Digital marketing has revolutionised the way small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) do marketing. It elevated them to new levels of potential to compete with big brands that was not possible before digital marketing. There are many channels and aspects related to digital marketing. That’s why we understand the confusion and frustration that many SMEs face when they try to unravel the digital marketing world. In this article, we will tackle different aspects of a digital marketing strategy by simplifying it into the ‘7 Cs.’ Let’s dive in and see what the first four Cs stands for and how you can utilise these digital marketing tactics to grow your local business.
Are You Looking for ‘Digital Marketing Ballymena’?
ProfileTree – Expert Digital Marketers and Brand Strategists with a Local Flavour Serving Businesses in Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland
We are a self-made, family run agency based in Belfast and Monaghan. We’ve established ourselves in the Northern Irish market since 2010. We’ve grown the team, collected awards, and helped local and international businesses with building top-notch websites. We’ve also helped hundreds of small and medium sized businesses with free digital marketing training through programmes funded by Northern Ireland’s Councils over the course of three years. Investing in building a digital marketing strategy for your business in Ballymena means making sure your new partnership is built on proven methods. Our multi-talented experts can deliver on all aspects of digital marketing from social media marketing to building fully fledged websites and creating content optimised for SEO growth.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: The Narrative of Local Businesses
Today, big companies are more threatened by small and medium businesses than other big companies. That’s because local, small companies have a bigger ability to adapt and provide a tailored customer experience. But how does this reflect on your business in Ballymena? Are you making the most of your digital marketing strategy? Do you have a strategic plan to compete on a higher level and grow your business? Digital marketing tactics can help you achieve that. Even social media platforms and search engines are encouraging local businesses with their algorithms because they realise their power and that users are more likely to successfully convert or purchase.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: The 7 Digital Marketing Cs
The seven digital marketing Cs are a framework for you to understand the pillars of digital marketing strategy. They are by no means a ‘bible’. You can add or omit from them, but it’s an easy way for someone who is not experienced in digital marketing but wants to understand how it works or where to start from. On the one hand, the 7 Cs can be used to review your web development and experience as well as a brand’s overall online presence, to ensure that marketing communications are coherent and well-managed. Furthermore, they can be leveraged to keep track of and examine the activities of competitors.
Digital Marketing Ballymena C #1: Customer
Customers have always been the center of all marketing efforts, even before digital marketing existed. However, what digital marketing added to the formula is a huge ability to customise marketing initiatives and campaigns based on the persona of every customer and where they stand from in the customer journey. Digital marketing and advertising allow you to create much more messages and direct them to different consumers way more frequently than traditional marketing. In the past, companies used to create one or two marketing campaigns throughout the year, and it was all one-size-fits-all communication.
Today, you can create much more campaigns and each one would reach a different segment of your audience. That leads us to how identifying your target audience has changed.
The old way to describe your target audience would be something like:
‘Females aged between 30 and 40. Middle to Upper middle Class. Loves to read and travel in summer.’
The new way to do put it would be much more detailed and focuses on behavioural targeting rather than demographic targeting.
‘35-year-old, professionally successful city-dwelling woman with no kids and a passion for great restaurants. High achiever. Goes to Spin class three times a week. Lives in Belfast and is the founder of her own PR firm. She owns a Volvo. She and her partner go on two international vacations a year and prefer to stay at boutique hotels. She’s a member of a wine club.
She shops from International niche clothing brands and follows Dior and Guess on all social media channels. She spends an hour a day on LinkedIn, and 30 minutes on Instagram. She uses Google to find out about local fine dining hidden gems and collect perfumes. Her pain points are lack of time and house chores. She always tries to find solutions that save time.’
You see how specific it has become? Knowing that much about your audience help you create messages that they can relate to. It helps you choose the right channel to reach out to them. It also gives you an idea of the community your brand should mingle with to promote word of mouth. The pain points and challenges help you create products and services that address real problems. That’s why you should spend time getting to know your target audience, what their life is like and how you can add value to it.
Digital Marketing Ballymena C #2: Content
You probably have heard the common marketing phrase ‘Content is king’. But even if you haven’t, if you look around, you’ll find that content is the heart and soul of digital marketing. Users are on social platforms for content, they’re on paid streaming platforms for content, they’re on Google for content, and they’re even looking into their email waiting for important content to arrive. As much as it is empowering to brands, it has also created a content clutter, a short attention span for users, and a challenge to create differentiated, valuable content.
