A Quick and Simple Framework for Marketing Strategies

@RobOusbey @Distilled #StateOfSearch bit.ly/ShareThisDeck
Rob Ousbey
A Quick & Simple Framework
for Marketing Strategies
State Of Search 2017

The Creative
To begin, I want to share the story of a creative
campaign we launched on behalf of a client.

The Coverage
We earned coverage from practically every blog and
news website we could have hoped for.

The Results
1,600
45,000
15,000
3,000
Linking Root Domains
Facebook Likes
Twitter Tweets
LinkedIn Shares
ReferringDomains
And the piece continues to earn links:
three years later, we still average a
new linking domain every day

The Client’s Reaction
Not long after, the client fired us. In the short time we’d worked
together, we’d done a great job of everything we had planned to,
but hadn’t moved the right needles for them. We had a timescale
for success in our heads, but we’d not show them how this work
was going to impact the numbers they care about.

The Only Ways We Fail
We failed to do
the things we
set out to do.
We achieved the
things we wanted to,
but they didn’t have
the anticipated effect.
“Execution Failures” “Strategic Failures”
As a consulting agency, we get to post-mortem, debug and try again.
I’ve outlined two failures modes here: execution failures, and strategic
failures – this presentation focuses on avoiding the second type.

What is ‘Strategy’?
Objectives
What do we want
to achieve?
Tactics
The things we’ll
do to get there.
Strategy
How can we
achieve it?
You can tell when a strategy is set well,
because it allows you to look at any
part of your to-do list, and ask ‘why?’ all
the back up to the top level goals.

The Nested Dolls of Strategy
The overall ‘business objective’ may generate tactics for individual teams (such as logistics, finance,
sales, marketing, etc.) That then sets an objective for each team, who develop their own strategy and
tactics.
If the marketing strategy suggests investing in PPC, social and email marketing, then each of those
departments will now have an objective, and can start their own process.
This presentation focusses on the marketing portion – turning marketing objectives into tactics.

The Nested Dolls of Strategy
Objectives
Strategy
Tactics Objectives
Strategy
Tactics Objectives
Strategy
Tactics

Why do we need another framework?
Many other strategy frameworks exist, but there are
always parts that I find lacking, particularly given the
way the internet has changed the options available to
us, and made new data available.
But mostly I wanted a process that we could go
through very quickly, and get an answer we were 90%
confident about in 1/10th the time it could take us.

Getting Things Done
‘Doing strategy’ often seems particularly time consuming, and it sometimes seems to be a wonderful way to
ever get real work done.
If you have people who can get on with executing; give them your best guess of things to do while you’re
researching/planning - and treat it as a test to see what happens.
I'm also OK with tactics influencing strategy. If you have a tactic that you’ve found is working well; then look
for insights. That can contribute to the process.

WHOare we trying to reach?
For this framework, you’ll be answering
FIVE fundamental questions. Simple! 

Be Selective
You can’t be all things to all people. There’s a well
understood process of ‘persona identification’

Prioritize
Beyond identifying a number of persona, you should
prioritize them – and understand which groups
you’re not going to target.

Factors we may want to describe in the persona:
Gender
Level of Education
Location Type (geographic, rural/urban)
Situational (marriage, kids, studying, working)
Age group
Behavioural
Their location & language
Interests
Values (internal beliefs that influence a purchase decision)
External influences
Things that change
quite rarely
Things that change
more often

Factors we may want to describe in the persona:
Business or Personal Purchase?
For brand like these, you’ll also be asking “is this person
making a business or personal buying decision?”

Guesswork & Gut is Rarely Enough
It’s tempting to take a guess at the personas for your
business, but we can do better that.

51% of people believe it is important
that brands ask about their needs.
10% of people said that their favorite
brands do this well.
You Have Permission to Ask
Edelman surveyed 11,000 people across 212 brands in 12 market sectors.
The results show that people really don’t mind brands asking about their needs!

Survey Process
We run surveys by emailing a segment of existing
customers, with various questions to answer.

Beyond basic demographic data, you can find out a
lot about the customers’ values and interests.

Interviews
We then group the data by similar responses and pick
representative people from each major group to speak to for
longer. This gives us the chance to look for recurring themes, and
even particular quotes that we can incorporate into a persona.
Although it’s more geared toward product development, the ethos
of the questions in Zac Cohn’s deck are well worth considering.

