Businesses are quick to jump to creating. They skip thinking about the customer’s journey or their long-term goals for success. They create new websites, new content, and new SEO that might generate views in the short-term, but isn’t effective at building relationships or adding real value.
What you do before you actually create content can sometimes be the most important part of the entire process. Without taking the time to plan or craft the right content, your marketing strategy will fall short.
At authenticWEB, we’ve developed a proven process for achieving success every time. Our three state process empowers you to learn how to best reach your clients, define your own success, and create a plan that can be used even as technology changes.
Each stage in the process serves a purpose, and without it you wouldn’t expect to see any results. Let’s discuss the importance of all three stages, starting with Mapping the Points.
Stage 1: Map the Points
Do you ever feel really excited about a marketing project only to hate it three months later? You feel like you hire a web designer, a logo designer, or a content creator and then you are left telling them what to do to no avail. Then, after 90 days, you’re still not sure if your project is even working or going in the right direction.
If you feel this way, it’s because you aren’t 100% clear about your goals, your customer’s journey, or how to be a part of that customer’s journey.
In the first phase of our process, we will take out any ambiguity and Map the Points to success.
To achieve the utmost level of clarity, we’ll start by asking the important questions. First, we discover where you’ve been. We’ll talk about what’s worked in the past and what didn’t. Most importantly, we’ll discuss where you want to go.
It’s essential you consider what you really want your marketing to achieve. Do you want more customers? Do you want to form long-term relationships with the customers you already have? Do you want to build trust in your audience?
At the end of the day we know it’s not actually marketing you want, but success. Before you can achieve success, you have to define what success means to you. After we’ve defined success on your terms, it’s time to move on to strategy and stories.
In order to truly succeed in your marketing strategy, you must become an integral part of your customer’s story.
In our Storyboard Strategy Session, we will:
- Map out your customer’s journey
- Align your goals to your customer’s story
- Discover the perfect stories to place you in your customer’s journey
- Prioritize the creation of that content
- Decide the best platforms for delivering the right story at the right time
We will talk about the platforms that work now to deliver content to your ideal customer, from SEO to Facebook Video to Youtube. Most importantly, you will have a plan that works not just now, but years from now when the latest platform comes out.
Stage 2: Collect and Craft the Stories
After we’ve decided the most important stories to reach your goals, we will begin to Collect and Craft those stories. We will collect your customers’ stories using the latest high-definition audio methods and create videos from there. We will also arrange documentary style video shoots when possible to collect those stories.
Because of the Storyboard Strategy Session, we know where those stories will be placed in the customer’s story. Now, we will craft those stories based on our understanding of that timing. You won’t have to tell all of your stories at once. Rather, you will become the guide on your customer’s journey to success.
Because these are your stories, you will never have to worry about someone stealing your content or your business looking like your competition. Your stories position you as the top authority over your competition.
Step 3: Deliver the Stories
The Storyboard Strategy tells us where your customer is in their story. It also tells us where we want them to go next. Every piece of content moves the person along a journey, and this helps the prospective customer build trust in you as an expert.
Your prospect might not know they even need or want help. We will capture their attention with your stories in places they already frequent like Facebook and Linkedin. While traditional ads can be annoying and are easy to scroll past on a busy feed, great stories demand attention.
Sometimes, your prospect is looking for answers to a question. In this case, we will optimize those stories for search engines like Google and YouTube so you’ll be their top search result.
Your prospect by now might be aware they need the help of a business like yours. At this point, it is up to your website to deliver the stories and call your audience to action. No matter how great the story, people will need to hear your stories over and over. You can re-share your stories with your customers through emails, retargeting, and social media.
What are your goals?
Start thinking about your goals. What are quantifiable ways you can measure the success of your marketing plan? Defining your goals is the first concrete step in creating a plan that works for years to come.
Every stage in the Three Stage Process is vital to the success of your entire marketing strategy. Without one, the rest will fall apart. A Storyboard Strategy Session with authenticWEB can help you position yourself at each step of the customer journey. Are you ready to start achieving your business goals? Schedule a Storyboard Strategy Session today.