Cohesive marketing is an important part of your marketing strategy. Social media and email marketing are important, but a cohesive marketing plan is more cost-effective and profitable. At Inner Spark Creative, we have put together a guide to learn more about a cohesive marketing plan and how to get started with one.
What Is Cohesive Marketing?
A cohesive marketing strategy is a marketing plan that promotes a brand on different platforms with the same goal. All elements of a business are aligned in a cohesively marketed company. This means a campaign or advertising strategies are consistent across multiple platforms. Long-term cohesive marketing plans are extremely profitable and effective.
Benefits Of A Cohesive Marketing Strategy
There are many benefits of creating a cohesive marketing strategy to help improve and promote your business. Being cohesive also makes your business’s reputation consistent not only among different platforms but with all your communication.
How to Create a Cohesive Marketing Plan
With a little bit of time and effort, creating a cohesive marketing plan is not hard. If you know your business and your audience, it can be done quickly. Here are some steps to help you get started.
1. Objectives
Without any direction in your plan, it will fail. You need goals and objectives to figure out the direction of your campaign.
- Goal: Long-term target you are looking to reach
- Objective: specific target you want to achieve in a shorter time frame to reach your broader goal
For example, a goal could be to increase revenue, and your objective could be to increase engagement with followers on Instagram by the end of the first quarter.
Objectives must be measurable. Some popular measurements in marketing are:
- Click-through rate
- Cost-per-lead
- Bounce rate
- Sales conversion rate
- Cost-per-mile
- Customer lifetime value
Once you figure out your goals and objectives, it is time to begin your marketing plan.
2. Brand Voice
Brand voice is a distinct personality and tone your brand uses in its communications. Communications that represent your brand include writing, speaking, social media captions, and presentations.
Here are some questions to ask when determining your brand voice:
- What do you want the default tone of your brand to be? Could be friendly, serious, funny, inspirational, informative, etc.
- What types of words would you like to use or avoid? Do you want to use a lot of verbs? Compound words? Contractions?
- Do you want to use emojis or not?
- How much humor would you like your brand voice to have?
- What are the target keywords you want to associate with your brand and how often do you want to use them?
This is an important step for brands trying to be cohesive. You should use your brand voice across all platforms to keep everything consistent.
3. Consistent Resources
Your marketing strategy should be used across multiple platforms, but prioritize areas where customers can interact with your brand. For example, information posted on social media should also be on your website but can be advertised through different social media platforms or email lists. Since you will be on multiple platforms at once, it is important to have a central set of resources you will be using and picking from.
Some examples you might want to choose from for digital marketing are:
- Videos
- Blogs
- Graphics such as infographics or edited images
- Podcasts
- Q&A’s
- Gifs
These resources should be broad and used to talk about topics that are frequently in your marketing. For example, a business might use a series of blog posts to explain how to use a product and also post a video tutorial on social media. Once you know what marketing tools you are comfortable with and how to use them, your marketing plan will be much easier to make cohesive.
4. Create Content And Adapt
Once you have a branding guide, resources, and found your brand’s voice, you are ready to create content for your brand. The content you are making for social media, your website, and distributing through email may look different, but should be the same campaign. You must make adjustments as you go to adapt to your audience and how each message is received by the audience based on feedback. Your marketing content for each week should follow the same theme. They should have similar links, resources, wording, and actions you want your customers to take. You also need to adapt your social media to the reactions of your audience.
Some ways to increase your SEO (search engine optimization) is to:
- Use hashtags
- Personalize metadata of your images
- Use target keywords to boost your text
Once you have created content for your social media content and email marketing, you are ready to start marketing your campaigns!
5. Evaluate As You Go
You need to continuously evaluate your content as you are releasing your marketing. If you are not reaching your goals and objectives, it is important to perfect your process to make it work. Trial and error is an important part of marketing. If you do not change your plans as you are going along, your plan may fail with changing trends and your audience’s wants and needs.
How We Can Help
At Inner Spark Creative, we are a full-service marketing agency that wants to help you with all your needs. We offer a diverse range of services and are ready to bring your business into new territory. Contact us to develop a cohesive marketing plan, or learn more about what we offer to help advance your business.