Scaling with Existing Data
But it’s 2017! There’s enough data available to us that
we should be able to generate some insights before
we have to turn to surveying/interviewing people.
The place to begin is any interesting data submitted
by customers. For example: customer lead forms,
questions submitted, special requests, etc.

Existing Data Sources: User Data
The FullContact API will take an email and return age, gender, location and lots of other demographic stuff,
for a few cents per result. It also gets: location, their employer, and tries to find their interests (based on an
aggregation of lots of data)
Consider running this over all your customer records (or just those in a certain segment, such as the top 20%
of customers by revenue) to find out who they really are.

They have API libraries for a bunch of languages. You could even just do it in a spreadsheet!

social media – digital marketing –
digital marketer – internet marketing – marketing agency – search
engine – web design – online marketing – marketing strategist – search marketing – media marketing
– content marketing – real estate – husband father – marketing consultant – local search – fort worth
– small business – #seo #ppc – seo ppc – small businesses – marketing manager – seo sem –
keynote speaker – digital media
Followerwonk (a Moz tool) can parse all
of your Twitter followers, and review
their bios to find common themes.

Twitter Analytics can analyze your audience, and
compare it to a benchmark population.

Google Analytics gives affinity/in-market data for
your visitors. You could filter this data by converting
users or basket sizes. It can also be used for creating
custom reports which can be analyzed or used later
for retargeting.

Overlooked Personae
Don’t overlook a couple of interesting groups: people
who already know & feel positively about your brand
(but need activating), and previous customers that
haven’t purchased in a while (and need reactivating.)

Third Party Data Surveys
You can run brand awareness/affinity/association surveys using
AYTM, Google Consumer Surveys or SurveyMonkey Audience.

Third Party Data Surveys
For example: 70% of mothers with young children
have heard of Zulily. This might suggest that they
should focus on activation rather than awareness.

An example of a fully-fleshed persona. This was one
of three, created for a consumer electronics
company. Countless other example exist online!

We describe Geeky Gary by his background, his
influences, his likes & dislikes

We also described the process he went through to become a
customer. In his case, this included loads of research.

This was obviously very fleshed out, with a deck full of detailed information.
It’s very boardroom friendly, and this client used these personas to build out
all of their sales & marketing over the following years.

WHO
When running through the process quickly, you don’t
need fancy stock photos. A quick sketch can remind
you who is who.

WHEN
during the customer journey
do we want to reach them?

Traditional Customer Paths
The traditional purchase funnel was developed in 1898. The modern reality is
that it’s a lot harder to quantify where people are at. This model also doesn’t
include a stage before they realize they need to solve a particular problem.

Customer Modalities
Various modes exist. People are likely to have fairly
unique experiences in getting from awareness to
purchase.

Examples of Triggers
I deserve a holiday!
My coffee machine is broken.
I’d never even thought about
replacing my thermostat!
Intrinsic:
External:
Opportunistic:
Different triggers may help the customer determine they have a
problem, such as intrinsic/situational, external, or opportunistic.
MarketingProfs.com has a model with eight different trigger types.

A New Model of Customer Modes
Blissful ignorance, no problems
Determines they have an issue that needs solving
Recurring issue ←→ once-in-a-lifetime question
Maybe researches solutions
Maybe gets influenced; maybe they’ve already been exposed
Could be passively or actively searching
Maybe they have a favorite brand
Makes decisions about what brand & product to buy
Decides where to buy it from
And the pattern of modes they pass through will be intertwined with
their persona. One group might quickly decide what they want to buy,
and then spend ages comparing different places to buy it – but another
group might be so brand loyal to a particular retailer that it’s no question.

Example: Market Leaders with Predictable Paths
We worked with a client who makes some of the
hidden hardware behind ‘connected home’
technology. With an ~80% share, they benefit from
just getting people into the market, rather then
necessarily having to sell them on the brand itself.

Example: Market Leaders with Predictable Paths
Which is quite reminiscent of De Beers in the 80s:
they only had to persuade people to buy diamond
engagement rings, and they would always benefit.

Example: Very Different Paths
People can take extremely different paths within the same market, such
as our divorce lawyer client. Some people spend a long time thinking
about getting a divorce and researching lawyers. Other people have just
had papers served, and have to choose a lawyer extremely quickly.

