Creating A Digital Marketing Plan When You Know Virtually NOTHING About Marketing
My team and I have this app in the oven and we needed to get the word out. We don’t have a lot of funding so renting a billboard is obviously not in budget, but hey, social media is free for the most part. Problem is, we aren’t exactly marketing experts. Prior to finishing this article, I was no more educated in digital marketing than the average 10-year old. If you’re similarly struggling with how to create a simple digital marketing plan, then scroll down for some crystallized wisdom.
The Marketing Funnel
The Marketing Funnel is a conceptual model that illustrates the stages a potential customer goes through before making a purchase decision.
Like a funnel, there’s a larger audience in the beginning and progressively less as we move through stages. The initial model was made by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898, but it has stayed relevant throughout the centuries. If you go through marketing tutorials from recent years, you’ll still find that it boils down to The Funnel.
- Awareness: prospective customers acknowledge the need for a solution to their problem.
- Interest: prospective customers seek more information about a product.
- Desire: prospective customers believe the product is their current best option.
- Action: prospective customers: prospective customer becomes an active customer.
You will want to cater your digital marketing content so it penetrates every stage a customer could be in. Here’s how.
Creating A Content Plan
What Content Should I Make?
There’s a lot of content types you could be making, but research shows that one particular type stands out. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that short-form content is what they’re talking about. All the big companies are doing it: TikTok, Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts. Short-form videos receive 2.5 times more engagement than long ones and most marketers believe it to be the most engaging format.
A few simple tips on how to edit an engaging short video:
- Short means short: the ideal length of short videos is 20–60 seconds long.
- Add some subtle music: subtle is key here. You want it audible enough to make your videos less awkward, but not too loud that you’ll get sarcastic “Love it! I can almost hear what you’re saying over the BGM”’ comments from viewers.
- Keep the shot moving: this could be in the form of cutting to another shot every so often, adding text captions, or adding moving graphics on the screen.
Remember the Marketing Funnel mentioned, like, a minute ago? Great, you should apply that here. Generally, your short videos will fall into three categories:
- Attraction
This type of video is meant to raise awareness about your products, videos like quick tips or “What your life could look like if there was a tool that could save you 5 hours of studying”. It points out a problem your prospective customers have and a solution you could offer.
2. Nurture
After finding out about your product, some customers will want to find out more about it. To hook their interest, videos are FAQs or Behind The Scene videos.
3. Conversion
To close the deal, you want your customers to think that you’re the best solution they could get. To kindle that desire, you can create videos about customer reviews or testimonies.
Ideally, you will create the videos according to how populated each funnel stage is. Your content plan should be 50% attraction-type, 30% nurture-type, and 20% conversion-type.
How Often Should I Make Content?
As a thumb rule, you should be making a minimum of 4 short videos per week when you’re just starting out. Say a month is 4 weeks long, that means 16 short videos a month.
Does that sound like a lot? A lot of people think so. In fact, it’s the most common reason why marketers hesitate to adopt videos as part of their strategy. But it doesn’t have to be that time-consuming. A good tip is to batch record a whole month’s worth of videos in one go before editing any of it. That way, you don’t go back and forth from camera to desk. You can take a few days to stock your repository of recordings and then spend the next few days editing. When you get the hang of it, one short video could take only 15 minutes of editing. The rest of the month? Just upload the videos every few days and think of next month’s content in the meantime.
How Do I Generate Content Fast?
Constantly churning out content is not easy. Even the most creative person will run out of ideas at some point. When you need to get the gears in your head turning, some external help would be good.
With AnswerThePublic, you can find out what people are asking about certain topics and find out what questions about your product people want answers to.
For example, my team and I are developing a note-taking app. AnswerThePublic generates this wheel of questions we can use as a starting point for video topics.
It seems “Which note taking method is best?” is a highly searched question, so we could create a video on the pros and cons of a few note-taking methods and highlight what type of note-takers will get the most benefit from our app.
2. ChatGPT
Is it really a 2024 article without a mention of AI somewhere?
Here are a few prompts you can use to ask ChatGPT to accelerate your content generation. Sometimes it generates already solid ideas, other times you could use them as starting points to polish.
Video Ideas
I want you to act as a digital marketing expert. Give me 10 topic ideas for short-form videos on the topic of <insert your topic here>.
Video Scripting
I want you to act as a marketing video copywriter. Write me a 30-second script on <insert your video topic here> along with recommendations of what video clips I should use.
3. JasperAI
Well what do you know, this article was written with the help of JasperAI.
Deep learning capabilities, voice and tone adjustment, SEO optimization, plagiarism checker, and many more– JasperAI can help you streamline everything digital marketing from blog posts to video scripts. The downside is that it’s not free forever, I only managed to use it here because I’m on the 7-day free trial.
4. JuniaAI
Well what do you know, this article was written with the help of JasperAI AND JuniaAI. JuniaAI, released last year, is a strong contender for JasperAI as it seems to offer what JasperAI does, but for cheaper. JuniaAI offers a permanent free plan while JasperAI only offers a 7-day free trial.
Of course, this article barely scratches the surface of marketing. I only hope that it gives you an idea of actionable steps you can take to create a digital marketing plan as a beginner. See you in the next one 👋
References
BronHiggs. (2016). An example of a typical purchase funnel. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_funnel#/media/File:The_Purchase_Funnel.jpg
Wyzowl. (2024). Video Marketing Statistics 2024. Wyzowl. https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/
Mosby, A. (2024). Short Form Video Statistics Of 2024 (Usage & Trends). Yaguara. https://www.yaguara.co/short-form-video-statistics/
McDowell, W. (2023). Social Media Marketing for Beginners — COMPLETE Strategy for 2023. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrBqVGYQSdU
Wang, L. (2023). Digital Marketing 101 — A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Marketing (Explainer Video). Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUniTVTi_Jk