Creativity and strategy work hand-in-hand. If campaigns are solely strategic, they have a tendency to be unoriginal. Purely creative campaigns can lack direction or may not connect with the target market. Combining the logical with the creative can result in an instinctual and compelling campaign that your customers will love to engage with. But you have to know how to begin:

Strategy

1.     The End

All the best strategies are created from the desired end result. Yes, you want potential customers to buy your product or service, but what more specifically?

• Do you want customers to use your site as an authority in your industry?
• Do you want to communicate the values of your company as a selling point?
• Do you want to build brand awareness?

The more specific your end goal is, the more specific and targeted your message will be.

When you communicate this end goal to your creative department, they can mold the campaign around this central goal, making the call to action more natural and intuitive for the user. Speaking of which…

2.     Users

We’re not talking Tron (though we could, for hours!), and we’re not talking Ben Affleck’s ex in The Town. We speak, of course, of the customer on the other end of the screen. He is not a search engine, not an idiot, but is a person that is searching for value. But that’s not the extent of his depth.

• Use Facebook Graph Search to discover your customers’ interests, median age, favorite TV shows, and other creepy yet handy info. You may even stumble upon the hidden gem: Random affiliations (the seemingly out-of-nowhere interests that your audience has in common, like architects who love the Riddick movie series).
• Go to Reddit or a popular online forum for your industry and check out the conversations potential customers have. What questions are they asking? What tone of voice and vocabulary are trusted users writing in?

Use this info along with keyword reports from your friendly SEO and onsite behavior from your team Analyst to determine common behavior and demographics. Where are your customers coming from? Is your search traffic coming from branded or non-branded search? Once they’re on your site, how long do they stay there?

Once you know the path you want your users to take and all the creepy details on what your audience engages with and how they engage with it, you can start getting creative.

Imagination

1.     Role Play

Here’s where the creativity juices start flowing. You know your audience well, perhaps even too well. Put yourself in their shoes and see the world through their eyes. What are you looking for? What are your time/money restraints? What entertains you? Make like Daniel Day Lewis and become consumed by your role. Create a lexicon of language they use and pay attention to what they engage with.

Don’t limit yourself by what you’ve done in the past: if you have only done paid search, and your audience loves a certain online magazine, branch out and be seen where your audience spends time. Just make sure every campaign you create is applicable to the audience and why they’re on that publication’s site.

2.     Build the set

Now that you are thinking like your audience, create a campaign custom-built for them. If you were building a stage for your audience, what would it look like? Minimalist, clean and white or rustic and cozy with wood paneling? Take these ideas and turn them into a campaign structure that works for your audience.

Is your audience more likely to click on a banner ad, open and engage with an email, or read and share an infographic? Create the structure for your campaign around user behavior by thinking how they think.

3.     Break a leg

Here’s the truly fun and creative part: bringing it all together. You know your role, you have your stage set, and now you get to create an experience that’s custom built and written just for your audience.

• Use the lexicon to write in their language, use colors and design elements you already know they like, and push the limits. Go a bit outside your comfort zone, be imaginative, and surprise them. Use any random affiliations you found, dive deeper into the voice than others dare.

• Avoid doing what everyone else is doing. After all the research and role playing you’ve done, you’re bound to see what the other campaigns are missing. Don’t be afraid to put a bit of yourself into your campaigns; every good actor combines character research with personal emotion.

• Delve deeper than others dare. When describing something, include a few seemingly miniscule details that really place your audience in the moment: What are the scents, tastes, or sensations you’re feeling? The more detail you provide, the more connection your potential customers feel to your blog post/product description/whatever copy you’re writing.

So there you have it. The ultimate marketing campaign guide in 1000 words or less: Start with strategy, add some imaginative role playing, and push the boundaries. You have the ability to create a truly compelling experience that connects and empathizes with your customer, and now you have a game plan. Go get ‘em!

The post Create Valuable Marketing Campaigns: Start with Strategy, Build with Imagination appeared first on Portent.

