PA@tonicconsultancy.co.uk

Tag: strategy

Tonic Consultancy > Read our Blog > strategy
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.

TV remote control
Audience research, Blogs
18th September 20230

Broadcast TV Audiences Decline – What Does This Mean For Advertising?

According to a new report from Ofcom, the number of people watching broadcast TV each week has had the sharpest fall since records first began. With streaming services growing in popularity daily, public service broadcasters have seen the number of viewers each week decline from 83 percent in 2021 to 79 per cent in 2022, according to the UK’s communications regulatory body.

Ofcom’s Media Nations 2023 report also revealed that the average time spent watching broadcast TV per person per day fell from 2 hours 59 minutes in 2021 to 2 hours 38 minutes in 2022.

Public service broadcasters (PSBs) such as BBC One and ITV1 remained dominant in the most-watched list, with the research suggesting that the public recognises these channels deliver ‘broadcast events that bring the nation together for a shared viewing experience’, with England’s quarter-final match in the FIFA World Cup, the State Funeral of the Queen and the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee being the most watched programmes in the UK in 2022.

The broadcast TV watchdog’s report also noted a major shift in the broadcast TV landscape, with the decline in the number of TV programmes that attract mass audiences, and the number of shows that gained over four million viewers has more than halved in the last decade, demonstrating that there are far fewer people watching early and late evening TV news bulletins, as well as a decline in viewer figures for the UK’s most popular soaps.

According to the report, a mere 48 programmes managed to find an average audience of over four million on streaming platforms in 2022, with Netflix having the vast majority of those.

Yih-Choung Teh, group director of strategy and research at Ofcom, said: “Today’s viewers and listeners have an ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet of broadcasting and online content to choose from, and there’s more competition for our attention than ever.”

Teh said that the UK’s traditional broadcasters have had steep declines in viewing numbers for their scheduled live programmes, particularly among what were typically loyal older audiences but he added that despite this, PSBs are still unrivalled in bringing the nation together during important cultural and sporting events.

But what does this mean for advertisers?

Declining viewing figures might sound more like a reason to start thinking about advertising elsewhere, and getting your advert aired during peak viewing times seems like an impossible task, never mind an expensive investment.

But with the average viewer watching over 2 and a half hours of commercial broadcast TV every day, broadcast TV accounts for 84 per cent of all video advertising, dominating the audio-visual market, and TV advertising is by far and away the most trusted medium, with 35 per cent of UK survey respondents placing it at the top, followed by newspaper advertising with 19 per cent.

Brands looking to advertise regionally can also leverage SkySmart to help target audiences in different locations, different ages, lifestyles, and many other demographics, by using marketing data to advertise to smaller, targeted audiences in cities, towns, or even specific postcodes.

Platforms such as Sky and Channel 4 even provide a bespoke service that can allow smaller brands to gain access to premium viewing environments, and not only broadcast television but video-on-demand (VoD) services too.

Broadcast TV adverts can’t be skipped, they run full screen, aren’t fighting for attention on a busy webpage, and aren’t subject to internet ad-blockers. TV advertising has been creating viral sensations since long before the internet age coined the term viral video and still creates discussion among people as we ask each other if we’ve seen the latest advert for a particular brand or product.

TV advertising can deliver a huge advantage to your brand, driving market share, building trust, and providing scale and reach. Brands can buy the exact number of ratings/viewers they need, and target specific audiences, whether it’s Love Island fans, or families gathered around the TV to watch Saturday evening entertainment.

