Planning Digital Marketing Campaigns and Content Strategy

November 12, 2024|Accountants, Kim's Blog, Lawyers, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy, Web Sites|

Whilst recovering from a seasonal cold, Chloe Cristine of TBD Marketing presented her latest digital marketing training workshop for PM Forum on “Planning Digital Marketing Campaigns and Content Strategy”. Also included below is a summary of a webinar on the same topic hosted by Ireland – PM Forum by Emma Burdett | LinkedIn of Digital Culture NI | All About Our Digital Marketing. Future dates of all PM Forum marketing training courses.

Posts on Chloe’s other recent digital marketing training sessions:

Analytics and Measurement for Digital Marketing – Kim Tasso November 2024

Hands on guide to SEO (digital marketing training) – Kim Tasso July 2024

Highlights of social media best practice – with Chloe Christine (kimtasso.com) April 2024

Email marketing and automation with TBD and PM Forum (kimtasso.com) March 2024

In September 2024, Optix Solutions presented create a digital marketing strategy in a professional services firm (kimtasso.com)

Context – Marketing strategy vs marketing planning

Delegates included representatives from law and accountancy firms and ranged from Digital Marketing Managers to Digital Marketing Executives. 67% considered themselves intermediate and 33% advanced in digital marketing. Chloe started by providing some context of this broad topic.

Marketing strategy is long term, setting high level objectives and concerned with decisions such as target market, competitive positioning, key strategies and overall budget.

The marketing plan focuses on the target audience(s), objectives and key results, tactics, positioning against competitors, budgets and expected ROI and how to measure success (KPIs). It outlines and organises actions to achieve the marketing objectives.

Chloe walked through a detailed campaign plan with detailed objectives such as 50% of the content achieving higher than industry standard engagement, increasing the number and percentage of people completing surveys and targets for specific social media platforms.

Objective – What do we want to achieve?
Target market – Who are we targeting?
Channels – Which channels shall we use? (e.g. social media, paid (Google) ads, PR, email marketing, events, print etc)
Tactics – How will we execute it?
Budget – How much are we willing to spend?
Timeline – When do we want to achieve our objectives?

Chloe suggested starting at the desired outcome (e.g the number of attendees at an event) and working back to identify through the funnel to calculate how many would need to visit, engage, download, sign up etc to achieve that level with the data-driven conversion rates across different channels observed in the past. She mentioned that it was possible to create an audience in Google Analytics from people who have visited certain web site content.

A poll revealed that the biggest challenges in digital marketing campaigns were: 50% creating engaging content, 25% measuring ROI and 25% budget constraints. This was followed with a lively discussion about some common problems such as:

a lack of clear goals from lawyers/accountants
too much complex and technical information in the content
overly formal style
lack of time to consider the follow up lead nurturing activities
old web sites (which made tracking difficult).

Another common issue was having to provide campaign support to numerous ad-hoc requests from so many different fee-earners and teams (this goes back to the need for a strong marketing strategy which focuses on key priorities).

Some educate fee-earners using data from past campaigns and then demonstrate what can be achieved with optimised ‘best practice’ campaigns on a step-by-step basis. Some delegates had found templates useful to request campaign aims, targets and other information before proceeding. Streamlining processes across different service teams was also a challenge.

Chloe mentioned third party tools (e.g. SwipePages) to help create and design landing pages (which outperform main web pages) which are sometimes on separate sub-domains. The user experience is often improved as a result.

Chloe used an environmental law campaign example to show how campaign objectives could be broken down for different elements during a campaign. Delegates worked in break out groups to reflect on possible campaign objectives for corporate scenarios. Popular activities included: blog series, video interviews, LinkedIn carousels, boosted posts, emailing to prospect lists, working with the press team and speaking at events. Templates to create suitable posts were suggested as well as data to show that personal profiles achieved higher reach and engagement than company profiles.

Analysing data for past blogs could also help fee-earners learn what content and channels were most effective. Content that was not generating engagement could then be culled from the web site. Chloe shared some interesting insights in calculating the cost of producing blog content and then calculating the cost per view. Others used QR codes to obtain statistics on how many people accessed different types of content.

