Marketing Planning

There continual changes in Google that affect the way a website can be used for marketing. There are also continual changes in Facebook that can be good or bad for business depending on your point of view. The Google+ social network had many major changes, all for the better.

Our tracking suggests that the Google+ social network will dominate in the future as the best network for attracting new customers. Our strategies are not waiting for the future, we're implementing them today for retail jewelers.

Retailers frequently tell us that they lost track of time, and didn't finish their ads early enough. Our marketing planning does not allow you to lose track of time. In fact we often map out specific actions and dates that you can write on your calendar to help you plan your offline advertising and how it connects with your online advertising for a full 12 months.

Let's assume you would want to use the following monthly marketing strategies

1. Add a new blog post to your website every month
2. Send one email newsletter
3. Share things to the social networks
4. Advertise in local community newspapers
5. Online paid advertising

Here's how we would help you correctly plan out using all these methods together.

Set monthly deadlines for the 7th of every month and write these deadlines on your calender. You should post your new blog by and send your email out by that set date.

Every blog should also be shared to your business accounts for Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

With regard to offline advertising, whenever you publish an ad, you should also be posting that ad online. Newspaper ads usually need a 7 day lead time, but they can be submitted as late as 2 days before printing. Of course, other traditional media ads usually take more planning than that. You should be committed to matching all online ads to your traditional ads.

At minimum, you should consider using the online ad networks of Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. Other ad networks that produce positive results are Twitter Sponsored Tweets, Yelp Ads, and Foursquare Ads.

Setting up each of these advertising methods is easier than ever before. Each company has created easy setup methods so non tech savvy business owners can manage their own basic ads. However, these easy ad setups usually cost more money than if we were to manage and fine tune the ads for you.

Here's an example of how you have to organize your deadline dates according to needed lead times for a newspaper ad, online ads, and social networking.

Holiday	Date	Traditional	Google AdWords	Facebook Ad	Website Update
Valentine's Day	2/14	1/27	1/6	1/31	1/6
Mother's Day	5/11	4/25	4/18	5/1	4/18
Independence Day	7/4	6/20	6/6	6/27	6/6
Halloween	10/31	10/17	10/3	10/24	10/3
Black Friday	11/28	11/3	10/27	11/20	10/27

As you can see, the lead time for Google AdWords is much greater than other media types. This represents the complexity of that medium and time that is needed to create the matching pay per click campaign. In fact, Google requires 7 days lead time to authorize some ads.

Website Updates also have a long lead time because we set up new landing pages to match all the other online and offline campaigns.

Something to consider is that traditional media, like newspaper and direct mail, is usually published within 7 days before a holiday. This creates top-of-mind association between that holiday and your offer.

With digital advertising you have a greater opportunity to promote your special offer 14 to 21 days before. In reality, to get the best online exposure, you should always have your digital ads prepped and ready long before the traditional ads.

This long term planning is where we excel. With our years of experience we already know what events and holidays you will want to plan for and what it takes to get the most people to see you offer, and visit your store.

We will prevent all your important advertising opportunities from slipping by, and your overall marketing ROI will increase as a result.