The advantages of TV advertising

Reach – No other kind of media is able to provide the same reach with a single advertisement. TV advertising can reach huge audiences frequently and quickly, as much as 70 per cent of the UK population in one day. While there is a growth in people watching TV and film via tablets, computers and smartphones, none are as ubiquitous as the living room TV, and with many UK households owning more than one TV, that reach increases.
Influence – Television, compared to other video marketing platforms, has one of the highest engagement rates. According to data from the websites of organisations that use TV advertising, TV ads contribute to around 35 per cent of all visits to the number of all website visitors. TV advertising has retained an air of prestige and quality that other channels are unable to meet.
Audience targeting – Targeting a specific audience has been utilised by TV advertising for a long time. TV ads are shown at certain times of day, on certain channels, and during certain shows to ensure they are being shown to the right audience. This has become even more sophisticated with the advent of Sky AdSmart and targeted advertising has become even more integral to TV advertising.
Captive Audiences – While there is a certain amount of ad-skipping in VoD and recorded TV, and viewers are free to get up and pop the kettle on or visit the bathroom during ad breaks, the majority will stay in their seats, and even if only passively, they will be exposed to your adverts. In the case of recorded TV, if adverts are skipped, the brand will not be charged. Many VoD platforms are now including adverts before the show or film they want to watch, and some have now implanted unskippable ads that have to be watched in order to view the on-demand content.
Building trust and Legitimacy – It can take time, effort, and cost to develop a TV advert that is suitable for a wide audience, but the engagement and trust inferred by TV over other platforms provide a great ROI. TV also can establish a greater sense of legitimacy, trust, and recognition of your brand than other platforms.

Are you convinced about the power of TV advertising yet?

When it comes to video advertising, TV is the most widely viewed medium and has become home to many small and medium-sized brands, who are easily able to find a place among the traditional TV advertisers and larger brands.

If you’re looking to take advantage of TV advertising to promote your brand, product, or services, and looking for expert advice and help, talk to Tonic today!

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.

Phone with TikTok logo
Blogs, Digital
7th June 20230

Why You Should Consider Advertising On TikTok

It might be more well-known as the procrastination tool of teens, taking up viral dancing and lip-synching challenges, but if you’re considering leveraging the exceptionally popular video creation and sharing app TikTok for your business or organisation, you’re certainly not alone!

Since the launch of TikTok in 2016, the app has been downloaded 3.5 billion times worldwide, and was the most downloaded app of 2021, beating rivals Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.

We have a look at why you should be taking a closer look at the TikTok revolution, which has made a profound impact on culture in the modern world, and why savvy businesses are looking to get a piece of the action! But first…

What is TikTok Marketing?

TikTok marketing is a form of social media marketing that uses the popular app to promote your brand, product or service, incorporating a variety of tactics, for example, influencer marketing, TikTok advertising, and creating organic viral content.

TikTok marketing can help build brand awareness, develop and build engaged communities, advertise and sell your products and/or services to targeted audiences, and generate feedback from audiences and customers.

Let’s have a closer look at the three main types of marketing used by brands on TikTok.

TikTok Influencer Marketing

TikTok influencer marketing has become a major part of the app, with mega-stars such as former competitive dancer Charli D’Amelio and her viral dance videos, actress and social media personality Addison Rae , and Zach King with his videos of magic tricks, all making a huge impact on the success of businesses with their tens of millions of viewers.

However, you don’t need a high-profile and highly-paid influencer for a successful marketing campaign. There are always rising stars and influencers who better fit your niche.

Some of the biggest viral successes have been accidental, such as when TikTok user Nathan Apodaca aka @420doggface208 posted a video of himself riding his longboard, sipping Ocean Spray cran-raspberry juice to a soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams, kick-starting the #Dreamschallenge hashtag, and significantly boosting sales of Ocean Spray and streams of Fleetwood Mac.

Creating Your Own TikToks

Creating your own TikTok videos can give you the most freedom. Simply create your own Business TikTok account and profile, and start creating and posting your own organic content, whether it’s demonstrating your products, day-to-day life in the office, or taking up the many dance challenges.

You can always find a wealth of inspiration on the app by browsing the For You section. Just remember you’re supposed to be working and looking for inspiration, not getting lost in procrastination! Well, maybe a little, for research!

TikTok Advertising

TikTok advertising is typically promoted, full-screen video content that a brand pays to show to a targeted audience. TikTok ads are another form of social media marketing used to help increase awareness about the advertiser, or to help sell a product or service.
TikTok advertising can potentially put your brand, service, or product in front of almost 900 million people over the age of 18, a whopping 18 per cent of all adult internet users.