Audience targeting and client journeys

Various tools (e.g. Google Trends and MarketLine) were explored to help search trends and insights as well as industry statistics and reports to inform content strategy. SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics could also be used to obtain feedback about user attributes, interests and preferences (Chloe walked through an example for commercial law).

Tools for competitor analysis included: Facebook Ad Library, Ads Transparency Centre, Similarweb, SEMrush and Spyfu. AI (e.g. Telescope.ai) could also be used to generate lists of potential leads and create buyer personas.

Chloe challenged the myth of platform-specific audiences sharing data that most audiences used multiple platforms ( e.g. 51% of LinkedIn users also use Facebook, 85% adults use multiple platforms). Therefore, there was audience overlap between platforms. She shared the latest audience statistics on: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter and YouTube.

Different content strategies were explored: case studies, testimonials, white papers, thought leadership articles, sponsored content, InMail, videos, infographics, search ads, display ads and remarketing.

Google Search Ads are different to advertisements on other platforms as they target those who are actively searching for content. She mentioned a recent campaign where they learned it was costing just £25 per enquiry and had now increased budgets. There are Partner sites where (banner) ads can appear through Google (similarly with Meta Pixel or Facebook Pixel).

She recommended A/B testing to assess which platforms and content types worked best for your audience(s).

Retargeting or remarketing is where you reach users on another platform from where they first engaged with your content. Remarketing can increase conversion rates by 70% and users are three times more likely to click on a retargeted ad than a new ad. Yet remarketing is underused although it was noted that you need around 1,000 visitors within the last 30 days for this to be effective. Chloe shared an example to create Google matched lists where 1,500 email contacts were uploaded to create an audience and match rates vary around 60%. Repeat rates indicates how many times people see the ad – don’t want to exceed 3 or 4. Chloe reminded us that you need to implement Tracking Pixels a few weeks before such a campaign.

Understanding the client journey

A poll revealed that 50% of the delegates understood their client journey moderately well and 50% somewhat.

We considered the various stages of the marketing funnel and which channels and content was best to use at each considering how client intent varies across stages:

Awareness – PR, social media advertising, display advertising, Youtube advertising
Interest – Paid search marketing, targeted content marketing (email, webinars)
Decision – Email, newsletter sign ups, social proof (testimonials)
Action – Website lead forms, free consultations, live chat, remarketing ads across social media

There was a break matching advertising options to each stage of the funnel.

Marketing Channels

A poll revealed that the most used platforms were 50% blogs and web site content and 50% LinkedIn adverts. 67% delegates were keen to learn more about LinkedIn ads and 33% on X/Twitter ads. There was lively discussion about how X/Twitter use had changed although its importance for social network ranking was noted (automated cross-posting through tools such as Hootsuite were a possible solution).

Chloe provided a comprehensive document covering statistics and advice on content types across different platforms for the legal and consulting sectors. This could be used for benchmarking and baselines.

Key advice for professional services included:

Focus on video content
Leverage LinkedIn for professional engagement
Use Facebook and Instagram for broader reach
Use Twitter/X for real time engagement
Optimise content for each platform

How to measure and report campaign success

Chloe explained setting up conversion tracking to monitor specific actions or events that indicate user engagement and progression along the funnel. She looked at monitoring both primary and secondary conversions using reporting platforms such as Looker Studio, GA4 custom reports, Supermetrics and GA4.

She took a detailed look at different types of conversion activity to monitor through the sales funnel for employment law enquiries (Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action). There was a final discussion about CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) to improve the rate of converting visitors into clients. Ideas included form placement and the colour and size of buttons.

Campaign implementation

All delegates managed their digital marketing in house. Inhouse benefits include: control, flexibility, direct oversight, resource allocation and alignment. However, agency use could bring expertise, experience and specialist skills. Chloe finished with some comments about UTM parameters needed for measurement to filter by source, medium and content. She briefly comments on click fraud rates.

Step-By-Step digital campaign planning webinar with Digital Culture

In October there was an hour webinar hosted by Ireland – PM Forum where Raphael O’Donoghue | LinkedIn introduced Emma Burdett | LinkedIn of Digital Culture NI | All About Our Digital Marketing to over 70 participants. Here are the highlights of her presentation on “Digital campaign planning”.