WHO - WHEN
Problem
Definition Awareness Research Conversion

WHO - WHEN
Problem
You can now decide when you are going to engage
with each of those personae, ie: what mode will they
be in when they first see your content/messaging?

message would you like those
potential customers to hear?
WHAT

What’s the message?
For those people, at that moment: what do you want
them to hear? How do you want to change their mind?
Maybe share a USP or value prop to support their
research? Maybe a clear, commercial call to action?
Maybe you just want to tell them you exist, or even just
help them out with an issue they have right now – even
if that doesn’t generate a sale for you.

Product Feature Messages
Relevance
Low
High
Differentiation
Low High
Neutrals
Must
Haves
Drivers
Fools’
Gold
If your messaging is about product features, the McKinsey’s model reminds us to ask how differentiated your
product is – and how much the consumers care about that. In hindsight, I’ve had clients distracted by
marketing a message that was “fools’ gold” – an feature where they were highly differentiated, but that the
market wasn’t interested in. The ‘drivers’ are where you should be taking the opportunity to show off!

Personality Messages
The message you want to share might be your brand’s personality. You can’t always just tell people
this – they may have to be shown and infer it for themselves.
This guest post on AVC is the jumping off point for thinking about personality in brand and marketing.

For example:: Johnnie Walker is a good time drink. It loves
parties, it loves people. It hates things that are normal.

Glenfiddich loves the outdoors and solitude. It hates people
and wants to be as far away from them as possible.

Social Proof Messages
Social proof is one example of message; the brand isn’t touting how good
the product is: people just like the target persona are validating it..

Testing Messages
Your surveys can also pick up on the importance of different things, and the
messages that will resonate with those people at that moment; ConversionXL
has some more good information about that,
You can test messages through PPC (as Tim Feriss did for Four Hour
Workweek), or see what generates engagement on your social channels.

WHO - WHEN - WHAT
Problem

WHO - WHEN - WHAT
Problem
BRAND X IS
AN OPTION
I DIDN’T KNOW
YOU COULD ….
BRAND X IS
A NOVEL
SOLUTION
BRAND X IS
AVAILABLE
AT MY STORE
Now you can take you ‘who’ and ‘when’
and determine ‘what’ message you want
them to take away from the engagement.

do we get that
message to them?
WHERE

paid search • organic search • local search •
product search • display • retargeting • gmail
ads • owned social • social coverage • bought
social • social advertising • social retargeting •
referral traffic • review sites • blog coverage •
product placement • content amplification •
news coverage • media buys • email • earned
email • paid email • partners • affiliates • events
Channels
Pretty much every channel has earned, owned & paid
components. When you SWOT individual channels, one
‘strength' might be your existing presence there

Choosing Channels
Content & channel are well linked. Use the content matrix to cross reference a point in the process and a
message type , to choose a content type / channel.

mlweekly.com
news.mit.edu
blogs.technet.microsoft.com
blog.statsbot.co
indico.io
fastml.com
hunch.net
blog.datumbox.com
ayasdi.com
Which sites influence these people?
If you’re looking to get coverage on other sites, you could extract links from the social
posts of your followers, and see which domains are most impactful and influential to them.

Which social channels are they on?
Instagram Pinterest LinkedIn

Which social channels are they on?
Instagram Pinterest LinkedIn
Social channels are all completely different.
You’ll already be familiar with the differences, but
use the data that is out there to help with selection.

Intermediaries of Influence
Which intermediaries do these people use? Who are
‘celebrities’ to them? For any given channel, who are
the major influencers for this persona?

Example: PR coverage + Amplification
This article presumably converts really well – and
the brand gets more eyeballs on it by using content
amplification within BusinessInsider, via Taboola.

Does your website need to be in the process?
McKinsey shared an example from a home appliance manufacturer,
who spent most of their marketing dollars on content for their
website – and had advertising spend across print, TV and display.

Picking Appropriate Channels
Insight:
Less than 9% of customers went to manufacturer website.
Action:
Brand reduced spend on their website & traditional advertising
Increased spend on content for retailer websites
Outcome:
Lead to an immediate 21% uplift in ecommerce sales

WHO - WHEN - WHAT - WHERE
Problem
BRAND X IS
AN OPTION
BRAND X IS
A NOVEL
SOLUTION
BRAND X IS
AVAILABLE
AT MY STORE
I DIDN’T KNOW
YOU COULD ….

Problem
IN THE PRESS
TWITTER
REVIEW SITES
BRAND-X.com
Now decide where you’re going to get that message
in front of the right people.