The average TikTok user spends around 20 hours per month browsing the app, opening it an average of 19 times per day, and 64.4 per cent of users are aged between 20 and 49, according to the latest TikTok user demographics and statistics.

It can be an incredibly lucrative platform to leverage, particularly if you are marketing to females, who make up 57 per cent of all users.

TikTok for Business

The app launched its TikTok for Business hub in 2020, and business users can add more information to their profiles and access real-time metrics and audience insights.

Once you have created an account, it can be switched to a business account in the settings (Settings and Privacy > Manage Account > Account Control > Switch To Business Account), then choose the category that best describes your business, and then add your website and business email address to your profile.

Advertising on TikTok

Paying for advertising on TikTok is a great way to get your brand, product or service in front of a growing audience, without taking any risks with an influencer that may or may not provide a good ROI.

There are various types of ads available on the app:
In-feed ads: Adverts created by the user, including image ads, video ads, and spark ads, which boost the content you already have. There are also pangle ads and carousel ads, which are only available through the app’s Audience Network and News Feed Apps respectively.
Ads for managed brands: similar to in-feed ads, but with additional formatting after consulting with a TikTok sales representative.
Top View ads: unskippable ads that appear when the app is opened, similar to YouTube.
Branded Hashtag Challenges: actionable hashtags connected to your brand.
Branded effects: stickers and filters connected to your brand.

If you plan on advertising on TikTok, you will need an ad account for TikTok Ads Manager by visiting ads.tiktok.com and clicking Create Now and filling in the necessary information.

Top Tips for TikTok Marketing

Trends on TikTok can often appear random, with some never taking off at all, while others seem to run and run. Sadly, there’s no guaranteed marketing strategy to aim for, but there are some legitimate tips that can help your brand make an impact on the app.

Familiarise yourself with TikTok

TikTok is a different social network with unique trends, behaviours and features than Instagram or Facebook, so it would be wrong to approach marking on the platform as you would with others.

Do allow yourself to fall down the rabbit hole of TikTok videos to help explore all the different features available, make note of the currently trending filters, effects, and songs, and keep an eye out for the Branded hashtag Challenges, usually involving a song, a dance, or a task that users are challenged to recreate.

Study up on the TikTok algorithm, as understanding how the app ranks and displays videos can help inform your content, hashtag, and engagement strategies. You can learn all about this and more at the TikTok Business Learning Center.

Define your target audience

Before you begin creating and posting content, you need to determine who you are hoping to reach. Take some time to research the TikTok demographics to help to identify who would be interested in learning more about your brand.

The app is very popular with teens, but it’s far from a teens-only app, as they only make up a quarter of all users. The 20-29 age group are not far behind them, and the 30-39 and 40-49 age groups make up a significant percentage of users too.

Once you have found your potential audience, it’s time to research what content they are more likely to engage with and start developing content ideas for your brand.

Check out the competition

Whether or not you have competitors on TikTok, seek out four or five similar brands to see what they are up to. Learn from what works and what doesn’t work for them, and it might be helpful to use the SWOT framework to determine their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Keep in mind that TikTok is first and foremost a creator-led platform, so don’t forget to include the app’s stars and influencers in this exercise, especially any who fit your niche.

Set goals

It’s perfectly fine to create content for TikTok that’s purely for fun, but it would be beneficial to set goals that can be aligned with your overall business objectives. This could include reaching a new audience, boosting brand or product awareness, and developing stronger bonds with customers.

It may be helpful to use the SMART goal framework, and set goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. You can access the analytics on TikTok via the Creator Tools to find the metrics to help measure your goals and track your progress.

Post regularly

Develop a content posting calendar and stick to it for a successful social media marketing strategy.

Feel free to experiment

There’s no magic formula for creating content that will go viral, but make sure you have space to have fun, go with the flow and be experimental with your creativity.

If something doesn’t work, learn from it and move on to the next, but if something goes viral by accident, whether you’re riding a skateboard, singing, and enjoying a refreshing beverage or not, roll with it, get in on the joke, and make the most of it.

TikTok is not a platform to take yourself seriously, so have fun!