Content marketing is incorporated into every digital marketing channel. To engage people on social media, you need to write entertaining and inspiring content. To attract traffic to your website through search engine optimisation, you need to create valuable content in line with a keyword strategy. To send out an email marketing campaign, you need to write compelling personal emails and give people content that would make them click. Even when you advertise, ad copies are the way you ‘hook up’ your potential buyers. That applies to every other digital channel from influencer marketing to video marketing and developing your website.
Here are a few content creation tips to help you out:
- Research your keywords or topics well.
- Find out your brand’s voice.
- Pick a topic that will spark your audience’s curiosity.
- Organise your ideas and draft them.
- Always think of the Call To Action (CTA) – what you want the audience to do after they read this piece of content?
- Research original sources and add your own unique input.
- Diversify your content to test out what works best for your audience – short and long form content, video, gifs, reels, stories, images, etc.
- Optimise tags and descriptions.
- Don’t talk about features, instead take about emotional benefits and problems that you can solve.
Digital Marketing Ballymena C #3: Context
Context takes us back to the first C – Customer. Your digital marketing strategy’s success is built on relevance and context. Understanding the context is crucial not only to crafting marketing messages and creating campaigns, but also to establish your entire brand and business strategy. The market share, the shifts in consumer behaviour, your brand’s share from the customer’s wallet, and what the customers are looking for at that moment in time, all have a huge impact on how your business offering, and ultimately on your digital marketing strategy.
The reason why many businesses and agencies fail to see a real value to investing in digital marketing is that they treat it as though it is a separate entity – away from the business strategy. It is something that is rarely discussed in the room where all the ‘big decisions’ are being made.
On the contrary, your digital marketing strategy is a direct bridge between your business and the customers. That’s why ‘the context’ is super important. Don’t get stuck in the past, and never assume that what worked in the past will always work. You need to read your surroundings so well so that you can not only respond to changes, but also anticipate them and lead the way to solutions.
Digital Marketing Ballymena C #4: Community
The fourth C is our favorite because it testifies the true power of digital marketing. Customers are now more empowered than ever thanks to technology and the ability to reach and/or share any information in the blink of an eye. That makes it so important to build a brand’s trust and loyalty, and attract strong leads is to harness the power of a community. Users share their reviews and voice their opinions so strongly online. As a local business in Ballymena, that could either be your biggest strength or most vulnerable weakness. In such a close community, word travels fast and people love to chat about their purchases. It makes them feel smart and it’s a way to socialise.
Word of mouth is more impactful now than ever. In the past, word of mouth would be a customer spreading the word to four to five people. Today, anyone can share a positive or a bad experience about your business to their list friends on social media which could reach more than hundreds of people. That’s why you have to be careful about every customer’s experience. Additionally, you need to be a good listener to what’s being said about your business online.
On the other hand, it’s not enough only to respond to negative and positive reviews. It is even more important to build your brand’s community and circle of people who would vouch for you. By engaging with them online, running competitions, sharing the real faces behind your business. You need to be relevant by being part of your customers’ world. Your customer is only a customer for a few minutes of the day, but outside of that, they’re parents, employees, partners, friends, children, and so many other things. You need to be part of their conversation by being present in the places they go to or where they spend their time. That’s how you build a community for your brand.
Here are some tips on how to build a community for your local business:
Build a connection within your internal teams. They are your frontline brand ambassadors.
Create a value-driven online presence. Be involved in what your audience are interested in, start a conversation, and encourage them to engage.
Positively contribute to a social cause. Corporate social responsibility is no longer something that only big corporates do. On the contrary, customers are looking for local alternatives that also contribute to the local community.
Produce expert and educational content. It shows your genuineness to help.
Create a dedicated space where your community members can bond. Facebook groups, online forums, and crowd sourced review websites are a great place to be on.
Be patient and consistent. Building a relationship between your brand and the customers and growing a community of followers takes time and effort.
To read about the rest of the 7 digital marketing Cs, click here.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: How to Choose the Right Digital Marketing Agency?
For digital marketing in Ballymena, we know results drive your business. That means real results should drive your digital marketing too. In fact, the very foundations of your digital marketing should be the goals you need to achieve as a result of your digital investment. Very often, companies take a ‘piecemeal’ approach to digital marketing and, therefore, fail to see the outcomes they need.