So this is my suggestion to all you marketers and bloggers out there: Let’s make every blog post a new episode of your own written TV show. Stop using your blog as an SEO tactic, and start making it a studio for your brand. If someone lands on a blog post from SERPS, great! When they are done with that blog post and look around the blog, the other posts should be similar enough for the reader to immediately get a feel for your voice and your purpose.

The layout of each post should be like an episode of a show, written with a problem to overcome, some entertainment, and heck, maybe even some character development. People will come back to that, I promise you. We’re pretty loyal to our TV shows. Make them come back to your blog again and again, first for the entertainment, then for the information, and lastly for your brand.

How do you make your blog into a written sitcom? That’s easy. You need a certain blend of ingredients that is specific to your brand. The main ingredients to any great television show are interesting characters, a problem, and a solution. The rest falls into place.

Cast of characters

Your characters should mirror both your target market and your brand. So if you sell high-end car parts for luxury and super sport cars, you want a mechanic and a car collector. The car collector is quirky, say he has an unhealthy obsession with Elon Musk and Tony Stark, and he’s a thrill seeker. He races his Ferrari on the track and takes his Lamborghini out on the Autobahn.

The mechanic is more obsessive over the collector’s cars, and wants to baby them. It annoys him when the collector gets a scratch on the Ferrari’s paint or spills a few drops of espresso in his Lamborghini. The two men are old friends and rely on each other to make their lives better.

These two characters are relatable to the target market and also to the brand. They’re human and unique enough to engage readers.

But your characters don’t have to be fake. There are plenty of great characters on shows like Top Gear, Autocar and Jay Leno’s Garage. Reel in someone from your company who can truly speak to your target market, and give them (almost) free reign.

Problems and Solutions

Every TV show has a unique problem to solve in every episode, whether it’s the A-Team building a tank out of a forklift in a lumberyard or a mechanic figuring out what that noise is when the collector downshifts his Ferrari. The problems and solutions in your blog are the key to users finding your content online. Answer common questions that your target market may have.

The key here is to keep from being too sales-y. Every blog post should not point to your products. It should offer a solution or resolution to a question, without getting too repetitive. Think Car Talk. All Click and Clack do on their show is answer questions about cars. But the questions are so incredibly varied, and the hosts are so relatable and entertaining, that I could listen to that show for hours on end.

Let your problems and solutions vary widely while your characters stay true to their quirkiness and spunk, and you’ll have a blog that entertains enough for people to come back again and again. Entertainment builds loyalty, and when it comes to your blog, loyalty really pays off.

So remember – build a blog that entertains, teaches, and that connects with your audience. After all, the more a customer relates to your content and feels like you’re speaking to them, the more likely they are to bookmark that blog and keep coming back to it. Speak to their passions and much-needed solutions, and the loyal customers will follow. Ready? …Action!

The post Blog Strategy: Think Inside the TV appeared first on Portent.

Why bother with email? (Reasons to take the leap)

People sign up for emails because they want the inside scoop. They want to be the first to know about a new product or service, a breaking news story in your industry, or some tidbit of culture that they’ll relate to.

That means you’re talking directly to a specific group of people who actually WANT to hear from you. But you have to send emails that are interesting, compelling, and/or useful, or they’ll drop from your list like ice cream from a toddler’s cone.

Research your audience (Cyberstalking is sometimes okay)

How well you get to know your audience will determine how many of your emails get opened and how long your customers stay on your list.

Start with the basic raw data you have from the customer and from your own research. You know more than you think. Anything your customer does online can be related to email (almost).

For instance, SEO: Use searched keywords, phrases and questions to determine your next newsletter content. Take a look at which products are searched for during each month, and build seasonal email specials around your findings. And if your customers are searching for a term or product, send it directly to their inboxes. Learn more about the integration between SEO and email here.

Scheduling matters. Alter your sending time to suit the specific schedule your audience lives by. If your audience is new moms, they will probably check their email in the early morning (on their phone before the kids get up), or from about 12-3 (on the computer during nap time). Purchase time is usually during the afternoon lull.

Pro tip: Research yourself as a consumer. Pay attention to the emails you receive from companies, which you like, which you don’t, and why. Start a folder of cool emails and think about what they have in common. Are the designs cool with little copy, or do they look more like traditional newsletters? Yes, it’s nerdy. Do it.