Looking for help with TikTok marketing?

If you’re looking for help with your social media marketing, content creation, or strategy, then reach out to Tonic today for help, advice, and tips!

home office set up with a laptop and phone
Blogs, Company, News from Tonic
17th May 20230

Why Big Businesses Are Using Micro Agencies

It’s fairly logical to think that it’s the big-name marketing agencies that secure all the big contracts with the famous big brands. With offices around the country, if not around the world, procurement teams ready to impress household name clients, and a portfolio of global marketing, surely they’re the go-to for big brands and businesses?

However, all is not as cut and dry as it may seem, as more and more brands are taking their business to smaller, micro-agencies, less bloated by bureaucracy and huge departments.

Some brands have been actively searching for these leaner micro agencies, small collectives of marketing experts and creatives, and disparate and diverse remote-working colleagues who are looking to disrupt the normal order of things by providing something quite different.

Small, But Scrappy!

These micro agencies are unconventional in their organisational hierarchy and how they operate, which gives them the freedom to seek out new ways of working, explore different approaches and processes, and with a smaller core team, faster and more efficiently.

A micro-agency is typically a small group of leaders, veterans of the larger national/multinational agencies, with all the right connections to freelancers and contractors of all the necessary disciplines – a little black book of the go-to people with the right skills and experience to get the job done fast.

Whatever it is you need – copy, graphic design, photography, marketing strategies and campaigns, advertising, digital or print – they’ll know the right person for the job, someone they trust to get it done right, on time and budget. Most of the time, these contacts would not be available via the larger agencies; it’s about making the right connections for the job in hand, not keeping everything in-house.

There’s little complacency in a small agency, not only do they want your work, they’ll fight hard for it, they’ll stake their reputation on it, and they know you’ll be back for their services again.

Pandemic Positives

Pre-pandemic, brands wanted to see the big agencies, with their football and pool tables, beers on a Friday afternoon in the open plan, brightly coloured office, with bean bags, quiz nights, and the trendy office ‘culture’ fostered by all the big name agencies, eager to stand apart from the rest while doing just the same as the next big agency down the road.

In the post-Covid landscape, the industry has changed and adapted. Clients are not as impressed by all the fancy office culture culture, or even the need to have to travel for meetings when it could be easily done on Zoom, and there is far less importance on how or where you work.

This became a huge levelling-up moment for the smaller brands, placing them on the same playing field as the big names.

The micro-agencies are still happy to see global brands go to the full-service big global agencies, with an army of corporate copywriters and campaign planners. Many of the smaller agencies provide a scaled-back service, narrowing down their specialisms and positioning themselves as experts in their particular niche, giving themselves an edge over the bigger firms.

Work With The People Who DO The Work

With a smaller agency, brands find they are working directly with the people who do the work, not a senior partner in the firm who essentially acts as a go-between. It makes it easier for micro-agencies to become involved deeper with the brand, with enhanced access and agility.
While many big agencies are still trying to navigate the post-pandemic world and remote and hybrid work, micro-agencies are already up to speed, already conjuring ideas and strategies on the fly, their inherent stripped-down hierarchy giving them speed and agility while some big brands are still trying to find their place in the ‘new normal’.

It all leads to a greater level of collaboration between brands and micro-agencies, more meaningful communication, and stronger relationships, instead of confusion and lack of context as the message gets passed from the client to client services to managers to the drones that do the work.

The brand gains access to the senior leadership of the agency and the people who perform the job at hand in one swoop; they’re not simply talking to the senior team who gets the credit for the hard work done by unseen juniors, and it’s this transparency that can be highly appealing to big brands.

An agency could have 200+ people working for it, and the brand communicates with up to 10 directors, sales personnel, and client services, but there’s only a small handful of unseen people who are actually working on the project.

With a micro-agency, there might be a core leadership of three or four people, but they’re also the ones with their hands on the controls. A simple project could take weeks with a large agency, as the gears of bureaucracy grind ever slowly, whereas your project is given directly to those who will get on the job ASAP with a micro-agency.

