Strategies to Promote Your Brand & Skyrocket Sales
Whether you’re experiencing a laid-back summer or you’ve managed to get ahead on your marketing plans, it’s never too late to work on your promotional campaigns. I recommend running at least one extended campaign (5-7 days) each month on the social media platforms where you’re active. Ideally, this should be supported by an email marketing campaign. But where do you start, and how do you plan it? Let me walk you through the process.
Plan for What’s Ahead & What’s Relevant
Not every holiday or season will be relevant to your brand, so you won’t create a campaign for each one. However, you can approach marketing campaigns in two ways. First, to support periods when sales are strong and give them an extra boost. Second, to support periods when sales are slow and squeeze in additional income. Some of the most common holidays and annual campaigns include:
- Mother’s Day
- Easter
- Summer holidays
- Halloween
- Back-to-school
- Christmas
- New Year
- Your business anniversary
Consider Your Marketing Channels
Where will your brand appear to drive interest and conversions? Think about the social media platforms you use regularly, email marketing, and your e-commerce website where you can display banners with promo codes. Each channel should be mapped out in your content plan, ensuring alignment. For example, if you post a discount code on social media, share it with your mailing list as well.
Create a SMART Goal
It’s easy to say you’ll sell 1,000 products from your website, but how will you achieve it? Create a SMART goal—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Ensure your goal is realistic in terms of producing and launching the campaigns, as well as fulfilling your promise (e.g., producing the product and shipping it).
Think about the Hook
What will motivate people to buy? A special discounted price? Free shipping? Something they saw an influencer or a creator use? Consider why people should buy now rather than at other times of the year.
Create Ahead
When you start creating your campaign, choose the one that’s coming up first.
- Make an Outline: Plan the social media posts you will publish, the newsletters you will send, and any changes you need to make on the website.
- Write the Copy: Draft the text for all your posts, emails, and website updates.
- Create Designs: Design the visuals for your campaign, including social media graphics, email templates, and website banners.
- Save as Drafts: Save all your content as drafts to review and refine later.
- Review and Schedule: Review everything carefully, then schedule your content to be published in a timely manner before the campaign launch.
Learn from Every Launch
Every marketing campaign aims to achieve one goal: making more conversions (sales).
At the end of each campaign, measure the following:
- Reach/Open Rate: Track how many unique users saw your posts or opened your newsletters. This is important because you need a relatively high reach on social media and a good open rate for newsletters to start selling.
- Click Rate: Measure how many users clicked on the links provided in a social media post or a newsletter. This metric helps you understand the percentage of users who were interested in your offer and clicked to learn more about the product.
- Conversion Rate: Calculate the percentage of users who clicked on the product link and purchased the product. The typical conversion rate ranges from 1% to 5%.
With each campaign, aim to improve your rates to increase its success.
How to Improve the Rates
Use the 4Cs of marketing as a guideline:
- Customer: Did the product, campaign, and messaging resonate with your customers?
- Cost: Was the pricing right? Did they expect a bigger discount, or was it too small?
- Convenience: How else could you support your customers in the purchase? Offer free shipping, send them personalised emails, or schedule calls to answer their questions.
- Communication: Was the messaging interesting and relevant to your audience? How could it be improved?
I hope this gives you a good idea of how to outline, plan, create, publish, and analyse your campaign! If you need further help, don’t hesitate to reach out or book your Content Strategy In A Day with me.