Now that you know what your audience wants, where do you begin? Let’s build an email list.

Strategy: Building/optimizing a list (Your little black book)

What is the ultimate goal of your email campaign? Let’s say you want people to buy your Puppy-hugger-while-you’re-away-so-he-won’t-be-lonely-inator. Great. So a purchase is your ultimate goal, with an interim goal of expanding your loyal customer base.

Building your list depends on the type of campaign you want to run.

New campaigns (The new girl)

If you’re looking for new customers, try an (onsite, banner or PPC) ad campaign and then collect the customer’s email address when they purchase the product. Since they’re new customers, just send a few emails to whet their appetite.

Pro tip: Sending a limited amount of emails at scheduled intervals is called an email drip campaign. Read more details about email drip campaigns here.

If you want to retain those customers and build brand loyalty, an ongoing email campaign is best. Even if your customers don’t open your emails, they see your company’s name in their inbox on a regular basis, which will pay off when they’re looking for a puppy-hugger.

But how do you get people to sign up for emails before they buy your product?

• An email signup box needs to be either in the header or footer of every page on your site. Period. Don’t make customers search for your email campaign.
• Place an email signup box at the bottom of each blog post and at the bottom of your About Us page. Check out great tips on building an email list here.

Existing campaigns (The girl next door)

If you’re building off a current campaign, you still need to do your research. The good news is that you have lots of data. Look at how the current email list was built, what worked, what didn’t, and where you want to go from here. Look at what emails caused unsubscribes and high bounce rates. Look at day and time of day reporting, and create your strategy based on what works best for your audience.

Is your current campaign speaking directly to your target market? What does the audience want to know about? Look at Google Analytics and your Email Service Provider reports. You can learn a lot about where these users went on the site, what their activity was for each email, etc. Take your time and soak up the reporting. The girl next door is telling you a lot about what she wants in a relationship, you just have to interpret it all. Read more about this under “Testing” below.

Design (Choosing your duds)

All emails should be responsive, without exception. How many emails have you received on your phone that you couldn’t read or could read only parts of? Create and save templates (Photoshop and HTML) that are mobile-friendly so they will be readable for your subscribers who open them on their mobile phones (which is about 50%).

NOTE: There is not an email template that has been created yet that works with 100% of all smartphones or tablets. There are 10-15% of smartphone users who have unique applications that we can’t get a mobile friendly newsletter to work with.

But even if your date likes the way you look, you still need to keep her attention. Compel your audience! Interactive content, videos, or useful tools will keep them coming back again and again. The more interactive the email, the more engaged your reader will be.

Content (Remember: they’re just not that into you)

When writing content, assume your audience is dating other people. You want to be mysterious yet engaging. Remember, email is your first date. Be honest and positive, and leave them wanting more.

Pro tip: Size counts! In general, shorter subject lines are better. In Obama’s online campaign, one of their most popular emails had the subject line of three letters: “Hey.”

• Subject lines. The first step is to get people to open your emails. Duh. The subject line has to speak directly to your audience and be appealing enough to engage them. 33% of email recipients open email based on subject line alone. Learn more email marketing stats here.
• Be scan-able. Create content that gets to the point quickly and is also entertaining. I know you’re not reading this entire post from beginning to end, and you might not even if you were paid to. And that’s okay.
  Some readers might be reading your emails just to be polite (ridiculous but true). Make your point early and often enough for a reader to get the point by scanning, but interesting enough for them to be engaged the whole way through.
• Engage backwards. Think about what your end goal for each email is, and work backwards from there. Let’s say it’s Christmas time and you want to share that epic video of kids getting puppies for Christmas. Start writing with the end result (puppy Christmas video) in mind, and share it with your subscribers as if they were your friends. Let the call to action determine the tone, design, etc.

Legal stuff (Don’t be a creep)

A strong email list is full of people who WANT to be there. Make email sign-up options obvious so that you only get people who are actually interested in your company. 1,000,000 subscribers who were tricked into being on your list will not give you the ROI that 1,000 people who are psyched about your brand will.

