Creating a Website Marketing Plan: Working With Leadflask

What makes a website great? What makes some marketing campaigns spectacular while others fail?

It’s not just one thing. It’s a lot of things working together to create something special.

At Leadflask, we like ambitious website and digital marketing projects, because it’s where we’re able to separate ourselves from other agencies that may just be interested in reaching the finish line and collecting a paycheck. 

Here, we believe that if we can help your organization and brand to continually grow, it will be better for both parties in the long run.

So how do we do that? That’s what we’re excited to explore with you in this article.

Our Core Values

At Leadflask, we approach everything with your business in mind. We don’t do cookie-cutter solutions, and we take the time to cater a plan to your specific needs.

We also believe in continuous improvement, so that no website is ever truly “done,” but is a work in progress that can improve as we gather more data to enhance the experience of your visitors and improve your bottom line.

RELATED: Working With Leadflask: Enhance Your Digital Presence

With that in mind, let’s look at how we’ll help you build a great marketing plan that utilizes your website as your greatest digital asset.

From Engagement to Project Execution

In the previous part of our “Working With Leadflask” series, we talked about our engagement process, where we get to know you and your brand - your goals, competition and ideas - and signed a proposal for a project or ongoing work to help you build your brand.

With that done, the next step is getting into the details of your project and executing it.

Our process adjusts to match the project, but there are certain steps that we follow every single time to ensure that we’re not sacrificing quality:

• Discovery deep dive – gives us a chance to learn more and ask unique questions about your business
• User persona discovery – is when we learn who interacts with your brand and how we can better target them
• Competitor discovery – is how we identify your competitors and analyze their digital presence for opportunities
• User persona review – is when we share and ask for feedback on our completed user data
• Competitor analysis – is when we share research about strong and weak points in competing businesses
• User intent mapping – is when we explore your customers’ reasons for interacting with your business
• User intent map review – is when we share user intent research and identify ways to satisfy users
• Create your marketing plan – this is where we put everything together into a comprehensive marketing plan catered to your company.

By the end of this process, you will have a thorough understanding of your digital presence, strengths and weaknesses, and a roadmap to identify and target ideal customers through a variety of strategies.

Discovery Deep Dive (“All the Details, Please”)

Meeting length: 1 hour

During the Discovery Deep Dive, we want to learn everything about how your company works and its challenges. At this point, we already have a basic understanding; however, this session allows us to discuss topics that may have yet to arise in previous discussions.  

We’ll ask specific questions tailored to your company, which means no two clients will ever have the same Discovery Deep Dive session. 

The topics will vary greatly, but a few basic examples include:

• How does your company run? What teams or roles are most prominent?
• What are your company’s core values? 
• What are you most proud of within your company?
• How does your business make money? (What products/services do you offer?)
• What products/services do well, and what could do better?
• What aspects of your company or services help you grow?

The Discovery Deep Dive lays the foundation for successful strategies and future discussions. We often find this session helps our clients see their company in a new light. For this meeting, we ask that you come prepared with an open mind and a description of what makes your company unique.

User Persona Discovery (“Who’s Your Ideal Customer?”)

Meeting length: 1 hour

How well do you know your target customers? That’s what we want to know. And then we want to go deeper to develop a deeper understanding that will help your brand position itself more strongly.

During the User Persona Discovery session, we invite you to explore your current and target audience. By empathizing with potential audiences, we can start to create user personas.

A user persona is a fictional character used to represent the type of person buying a service or product from your company. Think of the User Persona Discovery process as designing a character for a novel. We’ll brainstorm everything from your customer’s age and financial demographic to their mindset and personal beliefs about life.

We want to know who your users are, how they feel, and why they engage with your brand. Some questions we may ask during this session include: 

• What are your user's goals and intentions?
• What goal are you trying to accomplish for users?
• What media devices or apps are they most likely to use on a daily basis?
• How can we empathize with your users?
• What would help your users?

In addition, we also want to know who wouldn't be a good fit for your brand. Knowing who we shouldn't target helps us hone in on specific demographics and prevents us from expending resources in unnecessary directions.

This process is important because it helps us empathize with everyone interacting with your brand. Once we understand who your users are and why they're here, we can market to them successfully. 

During this brainstorming session, we want to gather what you already know about your users. We'd like you to come prepared with an idea of who interacts with your brand. You may find it helpful to reflect on past customer interactions before the session.

Why Exclude People From Marketing Efforts?

No company has an infinite budget for marketing, and some types of people are simply going to be more likely to interact with your brand and use its products or services than others.

By eliminating the less likely demographics, we can help the money you spend on marketing efforts to go further than it would if you were simply trying to reach everyone possible.

Competitor Discovery (“Who Competes For Your Customers?”)

Meeting length: 1 hour

The Competitor Discovery discussion explores your direct, indirect, and inspirational competitors. We'll work together to determine who your competitors are, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, and compare them to your company. 

We'll cover three categories of competitors:

Direct competitors target the same audience and offer the same products. Indirect competitors target similar audiences but may sell different products. Inspirational competitors are successful companies in your industry that inspire your business strategy. 

