Developing Your Brand: Do You Have a Plan?

Welcome to our February issue! As I continue to cover what I consider to be the essential guiding principles for those who want to market their businesses/organizations effectively, we’ll be diving right into planning the content of your marketing campaign for the next year—or even beyond.

As effective, powerful content must be thoughtfully created and then strategically presented to your target audience, it stands to reason that planning is just as critical to the success of your promotional efforts as consistency.

Once you’ve established your brand identity and unique selling proposition, you now have the foundation in place to move forward in a purposeful direction with a unified voice behind the content you will begin to generate.  Now, consider the following:

Objectives – What must you accomplish with your content?

Goals – How will your progress be measured?

Strategies – What do you want your content to say or do for your business?

Metrics – How will you evaluate the efficacy of your content?

Audience – Who are you targeting with your content?

Benefits – What can you deliver through your content and what’s driving the buy-in?

Topics – What subject matter will position your company as the expert in your field?

Content Type – What will work together best to meet all established criteria?

Call to Action – How will you consistently prompt the desired result(s) with your content?

Content Management – What’s your system for content creation, content publication, content analytics, etc.?

While you could certainly go into depth on each, a one page plan will give you a great overview without being overly complicated. If you lack a written strategy, one page is a great start. If you have a detailed strategy but have struggled to gain traction, thoughtfully condensing it down to one page will allow you to better articulate your direction.

As a prime example of planning out content, consider the editorial features in Strictly Business: Press Releases, Feature Stories, River Six column, Ask The Expert column, Client Spotlight, and Cover. Over the course of a calendar year, you’d be announcing news, weighing in on a variety of broad topics related to your business, focusing on a specific topic, introducing a key member of your team, telling a story about your business, and finally, you’re front and center. These can be arranged to roll out in whatever order is most beneficial to your promotional efforts, so planning ahead to maximize your investment (and results!) is key.

All of these features serve the purpose of branding–education, familiarity, top-of-mind recognition, targeted visibility, extended exposure—which will in turn drive sales and increase profits. Furthermore, they are all designed to work in conjunction with your advertisement itself for greater traction. When planned out for the year, you have a well-rounded campaign with a healthy mix of content that is not only shared on our company platforms but that you are also welcome and encouraged to share online and on your social media to further your reach in the marketplace. And that’s just one media source! Multiply this by the others in your mix and you have the potential for great success in your marketing efforts for the coming year simply by using content to your advantage! But remember, planning is the key to achieving your desired results!

To learn more about how Strictly Business can help you, contact me directly at (402) 466-3330 or visit www.strictly-business.com/connect.