Pro tip: Don’t buy email lists! Build your lists organically. Buying lists is a great way to get tagged as spam.

Here’s how to make sure you have a good, legal list:

• One way to ensure quality leads is the double opt-in. When someone signs up, send them a “please confirm your address” email. When they click through that email, you know you have someone who really wants to be on your list.
• Include an optional unsubscribe link on every email. Don’t hide it in tiny text or a giant footer paragraph. Put it plainly in the footer. If someone doesn’t want to be on your list, allow them to leave. It only makes your list stronger.
• Include the physical address of your company in the footer of every email. It confirms your company’s legitimacy, and can help keep you out of the spam folders.

For more tips on keeping it legal, check out this article.

Spam filters (Her overprotective father)

You always know a good date from a bad date: A good one leaves you wanting more, a bad one tells you about past relationships right off the bat. It’s the same with email. If you’re using all caps or filling your emails with keywords and sales language, you might get thrown in the spam folder.

If you don’t know why you’re being tagged, send some emails to the meanest techy friend you know. They’ll tell you what to improve in your campaign and a few more tips on exactly what you’re doing wrong.

For more tips on avoiding spam filters, read this.

Testing (It’s not you, it’s me.)

Email campaigns are successful when they are optimized for user behavior. They allow you to change the subject line, design layout and elements, call to action, tone of copy, interactive aspects, the means of acquiring emails, time or day emails are sent; all to give readers exactly what they want.

The best way to get to know your audience is to review how they reacted to emails over time. Let’s send two emails to the same Puppy-hugger-while-you’re-away-so-he-won’t-be-lonely-inator list. The first will be on Sparky’s depression story with a link to your blog, and the next will be a special discount email. Pay attention to who interacts with each email, and start sending them emails that are more specific to their interests.

But tests don’t have to be that obvious. Test any and every aspect of the campaign (subject line, UX, CTA, button color, etc.). Use the results of each test to optimize your campaign and/or create multiple email lists based on user behavior.

Pro tip: Think about who your audience is and why they’re signing up. Did they buy something? What did they buy? Was it through a discount offer or was it the latest release? There should be multiple lists per specific audience.

You’ll never get it perfect simply because your audience is always changing. But every test will improve your understanding of your audience and optimize your email list, improving your ROI.

Here’s where to get all that gorgeous information.

Reporting (Introducing her to your friends)

Email Service Providers (ESP) (Your wingman)

Learn to love your ESP. If you are new to ESPs, sign in and play around with the graphs and reports. See what you can learn. What do the subscribers respond to? What time of day, day of week, subject line length, etc. seems to work best for your audience? ESPs can show you all of that. You just need to know where to look.

Pro tip: An open email doesn’t always mean an open email. An “open” email in reporting means that the images display on the user’s screen or they interact with the content. So if a customer opens the email and doesn’t allow the images to be displayed, it won’t count as an open email. The user could just open an email, peruse the content, and close it without interaction.

Google Analytics Reporting (Your nosy roommate)

GA reporting gives different information than your ESP. Your wingman knows what happens while on the date (that’s him in the corner looking creepily at you all night), and your roommate knows what happens after the date. GA will tell you where customers go on your site after clicking through from each campaign.

Of course, the revenue and ecommerce conversion rates are our favorite results to look at, but all aspects of GA reporting are whispering secrets about your audience.

Was she really that into you? Your ESP and GA reporting will let you know, but in order to get the juicy details, you need a little help from UTMs.

UTMs! (Pizza to bribe the roommate)

When you have numerous links in the same email to the same page (i.e. logo, text link, and footer), it’s useful to know which link is being clicked through. Tracking on each and every link is essential to great reporting and the subsequent optimization.

Google’s UTM builder gives a specific URL for each button. Use this tool for each link in each email, plugging the new URL into the code of the email (usually through your ESP). Now you know which buttons resonate with your audience so you can design to their needs and preferences.

Good luck out there, email marketers, and remember: email marketing is like dating. It can be hard to find the right date, but once you do, the relationship can last a lifetime as long as you keep them engaged.

The post As Good as It Gets: What dating can teach us about email marketing. appeared first on Portent.