- Wait, hold on, hold on, hold up.
It's 2022, and you're still running marketing campaigns
without having a digital marketing strategy?
Do you also start driving
without putting the destination into your GPS?
What's up? It's Jamal.
Welcome back to the channel.
In this video, I'm gonna explain the importance
of creating a digital marketing strategy
before you post your first tweet,
hit "send" on your first email,
or buy your first online app.
And I'm gonna give you a full stack
of free tools that you can use
to build a digital marketing strategy today
that will help you gain customers
and drive sales for the whole year.
That's right, a whole year of driving with your GPS on.
Can you imagine?
You're welcome.
So, get ready to download some excellent free tools
from the description below,
and while you're down there,
be sure to hit the Subscribe button
and ring that notification bell.
All right.
So, the first thing I wanna explain is the difference
between marketing strategy and marketing tactics.
HubSpot defines strategy
as "long term, broad goals
that a business wants to achieve,"
and tactics are "short-term steps and actions
that should be taken to achieve the goals described
in the strategic plan."
If you've been watching videos on this and other channels,
you've probably picked up a lot of tactics that you can use,
but unless you're applying those tactics
to a sound strategy, your efforts are likely to go to waste.
One example.
Well, remember Burger King's creepy king?
It had all the making of a successful marketing campaign.
Almost.
The memorable ads were all over social media,
earning likes and driving engagement.
What it didn't do was drive customers to the drive-through,
because while the King campaign was winning awards,
Burger King was losing market share to Mickey D's.
The campaign's tactics were successful
but the overall strategy of making customers
crave burgers didn't perform as well as they'd hoped.
If you don't wanna make the same mistake,
you have to build a digital marketing strategy,
and the best way to get started,
and I think you know where I'm going with this,
is to download our first free tool,
HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template.
You can download it
from the description below.
The template will help you
build an effective digital marketing strategy, step by step.
(clicking)
You know what I'm saying?
And now I'm gonna highlight
some of the most important questions you'll need to answer
when building your strategy.
The first is creating buyer personas.
HubSpot defines a buyer persona as "a semi-fictional
representation of your ideal buyer
based on data interviews and some educated guesses."
Had Burger King done better research into buyer personas,
it might have realized their ideal demographic
wasn't the type of young, ironic hipster
their ads was clearly targeted to,
but perhaps, rather, families
who were looking for quick and satisfying meals.
So you have to do your research,
either by interviewing current customers,
analyzing demographic data in your CRM,
or even just talking to your employees,
who engage directly with customers.
You can also create personas of customers
you would like to appeal to in the future,
but this is often more difficult to achieve
and should only be attempted
once you're hitting goals for existing buyer personas.
I know what you're thinking to yourself.
Jamal, I want to be eager.
I wanna get ahead of the curve on this one.
Well, don't curve yourself out
of the game.
What?
You get what I'm saying.
To make the process easier, HubSpot created a free online
"Make My Persona" tool that will help you outline
much of the relevant info you need
to make buyer personas that work for any business.
It's kind of magical, frankly.
You'll find a link in the description below.
Your buyers aren't the only thing
you'll want to analyze
when building a digital marketing strategy.
You also, and keep this in mind,
wanna look at what your competitors are doing
for clues as to what works,
but you gotta know what to look for,
and don't just blindly follow trends.
'Cause you're gonna be caught
looking like a rapscallion, a real scoundrel,
a real ne'er-do-well.
When Nesquik declared September 16th, 2013,
to be National Bunny Ears Day,
funny photo filters were all the rage,
but despite a high-profile partnership
with the Today Show, the hashtag failed
to get any traction on social media.
Had Nesquik looked at other bunny-flavored ads,
like the Cadbury Creme Eggs' clucking rabbit,
they might have noticed
that the most successful big-eared campaigns
happen around Easter.
Folks just aren't checking for rabbits in September,
unless it's the Energizer rabbit,
and that keeps people going.
You know what I'm saying?
If you want to conduct a competitive analysis,
well, good news.
I have another free tool you can use.
HubSpot has a free Competitive Analysis Kit
with 10 different templates that you can use
depending on your business goals.
You can find the download link...
You already know.
You're now getting close to creating awesome campaigns
that will wow the right buyers.
All that's left to do is specify
the best platforms and tools you want to use
to reach the right customers.
But in case you haven't noticed,
there are dozens of marketing platforms
you can use to spread your message
and hundreds of tools to make your messaging
more efficient and effective.
To help you sort through the options,
HubSpot has a number of blog posts
that outline the best tools for each job.
We even have a post dedicated to free tools you can use
if you're working with a limited budget.
You where those links are.
At minimum, all right,
the absolutely, the absolute embarrassed bones,
you're probably gonna need a project management tool,
a social media marketing tool, an online advertising tool,
a lead capturing tool,
and a CRM tool to keep track of all of that goodness.
Fortunately, and you are quite fortunate for this,
the free version of HubSpot's Marketing Hub
can do all of this and more,
but even if you have a CRM tool,
check out the links in the description
to find plenty of other tools
to make your marketing tasks way easier.
(upbeat music)
- Our software is the worst.
- Have you heard of HubSpot?
See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess,
but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.
- I think I love our new CRM.
- Our software is the best.
- [Narrator] HubSpot. Grow better.
- The truth is, there's no one single way
to effectively market a product or service.
Creating an effective digital marketing campaign
is as much as an art as it is a science.
So get out your easel and your test tubes.
Do 'em both at the same time. Maybe combine 'em.
Maybe that's what we need for good strategy.
But knowing what it is you're trying to solve for
before you go out and start testing marketing tactics
will save you lots of time and energy in...
("puffing")
the long run.
That's why the free Marketing Plan template
we've also been talking about
also helps you clarify your business goals
so that every ounce of effort you put into marketing
feeds into your bottom line.
You can spend days, weeks, even months
mastering your digital marketing strategy
before it's ready to be deployed,
but eventually, you'll have to start executing the strategy
by building compelling content,
putting it out online and analyzing the results.
So even though this isn't technically part
of building a digital marketing strategy,
there's one more free tool I want to tell you about
for when you're ready to take the next steps.
HubSpot's free Ultimate Guide to Content Creation
has over 150 templates,
150,
that's madness,
for building everything from blog posts
and infographics to PowerPoints and press releases.
But remember that even the best content only works
if it's supporting a smart digital marketing strategy.
If you're ready to dive deeper into all things online,
you can head over to HubSpot Academy
and take our digital marketing certification course
and check out this channel's digital marketing playlist
for videos that focus on all the platforms
you need to successfully execute
your digital marketing strategy.
Now, if you don't mind,
I'm gonna be taking a few steps myself.
I'm gonna be looking like...
Theresa May walking down, walking down the aisle.
You know what I'm saying?
Towards my big digital strategy breakthrough.
You'll see me out there.
And I'll see you as well.
See you next time.
Heading out.
(Jamal making silly mouth noises)
Hm.
Okay.