Step 4 – Objectives
In this chapter, you will learn how to plan the necessary tactics and mechanics to attract your target audience and keep them engaged. Reference Goalscape
Both of the following articles give an insight into age-old tactics used when it comes to sales. Many of these haven’t changed in principle – it’s just a case of adapting them. Read them and think about how these tactics could be harnessed for your own business.
Read David Ogilvy – The New Standard AGA Cooker (about attack and defence, genius piece of work)
Tactics
Can you map your existing sales and marketing tactics from the following?
You need to listen to your customers (and potential customers) to understand how and where to pull (e.g., sharing intellectual property, thought leadership, social media) and where to push (e.g., ads, affiliates).
‘Pull’ tactics
The following are considered ‘pull’ tactics. Which ones could you consider using to gain potential customers?
- Blogging/guest blogging (with regular frequency)
- E-books, guides, and whitepapers
- Infographics
- Webinars
- Conference presentations
- SlideShare
- SEO (Metadata, AMP and SEOYoast Pro) (Structured data)
- Social media
- Contests
- E-marketplaces
- B2B app marketplaces
- Inclusion on deal sites
- Piggybacking (i.e., Jamie Oliver Food Tube)
‘Push’ tactics
Here are some examples of ‘push’ tactics you could employ:-
- Display ads
- Konstant Kreative – We design creative for one purpose. Conversion.
- ‘Swaps – reciprocal deals or swapping of products to add value for customers and benefit both sides
- Affiliates
- Direct sales
Personal tactics
- Leverage networking
- Phone contacts
- Email contacts
- Social contacts
- Social sharing
- Backlinks (Chat links)
- Gift (product) incentives
- Word of mouth (remember to ask to be shared)
How to activate members and get them engaged
These tactics will only be successful if your members are engaging with them. You need to consider some of the following ideas and resources to ensure your audience is engaged. Only when they are engaged will you be able to convert.
Understand ‘mini-interactions’ e.g., likes – each of these tiny moments is a step towards the next moment e.g. likes lead to follows, lead to tagging someone else, lead to subscriptions, lead to purchases
- Build an amazing landing page – Unbounce – Landing Page Builder and Converter
- Include good copywriting and clear calls to action
- Make it as easy as 1,2,3 – ensure you’ve got your own ‘onboarding guide’ to make it as easy as possible for people to join, purchase, or sign up.
- Gamification – everyone loves a game or a competition
- Include a dynamic pricing strategy (eg Platinum, Gold and Silver tiered, free trials and discount codes)
- Bundling – everyone loves a ‘deal’
How to retain users
- Comodo New York – Getting the user to the ‘Magic Hour’ (the ‘Aha!’ moment)
- Keep people informed – email updates, notifications, and news. (Look at springwise.com and subscribe to their emails)
- Have a look at Substack to become a subject matter expert and or generate revenue
- Don’t turn people off: e.g., Business of Fashion (contextual search and email preferences at the expense of website personalisation)
- Check up on your customers – alerts and notifications i.e., order confirmation, despatch, and happiness check
- Don’t let them go – exit interviews (with a retention plan of how you’ll keep them coming back)
- Treat them like royalty – roll out the red carpet and make them feel special
- Add new functionality and product features to keep users engaged (this may already be part of the plan)
- Remove redundant features – they just make everything noisy
- Build a community – share customer support and documentation and ask for social reviews (and thank them for using SEO-friendly language)
In short, make them happy!
Digital tools
These tools will help you activate some of the above tactics:-
- SEMRush – Discover your competitors, improve your SEO, boost your rankings. Try now! Unlock the full marketing potential of your website with SEMrush Projects! 18+ billion keywords. Best SEO Tool
- Neil Patel – Learn why your competitors rank so high and how you can outrank them
- AnswerThePublic – Search listening tool for market, customer & content research. Better at understanding the questions
- Interest Explorer – A Facebook™ interest targeting tool that reveals thousands of hidden Facebook™ interests that can be targeted with ads
- Personalyze – Easily create prospecting audiences to find new customers quickly and more cost-effectively
- Advanced Web Ranking – Fresh rankings daily, weekly and on-demand. For desktop, mobile and local searches. Packed nicely into white-label reports. Accessible from any device
- Brandwatch – Add I or my, to get personal stories
- Similar Web – Compare any website traffic statistics & analytics with Similar Web’s digital market intelligence platform. Grow your market share and increase website traffic
- Audiense – Audiense Insights activation tactics. Discover how to best engage and activate your audiences across multiple online
Actionable Insight
By now you should be able to develop sales and marketing tactics that will drive your target audience segments to your website or e-marketplaces.
Take it to the next level
How many tactics and mechanics do you currently use? Can you localise your tactics by language, country, city, and persona? If so, how?