will help you keep track of what works and what doesn’t. Tools such as Google Analytics can measure blog and web page performance.

  1. Review media

To help develop your strategy, assess what resources you have that can help. You can streamline this review by considering your assets as belonging to three different categories – paid, owned, and earned media.

Paid media is any channel on which you spend money to help attract your target audience, including offline channels such as TV and radio advertising, direct mail, and billboards, to online channels such as social media platforms, websites, and search engines.

Owned media is anything that your marketing team creates, for instance, photos, videos, podcasts, infographics, blogs, etc

Earned media refers to user-generated content, such as shares on social media, tweets or Instagram posts mentioning your brand or products.

Collate these materials in each media category into a central location to allow you to gain a clear picture of what you have and how you can use them in your strategy.

For example, if you produce a weekly blog – owned media – you may promote the blog on Twitter – paid media – which customers may then retweet – earned media. This can help you develop a more well-rounded marketing strategy.

It can also provide you with the opportunity to spring-clean your resources and get rid of any that don’t easily fit into any of the three categories, as well as help you determine any gaps in your resources.

  1. Audit and plan marketing campaigns

Now you have gathered all your resources, you need to decide which content will help you. Focus initially on your owned media and marketing goals. For example, updating your call-to-action at the end of blogs or newsletters can help boost online registration for the conference in the above example.

Follow this by taking a close look at your buyer personas. For example, consider a business that creates podcast creation software. If one of the buyer personas is looking for a way to add sound effects to the audio, but you have no content that shows how to do that with your product, make a short-form video for Instagram that demonstrates how effective your product is at solving this problem.

Lastly, develop a content creation plan, which needs to include topic clusters, goals, format, and the appropriate channels for each piece of content, and don’t forget to consider the challenges faced by your buyer personas that it will help solve.

  1. Implement your strategy

Your market research and planning should now present you with a clear vision of how to execute your strategy, and by whom. The final step is to now bring all that together and assign actions to your plans.

Define your strategy in a document that maps out the steps necessary to implement your campaign. It is important to think long-term when creating this document and keep in mind that the standard strategy document will be for the next 12 months. This document should become the main guide for your marketing efforts.

This document needs to outline all the details that have been outlined in the above sections and will ensure you are all set for the coming year.

What happens next?

Developing a robust marketing strategy takes time and hard work, and dedication the ensure you reach your target audience whenever and wherever they are and want to be reached.

Stick with your plan, use all the resources at your disposal, and use customer feedback and research to help you refine your strategy and maximise your time on the marketing channels on which your audience spends most of their time.

If you need help developing your marketing strategy for your business, then come and talk to us at Tonic, and we can help set you on the right track to success!