SBA 504 Interest Rates | March 2024 | 10 Yr:  6.601%, 20 Yr: 6.365%, 25 Yr: 6.285% *rates may vary Learn More »

ACTIVATE Women: Digital Marketing 101

Nov 15, 2022

Featured in 

Written by: Tiffany Honeyman, OpGo Marketing

The world of digital marketing is constantly evolving, making it a challenging and overwhelming task for many business owners.

To be effective, digital marketing requires knowledge of both the places and ways your target audience likes to be interacted with, as well as the ability to measure its effectiveness…and it can feel like a full time job.

At our last ACTIVATE Women session, Tiffanie Honeyman – founder of OpGo Marketing in Fargo – shared what you need to know about marketing online and how you can do it efficiently and effectively.

Here’s what she had to say!

About OpGo Marketing

OpGo Marketing was founded in 2015 as a software company built to measure marketing. My vision for the company was to fill the accountability gap with marketing companies. It seemed marketing companies were not paying close enough attention to the results of marketing investments. OpGo has since grown into a marketing firm that utilizes software that measures marketing. When you “measure” marketing, accountability is baked in.

    Small Business and Women-Owned Business Stats

    • Small businesses are critical to U.S. economic growth. They contribute 65% of all new jobs. Without small businesses, the economy won’t grow.
    • From 2014 to 2019:
      • The number of women-owned businesses increased 21% while all businesses increased only 9%.
      • Total employment for women-owned businesses increased 8% while all businesses increased 1.8%.
      • The share of women-owned businesses of all businesses skyrocketed from 4.6% in 1972 to 42% in 2019.
    • In 2014, non-minority women-owned businesses averaged $198,500 in revenue; by 2019, the average jumped to $218,800
    • As of 2019, women of color account for 50% of all women-owned businesses.
    • North Dakota Women-Owned Business Directory

    Start Up Do’s and Don’ts

    As a business owner, it’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day. Here are some top-of-mind do’s and don’ts:

    Do:

    • Manage by the numbers
    • Network / community involvement
    • Find mentors
    • Continue learning through podcasts & books
    • Attend workshops & webinars

    Don’t:

    • Don’t hire too quickly
    • Don’t spend without a 3-year budget
    • Don’t be afraid to fire an employee
    • Don’t let work take over your life

    Book Recommendation: Predictable Success is a book that helps business owners learn about the stages of business. It’s especially useful for start-ups and giving them an idea of what to expect. The book shares real-life examples of businesses in various stages shown below.

    Digital Marketing

    Digital marketing is a broad topic. Here is some brief information on a few critical topics.

    Marketing Strategy

    When building a marketing strategy, start with your business goals. What does success look like in a three-year and one-year view? From there, do a SWOT analysis on your company to better understand your weaknesses and opportunities. A SWOT analysis will cover your business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. There are many great templates available online to assist you with building out your SWOT analysis. This high-level view is an important step before getting into campaign details.

    Customer Journey

    Once you have your high-level roadmap for the year, start planning your campaigns with the customer journey in mind. Test that journey—is the experience what you anticipated for your prospects and customers? Keep in mind the journey does not end with your ad campaign—you have touchpoints beyond the website. Think about the experience your sales, customer service and support teams bring to the table. It all works together.

    Campaigns | Channels | Targeting | Messaging

    When developing a marketing plan, it’s common to build out multiple campaigns for the year. Campaigns that are multi-channel work best. It allows for a more impactful experience. Cohesive and consistent branding of the campaign will be more memorable. Be sure you have the right team in place to set up your KPI tracking before campaigns start. And be sure your digital marketing team knows how to optimize a campaign. It’s not like TV or radio where you simply “turn it on”. You need a team that will test messaging and monitor campaigns almost daily to be sure they are optimized.

    Branding 

    Branding begins with your company’s reputation. The logo and all other marketing materials are important, but secondary to the way your customers feel after interacting with your company. When we meet with a business, we evaluate past marketing, but we also assess whether or not we feel the company presents a good overall impression. (We have learned that for some businesses, even the best marketing cannot help them until they work on other areas of their business.)

    Measurement | Accountability

    There are many ways to measure success. Assess the overall marketing objective for each of the components of a campaign. Some channels are great for top of the funnel awareness while others are better for lead generation. Often-times, you’ll work both the top and bottom of the funnel in a campaign. If the goal of a channel is awareness and reach, then success would mean a good CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions). If you are measuring based on leads, then you would set a target CAC or Cost/Conv. If you are running a lot of digital campaigns, you’ll want a real-time dashboard to monitor performance.

    Competitor Analysis

    It’s important to understand your competition, but it’s also important to not “chase” your competition. Focus on your “why” and deliver quality–the rest should fall into place. A great way to assess your competition is to review their online presence. There are great software tools that will show you how much traffic their site gets on average per month and you can even see which of their web pages get the most traffic.

    Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

    Search Engine Optimization should be included in every marketing strategy. When you can get organic traffic to your website, the traffic has a higher conversion rate. Earning that credit with your site can take longer for certain keywords, but it’s worth the effort. If you have a solid clean code website with a great customer experience, then it’s a game of continuing to create new content for your audience(s). For more SEO tips, you can go here.

    Digital marketing is already a daunting task, especially when paired with running a business and all the tasks you manage on a day-to-day basis. You are already spread thin and staring a beast in the eyes, but don’t stress and take a deep breath. When you break down digital marketing into the parts mentioned in this blog, it becomes easier to tackle and slightly less stressful.

    Don’t be afraid to ask for help and be sure to utilize your social media as a strong resource guiding you toward further success.

    For more information, visit OpGo Marketing’s website