As your business grows, it can be easy to let your marketing get out of control. Your message may change as your business changes. This can leave your prospects feeling confused. Confusion leads to apathy and a decline in readers, subscribers and conversions and sales.
The good news is that a few steps can help you bring the shine and consistency back to your marketing message.
Step 1: Review Your Calls to Action
Generally there is a call to action on every piece of content that you publish. It may be as simple as a “read more” link. Or it may be a more advanced statement designed to motivate a purchase. Review your calls to action. Look for:
Consistency – Is the voice and message consistent? If not, review the calls to action that are most effective and repeat the language. Go through your content and change the call to action. Re-publish some of the relevant pieces and test the results.
Keywords – Are you using the same keywords throughout? Are you using keywords that are timely and relevant? Do a bit of keyword research right now and identify the words you should be using to garner traffic and to capture your prospect’s attention.
Broken Links – Make sure all the links in your calls to action are working and effectively linking to the appropriate page.
Step 2: Review Your Headlines
Headlines not only provide a means to capture attention, they also help send a message to your prospects. They help establish your voice. Follow the same steps for your headlines as you just followed for your calls to action. Also review the headlines that garner the most attention and mirror that language and voice as you tweak your headlines.
Step 3: Review Your Subject Lines
Your email marketing is only as good as the subject lines that work and get your readers to open your emails. Review your open rates and click-through rates to see which were most effective and which were the biggest duds. Adjust your subject lines going forward based on the trends and insights garnered by this review.
Step 4: Identify Your Successes
Review the sales pages and content that is most successful in your business. What do those pages have in common? Is the message and voice similar? Can this voice and message be communicated throughout the rest of your website and marketing materials?
Step 5: Going Forward
Identify your message. Who are you, what are you about and what do you have to offer your customers and prospects? Ideally, you already know what your marketing message is, but maybe it has changed as your business has changed.
Identify your current marketing message and create a content plan that embraces that message. Also review your website and make sure that it consistently communicates your brand and your marketing message. Identify places where you can make changes and update your site to match your marketing message and goals.
It’s not unusual for a marketing message to become obscured or lost as a business grows. Stop. Assess and evaluate. What do you want to say and how can you update your existing marketing to reflect a consistent and powerful message?