The goal of the Competitor Discovery session is to get in tune with your competitor's strengths and weaknesses. To do this, we may ask:

• What do your competitors do differently to attract users?
• What's something you admire about your competitors?
• What's something you think you do better than your competitors?
• What is the price difference between your competitors?
• How do you stand out?

To prepare for this session, you should identify at least one competitor for each category (direct, indirect, and inspirational). Consider how these companies perform and why they're in their current position. 

Don't worry if you need help identifying competitors; we'll also come into the discussion with a few competitors to explore. 

User Persona Review (“Does This Look Like Your Typical Customer?”)

Meeting length: 1 hour

During the User Persona Review, we'll present your completed user personas. We'll explain the traits of each user and how we can keep these traits in mind as we cater to each persona type.

After we share the data, we'll open up the discussion to answer any questions or concerns you may have. We want to hear your feedback on the completed personas.

Here are some questions you may want to keep in mind, in addition to ones that come up naturally:

• Does each user persona make sense to you?
• Is there anything you found surprising about each user persona?
• Can you empathize with and picture each persona in real-world interaction with your company?

The User Persona Review puts us on the same page regarding your audience. Ideally, this should evoke memories of past and current customer experiences. 

Competitor Analysis (“How Can We Be Better Than the Rest?”)

Meeting length: 1 hour

During the Competitor Analysis, we'll present and discuss insights and research into your competitors. This session should give you a better understanding of where and why your competitors fail and succeed. 

The Competitor Analysis session aims to create a successful plan to fill current gaps in the market and learn from prevailing strategies. 

We want to avoid copying your competitor's tactics. Instead, we'll aim to improve upon what your competitors do well to maximize user conversions. These tactics are subject to change in the future, especially as new competition shifts appear. When this happens, it may be worth doing another set of competitor studies.

User Intent Mapping (“How Are People Engaging With You?”)

Meeting length: 1 hour

A user intent map is a diagram that follows your users’ potential intentions as they interact with your brand. During the User Intent Map Collaboration session, we'll brainstorm ideas about what problem your users are looking for you to solve.  

The user intent map helps us identify your users' needs and in what order they have them. Mapping your user's intentions will help us create a satisfactory user-centric experience.

Like the User Persona Discovery session, you should put yourself in your customers' shoes for the User Intent Map Collaboration. To help facilitate the discussion, we may ask:

• Why would a customer come to your company? Why would someone choose your company over another?
• What need are you satisfying, and how well are you accomplishing that goal?
• What are some common questions you receive from your customers?

We also want to learn about your user’s intentions. Are they there for a specific product or service you offer? Or are there other products you offer that are usually surprising to customers, and they come away with a new purchase after interacting with your brand?

The fancy marketing terms for these are natural intent (specific product) and opportunistic intent (something they learn by interacting with you). But the point is that both can be great ways to generate interest and sales.

More than anything, collaborating with you in determining user intent allows us to map out marketing strategies that will work best for them. 

User Intent Map Review (“The Path Forward”)

Meeting length: 1 hour

During the User Intent Map Review session, we'll go over the current intent map. 

The funny thing about intent maps is that they’re always evolving. The map may shift in the future because the products your company may offer and the markets you may attract can change. This is normal.

Our goal during the session is to get your feedback, identify any missing points, and make sure you’re happy with the current map structure. At the end of the session, we'll discuss how we can cater our strategies to satisfy each user's intention at the right time.  

User intent maps are important because they help us identify what information users need and when they need it. We'll work together to cultivate viable improvement strategies using the information in the intent map. 

The best way to prepare for this session is to reflect on your own intentions and experiences when you interact with brands. At the end of the review, we want you to understand why your users interact with your company and the plan to satisfy all intents. 

Content Strategy Example

For example, let’s say a big part of your users’ intentions is to learn more about what makes your products special. 

In that case, we’ll want to create content catered to that intention and give your users all the details they could want about your product offerings. Whereas before the intent map, each product may have only had a brief description. 

Creating Your Marketing Strategy: Putting It All Together

This is what we’ve been working toward! And past this point, we’ll create and eventually execute the comprehensive marketing strategy that we’ve built collaboratively.

We understand that, in some cases, you may be looking for quick proposals and fixes to short-term problems. However, this is different from how we prefer to operate. We want to create immersive digital experiences and help you reach your bigger-picture goals.

This takes time. But it’s worth it when you can confidently push toward your largest goals.

Each step of the engagement process is vital for creating a successful longer-term partnership. If we both agree on the process, we can move forward together and continue to go into more depth. Our next step will be creating a marketing strategy, which could include several detailed proposals. 

Continuous Improvement

We want to be a part of continuously improving your business. It's important to us to know if you're committed to working together long-term. 

The process above, and the plan it results in, are all designed with that long-term perspective in mine.

Ready to start a project with us? We're excited to help you achieve your bigger-picture goals. You can get started by submitting our contact form or by giving us a call.