A short, instructional YouTube video (hosted by Jamal) arguing that businesses must build a digital marketing strategy before applying tactics. The video distinguishes long-term strategy from short-term tactics, gives real-world examples of tactic-rich but strategy-poor campaigns (Burger King Creepy King, Nesquik Bunny Ears Day), and points viewers to HubSpot free resources — marketing plan template, Make My Persona tool, competitive analysis kit, HubSpot Marketing Hub (free tier), a 150-template content creation guide, and HubSpot Academy courses — to plan, execute, and measure year-long digital marketing efforts. Tone is conversational, humorous, and promotional/educational with CTAs to download links in the description.
Chapters
Wait, hold up, hold up, hold up. It's 2022 and you're still running marketing campaigns without having a digital marketing strategy. Do you also start driving without putting the destination into your gps? What's up? It's Jamal. Welcome back to the channel. In this video, I'm going to explain the importance of creating a digital marketing strategy before you post your first tweet, hit send on your first email or buy your first online app. And I'm going to give you a full stack of free tools that you can use to build a digital marketing strategy today that will help you gain customers and drive sales for the whole year. That's right, a whole year of driving with your GPS on. Can you imagine? You're welcome. So get ready to download some excellent free tools from the description below. And while you're down there, be sure to hit the subscribe button and ring that notification bell. All right, so the first thing I want to explain is the difference between marketing strategy and marketing tactics. HubSpot defines strategy as long term, broad goals that a business wants to achieve. And tactics are short term steps and actions that should be taken to achieve the goals described in the strategic plan. If you've been watching videos on this and other channels, you've probably picked up a lot of tactics that you can use. But unless you're applying those tactics to a sound strategy, your efforts are likely to go to waste. Want an example? Well, remember Burger King's Creepy King? It had all the making of a successful marketing campaign. Almost. The memorable ads were all over social media, earning likes and driving engagement. What it didn't do was drive customers to the drive thru. Because while the King campaign was winning awards, Burger King was losing market share to Mickey D's. The campaign's tactics were successful, but the overall strategy of making customers crave burgers did perform as well as they'd hoped. If you don't want to make the same mistake, you have to build a digital marketing strategy. And the best way to get started, and I think you know where I'm going with this, is to download our first free tool, HubSpot's free marketing plan template. You can download it from the description below. The template will help you build an effective digital marketing strategy step by step. You know what I'm saying? And now I'm going to highlight some of the most important questions you'll need to answer when building your strategy. The first is creating buyer Personas. HubSpot defines a buyer Persona as a semi fictional representation of your ideal buyer based on data, interviews and some educated guesses. Had Burger King done better research into buyer Personas, it might have realized their ideal demographic wasn't the type of young, ironic hipster their ads was clearly targeted to, but perhaps rather families who were looking for quick and satisfying meals. So you have to do your research either by interviewing current customers, analyzing demographic data in your CRM, or even just talking to your employees who engage directly with customers. You can also create Personas of customers you would like to appeal to in the future, but this is often more difficult to achieve and should only be attempted once you're hitting goals for existing buyer Personas. I know what you're thinking to yourself, Jamal. I want to be eager. I want to get ahead of the curve on this one. Well, don't curve yourself out of the game. What you get what I'm saying? To make the process easier, HubSpot created a free online Make My Persona tool that will help you outline much of the relevant info you need to make buyer Personas that work for any business. It's kind of magical, frankly. You'll find the link in the description below. Your buyers aren't the only thing you'll want to analyze when building a digital marketing strategy. You also, and keep this in mind, want to look at what your competitors are doing for clues as to what works. But you got to know what to look for. And don't just blindly follow trends because you're going to be caught looking like a real Raph Scallion. Real a real scoundrel, a real ne' er do well. When Nesquik declared September 16, 2013 to be national Bunny Ears Day, funny photo filters were all the rage. But despite a high profile partnership with the Today show, the hashtag failed to get any traction on social media. Had Nesquik looked at other bunny flavored ads like the Cadbury Creme Eggs Clucking Rabbit, they might have noticed that the most successful big eared campaigns happen around Easter. Folks just aren't checking for rabbits in September unless it's the energized rabbit that keeps people going. You know what I'm saying? If you want to conduct a competitive analysis, well, good news, I have another free tool you can use. HubSpot has a free competitive analysis kit with 10 different templates that you can use depending on your business goals. You can find the download link you already know you're now getting close to creating awesome campaigns that will wow the right buyers. All that's left to do is specify the best platforms and tools you want to use to reach the right customers. But in case you haven't noticed, there are dozens of marketing platforms you can use to spread your message and hundreds of tools to make your messaging more efficient and effective. To help you sort through the options, HubSpot has a number of blog posts that outline the best tools for each job. We even have a post dedicated to free tools you can use. If you're working with a limited budget, you know where those links are at minimum. All right. The absolutely the absolute barest of bones. You're probably going to need a project management tool, a social media marketing tool, an online advertising tool, a lead capturing tool, and a CRM tool to keep track of all that goodness. Fortunately, and you are quite fortunate for this, the free version of HubSpot's marketing hub can do all of this and more. But even if you have a CRM tool, check out the links in the description to find plenty of other tools to make your marketing tasks way easier.
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HubSpot grow better the truth is, there's no one single way to effectively market a product or service. Creating an effective digital marketing campaign is as much as an art as it is a science. So get out your easel and your test tubes. Do them both at the same time. Maybe combine them. Maybe that's what we need for good strategy. But knowing what it is you're trying to solve for before you go out and start testing marketing tactics will save you lots of time and energy in the long run. That's why the free marketing plan template we've also been talking about also helps you clarify your business goals so that every ounce of effort you put into marketing feeds into your bottom line. You can spend days, weeks, even months mastering your digital marketing strategy before it's ready to be deployed. But eventually, you'll have to start executing the strategy by building compelling content, putting it out online, and analyzing the results. So even though this isn't technically part of building a digital marketing strategy, there's one more free tool I want to tell you about for when you're ready to take the next steps. HubSpot's free ultimate guide to content creation has over 150 templates. 150? That's in MA. That's madness for building everything from blog posts and infographics to PowerPoints and press releases. But remember that even the best content only works if it's supporting a smart digital marketing strategy. If you're ready to dive deeper into all things online, you can head over to HubSpot Academy and take our digital marketing certification course. And check out this channel's digital marketing playlist for videos that focus on all the platforms you need to successfully execute your digital marketing strategy. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to be taking a few steps myself and be looking like Theresa May walking down. Walking down the aisle, you know what I'm saying? Towards my big digital strategy breakthrough. You'll see me out there, and I'll see you as well. See you next time, okay?