What is a campaign?

Strategic activities are designed to achieve a business goal or objective – usually financially related. Integrated marketing communications in a campaign aim to move towards a specific goal supporting a brand or product/service. Or a campaign may be focused on advertising to accomplish particular objectives.

A campaign it isn’t an individual piece of activity. Emma shared examples of standalone advertisements from the drinks and airline sectors. And then considered the McDonalds “raise your arches” multi-channel campaign. This doesn’t show food at all and McDonalds is only mentioned at the end – but it achieved 1,000 Instagram posts and 5m views on TikTok where customers showed solidarity in their affinity for the brand. She also talked about the Barbie film campaign which spanned film, food, app filters, toys, shoes, sponsorship and faux Barbie boxes at cinemas.

Professional services firms focus on relationships, professionalism, trust and expertise. Key challenges include:

Convey messages of trust, availability and consistency
Intangible services need testimonials, reviews, case studies (STAR method), strong branding, thought leadership and premises photos
Trust can easily be lost from one bad experience – so you need to have a PR person (or reputation management agency) to head off any issues in advance
There’s a strong requirement for appropriate skill sets
Review resources (e.g. web site) regularly and keep them up to date
Advocacy can be difficult – so be timely with surveys and review requests and use them

How to plan a campaign – use SOSTAC®

Emma then ran through the SOSTAC marketing planning framework

Situation analysis

External macro-environment – conduct a PESTLE analysis Marketing basics – Marketing audits with onions and pestles (kimtasso.com)
External micro-environment – Review clients, competitors and intermediaries
- Who are they, where are they, the trends?
- What are competitors doing and is it working?
Customer journey mapping through awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty and advocacy
Internal marketing audit to review:
- SEO performance
- Social content and performance
- Marketing materials
- Email marketing
- Thought leadership
- Advertorials
- Branding
- User journeys and client experience
- Past campaigns
SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)

Objectives

Alignment with business and marketing objectives
What do you want to achieve with overall campaign?
What objectives are there for different channels?
Set KPIs
Ensure all goals are SMART for example:
- Increase social media following by 20% in next three months
- Obtain five new leads in March

Strategy

Understanding your client (e.g. demographics, channels, needs, wants, pains, goals – perhaps build personas)
Understanding your organisation – Who are you and what do you do different as an organisation, How do you differentiate yourself? Is this clear to the client? Have you demonstrated your USPs?
Impact of current trends such as digital transformation, content marketing and personalisation, thought leadership, social media engagement, client experience and feedback, video marketing, sustainability and CSR
Segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP)
- Who are you targeting? Who are you as a brand? What’s your competitive advantage? What tone and language to use?
Channel selection – Where are our target customers? Which channels do they prefer? When and how and why do they use those channels?
The order of work (e.g. credibility before visibility) into a project plan
Resources required (e.g. people, budget, skillset, time, tools)

And be well placed to seize opportunities as they arise (e.g. market developments, news items)

Tactics and Action

This section will be detailed and might include:

Plans, dates and times
Resource and responsibility allocation (project management and workflow organisation)
Social media plan and email scheduler
Advertisement set up
Agency alignment
Reporting
Internal communication

She looked at the RACE diagram (Reach, Act, Convert, Engage). And the differences in reach between paid, owned, earned and experience.

And reminded us of the importance of the User Experience (UX) and journey through channels to the web site where there were challenges with quality landing pages, on brand imagery, easy to see CTAs, FAQ sections and contact details

Control

This concerns measurement and reporting and spanned analytics against objectives and KPIs

She also mentioned issues such as mystery shopping, lead tracking and nurturing, user surveys and constant reviews of data to ensure continuous improvement.

She finished with comments about the channels and tools she’s enjoying including: Spotify ads, ChatGPT (Pro), Canva, Capcut, Podcasting, YouTube shorts, Trello/Jira, Google sheets and email (yes, really). She offered her campaign planner (contact emma@digitalcultureni.com)

PM Forum members can watch the video on the Skills Development Platform Digital Campaign Planning – A Step By Step Guide (pmint.co.uk)