Making it Happen: Practical Tips to Make the Plan Work

Many of us have plans to open a business, introduce a new product, or offer a unique service. There’s a lot of anticipation at the start; many excitedly begin, but sadly, it often ends with just a verbal plan. How can we retain the enthusiasm and drive to proceed? Focusing on execution and transforming plans into reality has become the most challenging part.

Regardless of what stage you are at with your plan, make sure you catch up and join the ride by following these steps.

Initiate a discussion – reach out to friends and colleagues who might be interested or have experience related to your plan. Screen those who are willing to work with you and be a part of the development.

Brainstorm with the Team – Build your small team and devote time to gather everyone’s ideas.

Accept all possibilities – There is no right or wrong, no passing of judgment, just a free flow of ideas on how to build the business.

Listen actively – Share your thoughts and listen more to what others are saying; discern the essence of each one’s point of view. Ask questions and pay attention to answers.

Checklist of what’s attainable – List all the ideas and then have a realistic view of what’s possible and what’s not.

Review competitors – Find out if there are existing companies running a similar business. The intention is not to copy but to gauge success, see required improvements, and learn common industry practices.

Set the goals – Identify from the checklist what is really SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely).

Create a timeline – Follow a schedule so the project is not drifting in the dark. It may not be fair to expect drastic results in four months, or it may be too long to see conversions in one year given the efforts that came with it.

Recruit and assign the owners – Find the right people. Remember that someone has to take responsibility for each group of tasks and be accountable for the success or failure of every step. There is no reason for a blame game when everyone knows the exact mandate.

Create a written plan – Translate all the words into a written agreement so all the efforts are laid out with actionable steps.

Start implementing – Now is the time to execute the plan and make it work. Don’t stop at hiccups.

Monitor each step – See what activity contributes to the success of the plan and which one sets it back. The idea here is not to be disheartened by the weakness or even failure of a specific task but to realize what needs to improve.

Tweak what’s needed – Revise what’s not working and apply changes with the intention of enhancing the process.

Always remember why you started. Your goal is the beacon that guides you through challenges and drawbacks. Visualize your success and let it drive your actions every day. Break down your ultimate goal into smaller, manageable milestones to celebrate progress along the way.

Consistency is key. Follow your plan diligently, but also be flexible enough to adapt when necessary. Regularly review your progress and make adjustments to stay on track. Persistence and adaptability are essential for overcoming obstacles and achieving your goals.

Metrics That Matter to Your Online Marketing Campaigns

How do you gauge if you a have successful website or social media campaign? You are consistently doing a daily post and updating your website regularly but how do you measure success? How will you know if your online marketing strategy is on the right track? Pay attention to your consultant’s updates on task status, but don’t stop there. Ask questions, seek to fully understand, and delve into the crucial data.

Start with a goal and strategy in mind. What do you aim to achieve and how will you make it happen on a day-to-day basis? Lay down the metrics that will define your efforts.

Take a moment to identify your Key Performance Indicator (KPI) so you don’t get lost in limbo with your digital marketing efforts. KPI is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a business is achieving its objectives. It is used to evaluate success at reaching targets.

Perhaps increase in the following areas for your social media stats:

• Number of fans/followers
• Number of impressions and reach
• Engagement rate/number of shares, reactions, and comments
• Click-Through Rate (CTR)
• Number of social media inquiries
• Number of clicks sent to the website (c/o Google Analytics)

Facebook has a “focused with your objective” paid advertising capability and good to run it with proper targeting (age bracket, locations, interest, demographics, etc.) to align with your set goals (brand awareness, event attendance, foot traffic, send message).

Take advantage of the “send message” feature when posting on Facebook, this has an opportunity to give you a lot of hits if properly implemented. If one of your goals is to get social media inquiries via messenger then boosting this post has a good possibility to deliver a result. Understand the insights it generates and improve from there.

While your website is a major gateway for conversations and conversions, its creation should align with your overall goals. Your website needs to generate quality leads through your contact forms and sales page.

