SEO Archives - 3 Screens Strategic Advisors Limited

From our years of experience (20+ years, OMG!) advising companies big and small on their digital marketing strategy, there are common “holes” we see that render their strategy incomplete and ineffective.

So ask yourself these questions to self-diagnose your digital marketing strategy. If your answer is “no” to any of them, your digital marketing strategy might need some revising.

1. Do you know your target personas? (Yes/No)

“A buyer persona is an imaginary character based on research and data that represents your ideal buyer or target audience” [1]. It describes your target customers covering their functional, emotional, and behavioral needs in the buyer’s journey. It is far more descriptive than a demographic description of a target “segment”, and it informs your content, ad-targeting, and how you should spend your media dollar. Doing digital marketing without understanding your target customers at the Persona level is like star gazing without an understanding of the constellation: you’ll waste a lot of effort looking around but not finding what you want and start complaining that the telescope doesn’t work.

2. Do you understand your Buyer’s Journey? (Yes/No)

The marketing funnel, decision funnel, conversion funnel, buyer’s journey, whatever you want to call it, is the journey that a customer will go through as they embark on finding a solution to a problem they have, such as finding a pair of waterproof hiking shoes, or the best video conferencing solution for the boardroom. From not knowing your brand is the solution they are looking for to finally buying your service/product, buyers seek content and information that gets more specific as they learn more about the available options. Understanding this journey is tremendously helpful in generating content ideas for your brand for different stages of the funnel.

3. Do you know what your most relevant keywords are? (Yes/No)

By keywords, we mean the words that people use to describe you. Storytell your brand with terms that your target customers use allows your brand to be more easily discovered and understood. Qipao or cheongsam? Course or class? Online banking or eBanking? Keyword analysis will give you the answer. It also gives you a wealth of customer insights along the buyer’s journey. From the related keywords, you’ll discover trending topics (e.g., STEM learning toys for 5 years old), product preferences (e.g., dark red lipstick), purchase behavior (e.g., where to buy), and competitive landscape (e.g., iPhone 14 vs. Samsung Galaxy S22). The more you use the frequently used keywords in your category, the higher the chance customers will discover you via paid search, SEO, and even social media.

4. Are you articulating your offering in terms of “customer benefits”? (Yes/No)

Product feature describes your product, often in language that means nothing to your customers, such as “Super Retina XDR Display”. In contrast, customer benefit describes how your customer can benefit from your product feature, such as “Mind-blowing detail”. Speaking in customer benefit makes for effective communications as your audiences have less to think about why they need your product/service.

In a nutshell, if you understand your target personas, their needs along the buyer’s journey, and their choice of words and language, you can effectively tell them how they can benefit from your offerings. Simply put, that’s marketing communications.

Like in life, a good friend understands you, your needs and speaks your language. Be a good friend to your customers.

Reference:

1. Certified Digital Marketing Professional, Module 2: Content Marketing. https://www.bonfiremedia.hk/syllabus

Digital Marketing is not IT

Digital marketing is about communications, not technology. Too often too many people get too caught up in the technical mumbo jumbo. The objective of communications has always been about generating awareness, creating engagement, driving action, and fostering loyalty. In a sense, nothing is new, and nothing has changed. So stop thinking you cannot understand digital marketing but its IT.

Digital marketing is not a cheap substitute

Digital marketing is not a cheaper alternative of traditional marketing. The cost of entry to start is much cheaper, but your total digital budget is not. In fact, “Hong Kong digital ad spend surpassed traditional” according to an SCMP article on Feb/2017 (that’s four years ago by the way). Digital product cost might look cheap as compared to traditional media item-by-item (e.g. a banner ad vs an OOH ad), but the sheer number of versions due to segmentation and optimisation can push the cost up. However, digital marketing is cost efficient, because the agility of the medium allows us to test & test and invest in success.

Digital marketing is not a niche channel

If you look at any media usage report from any developed country, the finding is consistent: across all demographics people spend the most time on the internet (google “media usage [your country]”, you’ll see what i mean). So digital is not an upcoming trend or the next big thing; digital is not a youth channel (though youth are more engaged online), and digital is certainly not a niche channel. It is actually your primary mass medium, your primary national medium.

Digital marketing is holistic

The cheaper cost of entry of digital allows us to think holistically across the entire buyer’s funnel, integrating all of forms of communications such as advertising (display ad), PR (social media), direct marketing (email marketing), retail marketing (eCommerce) to drive business results. These channels don’t work in silos and are interlinked, attracting prospects at the top of the funnel and converting them into customers at the bottom of the funnel.

Digital marketing is about the long-tail

The concept of the long-tail as applied to digital marketing is about targeting a smaller group of highly relevant people, as supposed to a broad audience of less relevance. We achieve this by paying attention to target audience persona and segmentation (more on this in subsequent newsletter), and by ongoing engagement with your highly relevant following. This is also why digital marketing is more cost effective, as there is less wastage.

Digital marketing is content marketing

We hear terms like content marketing, story telling, growth hacking, inbound marketing etc, and they are all simply a different way to say digital marketing. Digital marketing is indeed about creating ongoing evergreen content to engage with your audience, often content that solve some problems in their lives, may it be getting better sleep, or how to take picture of your pets. After all, search is the first action that people take when they are looking for a solution to a problem, so you want to be there in the search result with relevant content if you want to reach them.

As the first in a series of newsletter on digital marketing, I’ve touched on a broad set topics as I try to remind you of the necessary mindset shifts to properly embrace digital marketing. I will address big topics such as persona & segmentation, buyer’s journey, or content marketing in upcoming newsletters, so stay tuned.