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How to develop a profitable digital marketing concept

Many of our customer meetings with managers and executives from medium-sized companies are about the question of whether a digital marketing concept can really make a measurable contribution to company growth.

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The social media problem

A typical customer response to content marketing in the corporate sector often sounds like this:

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“I have no idea about this new social media world, and I don't really like it at all. I have an efficient daily routine and can't stand spending my energy and time on something that changes almost every day. Social media is a playground for young people. That's why we hired a young intern to post company information for us on Facebook and Twitter. That should do the trick!”

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Unfortunately, that is not the case. With such a strategy, you as an entrepreneur are symbolically sticking your head in the sand without your company achieving better results.

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Countless studies have shown that the interaction between buyers and sellers has changed dramatically over the last 15 years.

It's all too understandable that decision makers ignore topics they don't like or understand only inadequately and basically leave everything the same. The digital transformation has completely changed markets: today's market leaders first analyze the needs of customers. Based on this, they create valuable and tailor-made content for their customers. These typical measures are often summarized under the umbrella term inbound marketing.

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Inbound marketing & storytelling

Inbound marketing starts with your customer. Nowadays, interested parties and potential customers research the Internet in advance before they actually get in touch with your company. For this reason, many of the old marketing concepts are less effective:

• It is increasingly superfluous to work with traditional marketing “tools” such as ads, purchased email lists, or cold calling.
• Informative content with the aim of attracting the attention of potential customers and drawing information about your problem solution from it on their own initiative is far more successful.

Companies that use inbound marketing are no longer looking for customers, but they can be found. To achieve this, contact special Inbound marketing methods For example, they publish helpful, informative and free websites, blogs and articles that are tailored in such a way that they attract the attention of potential customers on the Internet. This is achieved, among other things, through “SEO”, an optimization of search words. In order to make your product attractive, you must therefore know in advance exactly what appeals to your potential customers and which terms they enter in search engines. Once you know that, you can start personalizing your marketing to a large extent. Here is a comparison The marketing concepts of the pre-Internet era with the current concepts:

Pre-Internet buyers:

• Relatively uninformed
• Linear customer journey
• Marketing: cold calling and interruption marketing

Today's buyers:

• Well informed
• Variable random customer journey that often starts with a Google search
• Marketing: thoughtful content creation

Why interruption marketing no longer works

There are 3 reasons why customers are skeptical of brands and why cold calling doesn't work as well today as it used to:

1. The spread of media. A variety of magazines, TV channels, radio stations and above all, an incredible number of websites are constantly bombarding us with their news about the most diverse topics around the world. Because of the forest, we no longer see trees.
2. Marketing is caused by the bad reputation of fraud and misleading. Unfortunately, consumers have been lied to and deceived so often in the past through false advertising promises and exaggerations. That is why they believe ads less and less, no matter how true and clever they may be. According to the results of the 2014 Edelmann Trust Barometer, 63% of consumers must hear a company's advertising messages 3-5 times before they actually believe them.
3. Consumers today are tech-savvy and know how to block out disruptive and disruptive advertising messages accordingly. They decide and research for themselves at what point in time they want which information. This makes it particularly clear why it is now more effective to ask customers for permission in advance rather than simply contacting them and invading their privacy without being asked. By tailoring the information to the needs of your audience, you get their interest much more easily and gain their consent to further interactions. This makes it much easier for interested parties to convert into so-called “leads”, i.e. potential customers. As soon as they sign a sales contract, the “leads” turn into customers. The next step is ideally to inspire your customers so much that they become ambassadors of their brand and recommend your company and product.

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The great opportunity for sustainably oriented companies

Based on the development described above, we see a great opportunity for sustainable and ethically oriented companies, but also for service and educational institutions. With the inbound marketing method, you have a powerful tool to help your brand achieve a breakthrough: Tell your potential customers the true story about your product and about your company. You are therefore in a unique situation and position: Your company and your product are attractive to your potential customer because you tell an honest and positive story. In particular, publicly traded companies, which often focus on maximizing profits, find it difficult to take such an ethical approach (see VW)

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Tell the story of the origins of your company

With our company Greenblut, we specialize in inbound marketing and see ourselves as a green content marketing agency. With our services, we are convinced to support green, sustainable or ethical companies in their growth, especially in the services, education and textile industries. We firmly believe that sustainability is becoming an increasingly important megatrend. Who would you trust?

• A conventional brand that is willing to do anything just to increase its profits and that even accepts to trick and deceive?
• a green, sustainable or ethical brand that has anchored ethical values throughout its value chain and corporate philosophy and actively implements, lives and communicates these values?

You might be wondering now:

• How can you get started with social media?
• What are “best practices”?
• How can you measure success?

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The SMART marketing concept: Set yourself smart goals!

The first step is: Sit down SMART Goals, so set yourself smart goals.

Smart stands for:

Specific (Specific): A goal that you set for yourself must be formulated briefly, concisely and as precisely as possible. A statement such as: “We must grow this year” is not enough. The brief but precise description of exactly what is to be achieved is missing. Put the destination in just a few sentences so that you could impressively present it to an imaginary CEO, whom you meet by chance in the elevator, as you travel from one floor to the next. This means that you only have a little more than 1 minute to do so, the statement must be short and concentrated.

‍Measurable: It's also not enough to simply say that your company wants to increase the number of “social media” subscribers. That's a goal, but it doesn't make much sense: in theory, you would already be successful if you had increased the number from 560 to 561. It would be effective to base the target on a percentage. For example, you determine that you are aiming for an increase of 30%. You can now constantly monitor developments and check again every month whether you are still on track or whether additional measures need to be taken to be able to achieve the goal.

‍Attainable (reachable): Of course, record-breaking goals can be useful (that's where Greenblut comes in) — but it's important to remain realistic. Let's assume that your company has had 50 leads per month so far. If you were to reach 1000 leads/month, we would be talking about an extreme increase. Of course, a company could push its employees to achieve such a goal. However, employees would certainly feel discouraged by such a requirement because they would consider the task impossible right from the start.

‍Relevant (appropriate): Think carefully about the goal you're setting for yourself. Assume that you produce balloons and have so far produced a maximum of 10,000 balloons per month. It would now make little sense to set yourself the goal of producing 20,000 balloons per month in the future without your wholesale partners guaranteeing you correspondingly larger purchase quantities beforehand. A better alternative would be to expand sales channels by a certain percentage first.

‍Time Bound: All the points listed so far contribute to a solid objective. However, it is also very important that you pay attention to time planning. For example, if you aim to expand distribution channels, you must also set a deadline for when the goal must be achieved. Only then can the increase in production (in this example: balloons) be planned in such a way that it goes hand in hand with the expansion of sales channels. Not that you end up with an expanded sales network, but with too few balls...