More Committed To Their Clients

A micro-agency will above and beyond with their clients, regardless of their size, while big agencies can often concentrate on their bigger clients, sometimes unfairly treating small to medium businesses as mere options.

Micro-agencies are always passionate about helping their clients succeed and providing a level of dedication and immediacy that can be lacking from larger agencies which are handling hundreds of accounts, all fighting for attention.

A micro may have as little as four or five clients that they work with consistently to produce fantastic results. Your success actually matters to a micro-agency on a personal level, not just on a business level.

Reasonable Costs

A big agency has more staff, more payroll, overheads, resources, and office costs, which inevitably leads to charging higher prices for everything. But there’s little, if any, added value to that; you’re not getting any additional focus, any more specialised expertise, if anything, you’re paying for the prestige of working with a named, branded agency.

With a micro-agency, you know who is working on your project, and they will be more upfront and transparent about their pricing. This transparency and familiarity can provide confidence about the work being done and the knowledge you’re not simply paying over the odds for a fancy office and the ‘culture’ employee perks.

Is It Time You Looked At A Micro-Agency?

Looking for a fresh approach to your marketing needs? A micro-agency could prove to be a leaner, meaner, and more efficient way of handling your projects and campaigns, with increased collaboration, and a personal and bespoke approach designed to meet any business’s needs.

If you’d like to know more about how a smaller agency could be of greater benefit than becoming tangled in the machinations of a large agency, then come and talk to us at 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!

Child with hands covering his face and question marks around
Blogs
9th November 20220

When Ads Go Wrong And What We Can Learn From Them

Advertising and marketing campaigns have the power to significantly raise the profile of a brand and lead it to success. But what about when ads go viral for the wrong reasons? Companies must be careful about the messages they promote.

We have a look at some of the advertising fails that caused offence, ridicule, and outrage, for a variety of reasons, and what we can learn from these marketing mistakes.

What is an advertising campaign?

Before we get started on our list of marketing disasters, let’s look at the basics. An advertising campaign is a marketing strategy designed to promote a brand, service, or product. They are devised by a team of marketing experts who come up with the advertising concepts and organise them into a marketing document or brief.

This then moves on to the actual creation of the advert, and its effectiveness can be enhanced by creating and distributing it in a variety of formats for different media, such as print, audio, and video, for use on TV, the internet, print media, radio, podcasts and more.
When advertising works, it can create a positive buzz about the product, service, or brand, the Holy Grail of the ‘water cooler moment’ as friends and colleagues discuss the latest advertising campaigns.

Just think of John Lewis’ annual Christmas campaign, Nick Kamen stripping to his undies in a laundrette for Levi’s in the 80s, or even the ‘You’ve Been Tangoed’ soft drink ads from the 90s.

Some ads might be silly, subject to ridicule, or make headlines due to being a little too saucy for some audiences – Wonderbra’s traffic-stopping ‘Hello Boys!’ billboards for instance. But they get people talking and generate huge brand awareness.

But advertising can be hard, especially when you’re trying to make an impact in a sea of sameness. When fighting desperately for customer recognition in an age where ads are everywhere we look, marketers can sometimes use tone-deaf, senseless, and hurtful marketing techniques.

Let’s have a look at three of the biggest advertising disasters:

When ads go wrong

  1. Pepsi

In 2017, global soft drink brand Pepsi debuted an advert that featured Kendall Jenner abandoning a photoshoot in the street to go and join in a passing social justice protest.

However, things take a turn for the worst when Jenner approaches a police officer manning the barricades and hands him a can of Pepsi, effectively ending the protests, socio-economic conflict, racial tension, gender equality, and police brutality, bringing about world peace. Maybe.

The issue

Pepsi used social justice movements as an opportunity to sell soft drinks, massively disrespecting the people who had suffered and sacrificed in the name of protest and change. What made it worse is that the apology that came from Pepsi wasn’t focused on BLM supporters or Women’s Marchers, but on Kendal Jenner herself.

What can we learn?
Helping movements for social change is a good idea, however, using these serious issues to sell a product is insulting, insensitive, and damaging. Pepsi left a bad taste in the mouth of consumers all around the world. Tread carefully when referencing important social issues in marketing.

