Here is a possible framework and some ideas for thinking about a marketing plan. This will need to line up with your sales strategy for the leads that your marketing programs will hopefully bring you.
High level, when I think about the goals of marketing, I think about a funnel of customers through a product. At the top are new or un engaged customers. In the middle are current customers. At the bottom are disengaged/lost customers.
The goal of maximizing reach is to increase the size of the top of the funnel. The goal of maximizing engagement/retention is to widen the middle of the funnel. I think of retention as engaging customers to keep using and buying your product. The goal of resurrection, at the bottom of the funnel, is to reactive customers that have dropped off.
I would be interested in not only coming up with ways of getting new customers, but also ways of getting them to engage more with your product (in the case of paying customers, getting them to spend more on your product or line of products). I would also be interested in ways of reengaging customers that have tried your product before, and aren’t using it anymore. Retention and resurrection are important. Most marketers focus on reach-- but imagine the revenue you could drive to your business if you could do a few small things to get more spend from the customers you already have in your pipeline or resurrect a % of the profitable accounts that you know have dropped off?
Reach
As far as ideas for increasing the size of the top of the funnel, this would be a pure acquisition play-- I would be driving customers to your product (or website for your product). Here are some collateral I would create for that:
- Blogposts
- Announcements and ad integrations on the company's website
- Posts on social sites- Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
- Landing experience for this new product with clear benefits written on it and a strong call to action
- Integrations or ads on your other product(s) to help you upsell this product to your current consumer base, if appropriate
- Direct email campaigns
- If this is a particularly high revenue-driving product- send postcards, and other direct mail to a laser-targeted list of people that in your estimation would find your product interesting or a compelling proposition – and would benefit from it
- PR- leverage connections to bloggers you know who have relevant followers
- Create decks for sales training about the product and how to sell it (if you have a sales department)
- Talking points for executives
- If you have a professionals program like Adwords professionals or Quickbooks Pro Advisors, reach out to to encourage those professionals to share news of the product with others. Consider using an incentive
- Videos- on Youtube, social sites, or other channels mentioned above. This is not necessary-- but it is useful if your product is particularly complex and requires explanation
- Add virality to the product or the user flow at sign up, if possible-- through social integrations, etc.
Engagement/retention
As far as encouraging customers to use the product more, my approach would begin with thinking about why people use/buy your product.
If, for example, if you're Google, and you're selling Adwords for SMBs, there would be several reasons why your customers are buying your product-- but I’d say that a major one is to reach users at the moment they are ready to buy. How can you help customers experience that benefit? When are customers really locked in? Answer: when they start seeing real impact on their bottom line. Ask yourself "How do we get them there?" How can we help them start getting and seeing the results right away? In many cases, this means:
Training your customer to use your product effectively for their business:
- Videos
- Case studies
- Seminars (online or not)
- When users are setting up their account, run them through a wizard, or use feature cues and step by step instructions that pop up on the page telling the customer exactly what they need to do, step-by-step, to set up properly
- Tips sent via email
Making sure that your customers are supported:
- Training for customer care reps
- FAQs and how-to pages
Making sure your customers see the benefits right away:
- Send new account holders some customized reports on the results of their campaign/etc. right away with some language about what they could do to improve their results (or what works for your business)
Resurrection
What about the users that you’ve lost? I would segment those folks and come up with ideas for targeted ways to reengage them.
Back to the Adwords example--there may be old Adwords users that had spent a lot of money on Adwords and then quit, or people that started setting up an account and then stopped before setting up payments. Find out why they disengaged and offer a solve. Some ideas--
- If they disengaged because they didn’t understand Adwords and didn’t set up the account, offer them $30 to try Adwords Express
- If they disengaged because they didn’t get great results, send them an email with tips on how to improve their website quality score or add negative keywords
- If they spent a lot of money on Adwords and then quit, send them an email to ask for feedback and ask them if they would like a customer care rep to talk with them and solve their difficulties. Consider the LTV of a high-spend customer—could it make sense to do something like a live training event for them and people like them?
Some more ideas:
Communicate with interesting infographics that salespeople can share with their clients and that you can share with the press. For example, you could communicate how much better an average customer's performance in X area would be with this product over a competing one
Put slide decks on Slideshare. When folks make the presentation a favorite, you'll know that they’re interested. Have salespeople look them up on LinkedIn and contact them
Use case studies. This is compelling validation of your product. It's basically anecdotal evidence to back up your case. It also puts an interesting spotlight on the benefits of using your product
Have executives at the company engage with your audience. See if you can get them booked as guest bloggers. Use them in guest appearances on your Twitter and Facebook accounts to answer questions—this will not only bring people closer to the brand-- it will get people engaged and talking about the product in social media and the press
Try display ads on LinkedIn
Don't forget to leverage recommendations
Quantify. If you can help customers quantify the savings or revenue you can help them get with calculators or other tools, go ahead and leverage those tools
If this is a mobile product directed to SMBs, you might want to look at this: Annabell Satterfield's answer to How do you market a mobile application?
Note: Paid acquisition-- no, I didn't forget this. This could be a whole other post in and of itself-- do you want to pay for search leads through Google Adwords? Do you want to try display ads (which can be expensive), etc. Best thing to do is try a few different paid techniques and shut down any that don't provide more value than their cost. Try just a few at a time to avoid becoming overwhelmed or blowing your budget.
Awareness/Preference:
PR, customers, events, and partners - getting people talking about you.
My personal favorite is to hire a big name band and throw a small venue party (we've hired Cake, Blues Traveler, and Barenaked Ladies, for example).
Show up, get your name out there, and start get get people thinking about you. Familiarity plants the seed of trust.
Conversations:
Blogs and social and a million similar things where interactions (often digital) happen - getting people talking with you.
Lead Capture:
Usually some for of education or knowledge sharing - eBooks, white papers, videos, infographics, thought leadership in its many shapes and sizes. Benchmarking data (unique data, or your unique take on industry data, is effective).
Drop some web forms to capture data and drop them into a (Silverpop) Marketing Automation program, score them, and route them to your sales team.
Nurture and Score:
Market to your new leads with path-to-purchase based nurture programs that drive up the score value and help increase their chance of converting.
Lead Conversions:
Marketing's roll doesn't stop at capturing the lead: nurture and market to your prospects carefully through the selling process with problem-solution-based evidence and customer testimonials, equip your sales efforts with on-track messaging.
Post-close Recycle:
Your new customer is a weapon to start back at the beginning - use them to build awareness, preference, and conversations...
As you build your success, you can add a thousand additional steps and fine tunings, and really put your marketing and marketing automation efforts to work. Check out more details from Sirius Decisions - they have done an excellent job of looking at the marketing-to-sales waterfall.
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