Take a look at these factors:

• Monthly site visitors
• Average session duration
• Bounce rate – the percentage of visitors who navigate away after viewing single page.
• Traffic source – find out where you get the traffic (Google, social media, referrals, direct, etc.)
• Behavior – learn how visitors navigate through the site (what are the pages visited the most?)
• Number of relevant inquiries
• Number of people who subscribed to the form

You can monitor all these items and even add more reports to study depending on your set criteria via Google Analytics or gather auto-generated insight from your Content Management Software like Wix. Google Analytics is a free platform and generates site activities to help marketers improve their website.

This may sound like jargon at first, but you’ll definitely get used to it as you learn from your actual data and improve your strategy backed by insights. The initiative has the potential to enhance results.

If you have any questions about evaluating and improving your metrics, and you have the desire to learn along the way, feel free to send me an email.

Digital Marketing and Other Company Departments: How Are They Connected?

Digital Marketing has to work hand-in-hand with other departments of the company. It cannot achieve full success without a good partnership with other Teams. Working together is vital to make sure that all efforts are being maximized. How is one connected to the other?

Accounting – The quick approval of payment and invoice processing is important. Some campaigns are delayed because it takes a while to identify what credit card to use or procrastinate to set-up the advertising account. Some consumed longer time to settle the Facebook boost or Google PPC billing. Sadly, there are even those who do not respect invoice dues and delay the payment to digital marketing consultants, website developers, and even to influencers thus bruising a good business relationship.

Sales – When a Facebook send message boost or a website PPC campaign manage to convert into actual inquiries, the sales team has to mobilize and make sure that each valid correspondence by a possible client is properly addressed. The sales people must also be willing to adjust their monitoring practice following the online marketing metrics—identify sales across channels (website via google analytics, social via FB insights, influencers via utm tracking, among others). For a moment, this task may appear daunting because of the perceived additional work and technicalities but the long-term result will validate the entire effort.

You can get 50 to 150 inquiries for a Php5,000 to Php10,000 worth of Facebook ads but if sales department refuse to monitor the quality of leads and the conversion value then we cannot completely say that the goal is reached.

Customer Service Relations – We all know that sales is not the end of our relationship with customers. Upsell, repurchase, and getting their referrals are vital and we can only achieve these if they are happy. Let’s deliver what we promised and perhaps even exceed the expectations. Naturally connect with the clients and don’t abandon them after sales. Word-of-mouth still works and add a push from digital marketing efforts to make the impact exponential.

Feedbacks from customers, regardless if it is good or bad, must be valued and addressed. Complaints must be fixed in an amiable manner. Frequent questions can be converted to some forms of content. If several customers are asking for a specific question, like where to purchase the product, social media messaging can include posts related to it by providing contents about store details and buying process.

Other Types of Marketing – Marketing is a vast scope and digital is just category under it.  Contents on mainstream (TVC, radio, print), out-of-home (like billboards and wobblers) and below-the-line (such as events and live shows) must be integrated into a single voice and tone. This way we maintain one brand feel whether the touchpoints come from a TV commercial, YouTube ad, or from an underpass banner. It is important that we don’t alienate the buyers about our brand wherever they see us.

Digital Marketing is best in coordination with other departments; each one must be willing to join, initiate to learn, do their part to connect, and be of purpose.

What Hinders the Success of a Digital Marketing Team?

Digital marketing plan is like a blueprint of your online campaign. It is created so the team can maintain direction, know each other’s role, and keep the goal. It includes a timeline so we know if we are on track and if the identified activities are implemented properly. When things get a little off, you can always go back to the plan and direct it back to the right path.

Reality: No matter how smooth we aim for it to go, there will surely be drawbacks; at most time it is fixable especially if you are working with a Team eager to troubleshoot and repair without a fuzz.  (Thankful that I mostly work with a supportive batch!) But we cannot avoid a scenario that can signal real trouble! Major commotion in a project does not only come from software glitch or malfunctioning platform… it is rather the behavior of the people we are working with that can cause a real burnout. Here are some signs that a plan would likely not succeed unless each one sorts the issue as soon as possible.

