The Bold Kiln Digital Marketing Class: 1/n
We have and continue to work with a bunch of startups supporting them on their marketing efforts, with specific attention to their digital marketing as well.
This is the first in a series of posts with our thoughts, insights and observations on the same. Please send feedback / suggestions to social@boldkiln.com
Today, we elaborate on how to approach digital marketing from a first principle point of view, to (help) ensure whatever you’re doing is
a) relevant and,
b) effective.
1. Business Objectives:
Define your business objective. This is crucial. Don’t be doing digital for the heck of it / because it’s cool / because how can I not / …
Figure out why you need to be doing digital marketing and what outcome do you want from it. This is your business objective.
Examples of business objectives could be: Product sales, app installs, brand building, customer education, awareness drive, product validation, hype creation … Sure — digital marketing may well help with more than one of these — but choose that one thing (at max two) you want the most to nail down your business objective.
2. Modus Operandi:
Once you figure out your business objective, you need to set how you’re going to go about achieving it — your MO (modus operandi). For instance whether your MO should be to conduct an influencer campaign / content marketing / paid advertising to push sales / brand collaborations to create hype or a simple offline marketing. Ex: If your business objective is to get sales, content marketing might not be the best MO to go with but maybe straightforward paid advertising could work. So, choose your MO intelligently instead of putting your energy in trying out a whole basket of things some of which won’t help.
3. Platform Choice:
Next question to answer: what platforms do you be active on, and leverage to execute your MO. Every platform is unique — so you need to leverage different platforms for different things. Whether it be Facebook for pushing out content to a targeted audience or Instagram to leverage user generated content or Twitter for engaging with people by building conversations. Choose the platform that compliments your objective and helps you execute your MO in the best possible manner.
4. Execute (Duh!):
Once you are sorted with the above, observe and see what’s working best for you. Once you know what’s working best, work on every aspect that is required to get it executed. Don’t delay things! As CEO Abhishek Agarwal said, ‘’Money is not the constraint. Time is’’ and so, don’t sit on things and overthink on it’s execution.
Execute. If you see it works — keep at it. Doesn’t — go do something else.
5. Review & Refine:
Cannot emphasise enough the importance of taking a step back, to periodically review the inputs-output equation and refine your actions from the insights therein. Make sure you are tracking, measuring, analysing and driving intelligence out of every aspect of your marketing strategy and its execution. This is something you should take back to your platforms, to your MO and to your business objective.
And then take a few steps back, and iterate on the entire flow from scratch.
We hope this was somewhat useful. It is very basic — but intended to be that exactly. Please send feedback / suggestions to social@boldkiln.com
