Buzz Building Series - Issue 11: Audience & content; How to write a Buzz Building strategy

Hi There,

Welcome to issue 11 of the buzz building series in which we discuss your audience and your content.

It's time to ensure that, now you've got all the basic insight, you're able to wrap it all up into a clear and measured buzz building strategy...

Rick says...

Audience & Demographics

From a technical / digital marketing perspective, it's important to consider your audience so that you have a clear and documented set of Demographic information so that when it comes to targeting Email Marketing, Social Media Campaigns and Blogging Outreach efforts.

Undertake the research required to understand the Primary and Secondary audiences that you are trying to reach with your content, and ultimately who it is that you want to buy from you. Document the audience attributes using variables that make sense to you and your business. Examples could include Age, Geography, Industry, Company Size etc.

Keyword Research

Understand what it is your target audience is looking for online and on Social Media. Utilise Google Tools to see which particular terms or questions are being asked, and the terms that yield the highest volume of traffic. Choose key terms relevant to you that yield lower volumes too, so that you can "own" certain key search terms.

List out the key terms and utilise these in your Search Engine Optimisation and in the writing and optimising of your Blog and Social Media content. This will ensure that you are giving your content the best chance of being found by your target audience(s).

Planning

As previously mentioned, consistency is absolutely key in any buzz building program. Create a plan that you and your team can then stick to religously. Your plan should include content topics, and the frequency that you will write and post that content. It should also include all the ways in which you will promote your content, what times and days you will do so, and also all of the tasks you need to perform to report on the results.

Don't forget to tell your friends...

 

Owen says...

In building your business generation strategy it’s important to understand where a Buzz Building programme sits and the role it will play, so that you can measure and monitor its effectiveness appropriately.

In simple terms I always see business generation as three gears or cogs, each of which performs a different function and “returns”/delivers at a different rate. For optimal effectiveness you need to use all the cogs all of the time and you need to use them for the purpose for which they’ve been designed.

It’s just using the gears to drive a car. It’s true that you could just pick 1st gear and use that to drive from London to Manchester, it is technically possible but it would be slow, noisy, expensive and probably cause all sorts of damage to your engine. So typically we don’t do that. We work our way through the all the gears and only use them at the appropriate time. When traffic allows we end up in top gear and can happily cruise along without much effort at all. So it’s the same with Marketing for businessgeneration.

I see three cogs or gears. The big one at the bottom that does all the hard work is Buzz Building. This gear keeps on slowly turning, grinding away day after day keeping you and your company “Out there” in the market, giving you presence and relevance and credibility. It’s also providing a platform for second slightly smaller cog or gear.

Buzz building costs the least but you need to do it all the time and it pays back over the long term. This is your marketing programme or account based activity where you’re focussing your marketing efforts on winning specific accounts of selling a specific offering. This gear costs more than Buzz Building and you need invest in consistent focussed areas.You can expect to see a return on your investment here in 3-6 months.

The last gear, the one you use least frequently but is the most powerful is the smallest. Top Gear and that’s lead generation. Here you can invest in short focussed bursts of activity and focus as and when you need it to keep the sales pipeline full. If you just used this gear all the time it would be highly inefficient and expensive.

If however, you’ve used buzz building and deeper account or offer activities to build the platform your top gear, lead generation just kicks in and works as and when you need it to. Lead generation activities can cost the most but if you’ve done everything else right you will need to invest less frequently in them and you will see a return in 1-3 months.

So marketing is not a campaign it is a process and it’s not magic it’s an ongoing and planned investment in supporting your sales effort. Buzz building plays a critical role in that process.

 

3 things to do today to help with your strategy creation...

Understand the tools available for Keyword Analysis
Document your target audience demographics
Create a content calendar

Don't forget, still to come in the buzz building series...

> Buzz building and the resources required to sustain it

To discuss any aspect of the buzz building series, please call us at your convenience on 0203 1372 844.

Rick & Owen