Moving the Needle
The easiest way to win in the short term is to
measure all the needles. That way, you always have
something you can celebrate, because some metric
has always improved over the last month/quarter.
This is the measurement/analytics part. If you’re not
measuring, you won’t know it’s working. You have to
move the needle!

# of top of funnel content pages
produced
# of commercial landing pages
optimized
# of bloggers, influencers,
journalists engaged with
# of pages indexed by Google
# of new linking root domains
Domain Authority
Ranking positions
Organic traffic to TOF pages
Organic traffic to product pages
Organic traffic $$$ contribution
to conversions
Activities Leading Indicators Success Metrics
Indicators & Metrics: Example for SEO
Differentiate between the important indicators and
the actual metrics of success.

WHO - WHEN - WHAT - WHERE - WHY
Problem
IN THE PRESS
TWITTER
REVIEW SITES
BRAND-X.com

Problem
SOCIAL
INFLUENCE
PRESS HITS
REFERAL
TRAFFIC
ON SITE
ENGAGEMENT
Define your leading indicators &
success metrics for each channel.

Putting it into Action
Now you have to take the WHO, WHEN, WHAT,
WHERE, WHY and do something with it. Hopefully as
you answer those questions, the ‘how’ itself
becomes pretty emergent.

EXAMPLEHere’s an example, where we used this framework to
very quickly get a marketing plan together for the
client. It was based on some existing industry
insights, and that took less than a couple of hours,

The Business
The client supports people’s genealogy research. For example: if I wanted data from the records office in a
small Polish city, or if I wanted to photograph the gravestone of an ancestor in Sweden, I’d have to get on a
plane to visit, and probably hire a local translator.
This client has a network of freelancers, providing genealogy services to people between different countries,
and can service people everywhere. They’re also aware that as well as an older crowd, genealogy is finding
a new surge in popularity with young folks.

Who
Sylvia the Silver Surfer - Retirement has left her with
plenty of time & money, but the arrival of another
grandson is making her think about the legacy she’ll
leave. Tech savvy & matriarch of the family records -
she’s currently researching their European ancestors.
Casey the Crafter - Just started senior year at high
school. Loves crafting & is always on the lookout for
her next project. She had her first taste of genealogy
through a ‘family tree’ project at school.

When
We want to reach her while she’s trying to uncover
hard-to-access records in foreign countries.
We want to reach her as she begins her genealogy
journey - possibly many years before her first purchase.

What
We have experts in the countries you need, who can retrieve records, take
photos, compile information - they’ll work on as much or as little of the
process as you’d like. Using our independent researchers is significantly
cheaper than flying to Europe, especially if you’ll need to hire a translator.
Genealogy can be loads of fun - and it’s good to have a friend to help you
along the way. Our team have put together tons of free resources &
genealogy information for you - including scrapbook & family tree
templates, and we’ve reviewed all the best free research & design
software.
“
“

Where
Search: commercial keyword terms; target with PPC immediately and a
medium-term investment in SEO
Social: through Facebook; earning coverage from the brands she follows, and
through targeted ads.
Social: mainly through Pinterest & Instagram, showing designs and templates
Blogs: craft & design bloggers (guest posts & placements)
Search: responding to ‘how-to’ and ‘resource queries’

How
Examples of what visibility will look like on search and social

How
Lots of resource content will be posted on our site, and we’ll push some to other sites as guest posts.
On Pinterest we don’t own a popular channel yet, so we’ll earn coverage and pay our way in as well.

who • when • what • where • why
RECAP

WHO
Who are we trying to reach?

WHO - WHEN
Problem
When during the customer journey do we want to
reach them?

WHO - WHEN - WHAT
Problem
BRAND X IS
AN OPTION
BRAND X IS
A NOVEL
SOLUTION
BRAND X IS
AVAILABLE
AT MY STORE
I DIDN’T KNOW
YOU COULD ….
What message would we like those potential
customers to hear?

Problem
IN THE PRESS
TWITTER
REVIEW SITES
BRAND-X.com
Where do we get that message to them?

Problem
SOCIAL
INFLUENCE
PRESS
COVERAGE
REFERAL
TRAFFIC
ON SITE
ENGAGEMENT
Why are we doing this?
Which metrics measure success?

Thanks!
Send me your feedback via @RobOusbey or rob.ousbey@distilled.net
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A Quick and Simple Framework for Marketing Strategies

A Quick and Simple Framework for Marketing Strategies

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