  1. Peloton

A man buys his wife an expensive Peloton exercise bike for Christmas 2019. She’s depicted as already being a little on the ‘thin’ side, and then the man documents her year-long journey to staying thin.

The issue

The whole advert feels very uncomfortable, bordering on an abusive controlling relationship, and far from promoting a message of keeping fit and staying healthy, appears to be a dystopian nightmare for ‘Grace from Boston’, her expression mirroring a girl on the poster for a horror movie as she starts on her journey.

The narrative of the advert appears that the husband has thrust the peloton upon his wife, as he believes she needs to get fitter, a sinister message that she needs to change for him. Every day she does her spin classes, eventually realising how she’s changed and found true love. It feels like a hostage situation evolving into Stockholm syndrome.

What can we learn?

Peloton, whose stock dropped by 10 per cent after the ad went viral for the wrong reasons, claim that the message was misunderstood, and while promoting healthy living and keeping fit is a positive idea, the message was garbled and easily misinterpreted. Keep messages simple and straightforward to avoid misunderstandings.

  1. Nivea

German skincare brand Nivea launched an advert for a deodorant range in 2017, formulated to ensure that clothing wasn’t discoloured through excessive sweat. However, the Facebook advert campaign, targeted at Middle East consumers, was titled ‘White is Purity’.

The issue

It doesn’t take a genius to link a slogan such as ‘White is Purity’ with white supremacy, and the skincare company was branded as racist by commenters on social media around the world while being praised for the message by white supremacists.

It’s not the first time that Nivea has courted controversy. In 2011, the brand launched an advert for ‘Nivea for Men’ products that depicted a clean-shaven black man holding a disembodied head with an afro, presumably his former self, with the slogan ‘Re-civilize yourself’. A corresponding ad with a white man holding a similar disembodied head omitted the slogan.

What can we learn?

The main takeaway here appears to be a lack of common sense. Nivea has issued statements deeply regretting the adverts and the offence caused. But surely using diverse focus groups to review campaigns could have prevented the ads from ever being run, even if the seemingly blatant harmful and racist messaging had not been noticed by marketing executives.

How can marketers avoid these advertising mistakes?

The above three examples are only a few of some of the terrible, harmful, and offensive adverts that unbelievably make it to print or air, and there is much that can be learned from these mistakes.

Always proof your campaigns

As seen above, common sense is not always as common as it should be. It’s important to make sure there are as many eyes as possible on your content. Ask colleagues, friends, neighbours, and people on the street, or create a diverse focus group to assess your advertising and marketing efforts. Use an editor to proofread your copy before it is published.

Keep in touch

Many of these advertising campaigns fell flat on their faces because they were tone-deaf. Always carefully consider the implications of your messages, and while humour can be a great advertising tool, make sure you check any and all jokes from all angles and perspectives.

Do your research and make sure that your campaigns do not inadvertently cause offence in different regions of the world, and avoid anything that can be considered tasteless or offensive.

Pay attention to current events
Sometimes ads have the misfortune to be released at just the wrong time, and it can be difficult to hold anyone to account if world events throw a different light on your campaign. Your organisation should take a moment to reconsider any imminent launches if a disaster occurs. It will be beneficial to postpone launching a campaign rather than it being deemed misguided.

If your campaign relates to current events, then make sure your brand has a genuine interest in educating your audience about the situation. Your customers are not stupid and can see through any thinly veiled attempt to sell products on the back of important issues.

Marketing and advertising campaigns are planned months in advance, and it can be easy to slip up, so keep up to date with national and international events before you launch your campaign.

In conclusion

Advertising is a powerful medium and should never be taken for granted. Regardless of whether you’re printing a message on promotional items to give away at a trade fair or conference or planning a national billboard and TV ad campaign, you must be always mindful of the word you use and what they might mean.

Your ads send an important message to your audience, so make sure you’re sending the right one!

If you’re looking for help with marketing and advertising, and to ensure you’re sending the right message, then get in touch with Tonic today!

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!