Instead, ProfileTree specialises in a strategy-led, big picture approach using methods and knowledge we’ve tested and proven in our own company.
If you’re a local business in Ballymena, or in County Antrim, you probably have been approached by companies offering digital products, probably as individual services like social media posts. It can be easy to be distracted by promises of huge ‘reach’ or impressive-looking – but stand-alone – pieces of work. But for much better return on your investment, some simple questions before you begin any digital marketing project can make sure everything you do is tailored for your company and for real results.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: First Ask Why
Some drone footage of your business or custom designs for your social posts may be ‘nice to have’ but building them into your bigger plan will help avoid being sidelined into the latest trend without the right reasons. So, for example, if your drone footage will support an online advertising campaign designed to drive specific sales under your marketing plan, that’s a good reason. Or, if your social media designs will help build a community of customers as part of your customer journey plans for their segments, that’s a good reason. Thinking bigger, thinking ‘why’ and sticking to your goals will help with making the right digital marketing decisions.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: What’s the Return On Investment (ROI)?
Similarly, thinking about how you’ll measure the success of the investment keeps a clear focus on the right reasons for your digital marketing activity. Success doesn’t always mean a sale. It could mean leads, new members of an online community, attendees at an event or more. Ultimately, ROI is whatever the activity needs to produce to support your business strategies.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: What Does Your Customer Interaction Look Like?
With Ballymena being a shopping town, you’ll know that your customers want to behave in their own specific way. And they want to engage with your business in their chosen way too. There’s no sense in trying to make a customer who prefers to phone use a web-form, and vice versa. So taking a step back to ask if the proposed digital marketing activity is really the way your chosen segment of customers/ potential customers would like to engage can be a wise move in the long run. Need help to see what’s best for your business?
Digital Marketing Ballymena: Why Choose ProfileTree?
We’re a different kind of digital agency because we offer a no-fuss service, tailored entirely for you, your audiences, and your goals. Just ask!
Digital Marketing Ballymena: A Clear Purpose
Knowing what you want to achieve is the best first step to creating digital marketing designed to pay its way in your business. ‘Reaching more people’ isn’t necessarily equal return on investment. Aim higher to connect your digital marketing to real world sales and/ or community-building with a quality customer journey. In this way, truly measurable digital marketing can easily show its full worth.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: A Clear Audience
Your ‘real world’ customers aren’t identical, and neither are the customers in your digital world. Your website, social media, and email data – not to mention your own instincts – will show you who you are already reaching. Is there a group within your existing audiences you’d like to target with your offer or product? Knowing this will avoid a costly trial-and-error exercise.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: A Clear Measurement
Similar to your purpose, a clear way of measuring your progress towards that goal is recommended. Why? It helps avoid your efforts being side-tracked, it shows what it is working and when. It means you are working in a measurable way towards something designed to help your business grow. Need help with this? ProfileTree can design a digital marketing strategy tailored for your individual business.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: A Clear Plan
To borrow a phrase from the world of sport: everything works, and nothing works forever. A plan to review and update your digital marketing investment will keep your business ahead of change. Things like social media platforms change, email regulations change, and customer devices change. That’s why a plan to keep ahead of the latest developments will help avoid the expense of having to start over.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: How Much Does Digital Marketing Cost
Working with so many different businesses over the years taught us to work with different budgets and requirements. We have created multiple packages for each of digital marketing services. Of course, every project has its own requirements but generally, we use your requirements and budget to come up with a suitable digital solution. In other words, you set the requirements, we tailor a package within the limits of your spending. Contact us for a free quote and a digital consultation about your digital marketing strategy.
Digital Marketing Ballymena: Ready to Book a Free Digital Marketing Audit?
A digital marketing audit is where one of our expert team members go through your digital marketing channels such as social media pages, website development and user experience, and SEO performance and analyse it to give you a brief of your brand’s digital well-being. Fill the form and send us your questions, we will be happy to answer all of them. Please do let us know if your business is registered in Ballymena, County Antrim. Alternatively, you can book a chat with one of our team members to audit your digital marketing channels for free and find out how we can help you establish a strong digital marketing presence in Ballymena, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
More services: Social Media Marketing Ballymena, SEO Ballymena, Content Marketing Ballymena, Digital Training Ballymena