• Indecisiveness – Cannot keep an eye on one objective and changing directions weekly, even daily. No focus.

The company might have too many overall goals but the Team must identify what to prioritize under the digital marketing scope and given the budget. If you are a new company, awareness must be the main step. Pin the most important and realistic approach. It is not right to build a campaign as you please or instantly imitate what the competitors are doing. All the efforts should be anchored by what you aim to achieve along with proper metrics.

Quick fix: Stick to the plan and don’t be swayed easily.

• Not communicating – Making abrupt changes without advising the team.

Let’s not forget that we are a “team”, regardless of size. Everyone has to move in sync with the known plan and adjustments must be made in alignment with those involved. It is not ideal to alter the content of your homepage without signaling your Web and SEO Team. They made codes and onpage optimization that can affect, worse omit, the company’s SEO approach.

Quick fix: Reach out and be open to the Team. Discuss new ideas without hesitations.

• Not listening – sometimes you wonder why the owner hired a digital marketing team if he will apply his own process and deviate from the plan he took part to create. Trust the expertise of each team member. Listen to their recommendations. Ask questions. Share your thoughts.

Quick fix: Listen to expert.

• Not telling the truth – lay down the cards and let the team know the real standing of the company so everyone can function accordingly.

If you are launching an app and you are aware of the glitch, then tell it to the team. Don’t go around the bush and make sure to present the real hurdles  so they would know how to tackle the situation. If you aim to immediately release the next version in three months then the team must know the schedule.

Quick fix: No sugar coating.

• Rushing – not following the timeline. Digital marketing is not magic, you have to work and wait and analyze and tweak the strategy and obviously, it can’t be done in a snap. You have given the list of keywords last week and you wish to rank today, wake up.

Quick fix: Respect the timeline.

Another red signal— those procrastinating the tasks and functioning in pessimistic mood. The quick fix is to do it according to timeline and maintain positive attitude. If you don’t get “send message” to your Facebook campaign, no need to be harsh. Review the targeting and creative strategy, adjust according to the data gathered.

We cannot be in control of algorithm changes, privacy restrictions affecting results of reporting, or even faulty dashboard update but we can always manage on how we deal with the challenges on and off line. Make real goals. Keep the cool. Stay committed. Move on. Learn. Work happy.

Digital Marketing and Your Business

What validates the real success of a digital marketing campaign? Your online marketing consultant gave you an update that your top keywords are now on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) position #1 and #2 and that your Facebook advertisement got 30 messages for a small budget of Php1000. This is good news and your Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is achieved!

Yes, that phase of work is well done but that’s not the end of the task; you need to align these milestones to your business goals.

Being number #1 on SERP means a lot for your SEO team! Months of optimizing your website and sifting through the net for quality backlinks have paid off!  Google and other search engines crawled your page and found it relevant to be ranked as #1 among hundred of sites vying for the same keywords. This will result to more organic visits and you can see the data as it happens in real-time for free through Google Analytics. More people will go to you—check your contents, read your company information, and take action (call, request a demo, subscribe to your newsletter, and/or send a message). You should have some promising leads!

What if you have more visits but got higher bounce rate (it is the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave without going to other pages)? Your Digital Marketing team can say we are #1 on SERP but what you must ask next is, how does it improve our business?

If you are #1 on SERP with keywords not being used by your target audience and if you are getting a lot of visits but no one is doing your desired action then you are not maximizing the effort.

Same goes to your Facebook campaign. Receiving an increase number of “quality” messages must be your advertising goal. What is 30 inquiries if you did not convert or if they are only spammy? You should drive more leads then translate it to higher sales and not more messages with no conversion.

Online marketing and sales department must work hand-in-hand to reach the business goals. It is like a choreographed dance and every step must be synced with each other.

How do you plan to execute your online marketing campaign? What signals its effectivity in relation to your company’s target? Let’s talk.