The concept of the digital marketing alliance is something relatively new when compared to traditional marketing partnerships. The alliance between online marketing platforms allows businesses to gain a broader reach, more traffic and greater engagement with customers than they could achieve working independently. Essentially, the alliance allows businesses to have a larger impact on customers’ lives and allows them to be more relevant in their day-to-day lives. It is this increased relevance that makes the difference between a successful business and one that is not.
Why Should You Care?
Working independently, most businesses can only grow to a certain extent. They may be able to purchase ads and pay for SEO, but beyond that they are on their own. With an alliance, you have the opportunity to leverage the combined efforts of multiple trusted partners to drive more traffic to your site and convert that traffic into paying customers and brand advocates.
In this way, the digital marketing alliance provides many benefits to businesses and the consumer, ranging from increased sales to greater brand awareness and loyalty.
Three Phases To An Effective Alliance
To put it simply, the success of any digital marketing alliance will be based on three factors: Phase one, planing; phase two, execution; and phase three, measurement. Although these three phases might seem straightforward, they can be difficult to achieve simultaneously. This is where strategic planning comes in.
Strategic planning is all about creating a clear picture of the future, understanding your current position and setting key milestones along the way. In addition to this, you will want to put in place clear KPIs to measure your success and determine if you are progressing toward your goal.
Setting Up Phases One And Two
Once you have completed your strategic planning, you can move to the next step and set up phases one and two of your alliance. During these two phases, you will coordinate all the various tasks, from planning content to tracking web traffic. Most importantly, you will want to establish a solid communication channel to make sure that all the partners are working as effectively as possible toward the shared goal of generating more leads and driving revenue.
To start with, you will want to meet with the other two partners in person to establish clear communication channels and a working relationship. You can also meet via conference calls or video meetings to keep interactions high-quality and consistent.
Another important step is to set up a shared office environment where you can all work together. This way, you will have all the necessary tools and resources at your fingertips, as well as a dedicated team member who is available to help and support you 24/7. An office space is important, not only for efficiency, but also for creating a positive working environment. It can also help increase productivity, enabling you to better serve your customers and promote your brand.
Establishing Phase Three
Once you have completed phases one and two, you can move to the final and most important phase of your alliance: establishing phase three. During this phase, you will track all the leads and sales generated from the previous two phases. In addition to this, you will establish benchmarks for the next stage of the alliance, establishing the basis for future collaborations.
You should track all leads, whether they are converted into sales or not. This is because it is quite possible that some of your leads may not end up being customers, but could potentially become brand advocates or collaborators. Having solid leads and a defined target audience allows you to effectively plan your marketing campaigns. Most importantly, you can use this information to make informed decisions regarding your marketing strategy.
Establishing phase three is all about consolidating the gains of the previous two phases and expanding them. To do this, you will want to revisit your goals and set new, long-term objectives based on your analysis of the previous two phases. For example, let’s say that your initial aim was to secure 10,000 monthly visitors to your site by 2020. Now that you have a clear picture of how to get there, you can set a new, longer-term goal of securing 25,000 monthly visitors by 2025.
How Do I Start An Effective Marketing Alliance?
As a brand manager or marketer, you might be wondering how to start an effective marketing alliance. Here are a few tips on how to do this:
Firstly, you should already have a clear idea of your target audience and their needs. Working independently, you may have defined a few key groups of people who you think might be interested in your product or service. Working as part of a team, you can take this one step further and create buyer personas, combining the knowledge you have with what you know about your target audience.
Secondly, you should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Now that you have a detailed marketing plan, it’s time to turn it into action and establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure your progress. In addition to this, you should set a few goals for yourself, such as increasing web traffic or securing a certain number of leads. Setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) goals will help you establish a framework for future collaborations.
To start with, you can identify specific metrics, such as the number of visitors to your site or social media accounts. Measuring the success of an alliance requires a bit of trial and error, as you will not know what metrics to use until you begin to see results. A common mistake that businesses make is to rush into measuring KPIs without a clear idea of what they are. As a result, they often use the wrong metrics or the wrong combination of metrics. The best approach is to use a lot of metrics and measure them over time, taking into account natural variations in the marketplace.
How Do I Measure Success?
If you are looking to measure the success of your alliance, it’s important to set up a clear picture of what you are aiming for. Most importantly, you should have a clear idea of the metrics you will use to determine your success. To begin with, you can track the number of leads generated and the conversion rate. In addition to this, you can look at the amount of web traffic and the retention rate of this traffic. In this way, you will be able to establish whether or not your alliance is making a difference and if it is leading you toward your goal.
Once you have these three pillars in place, the next step is to move to the evaluation phase. Here you will look at all the previous leads, assessing their level of engagement and whether or not they are a good fit for your product or service. In addition to this, you will want to revisit your goals and review whether or not they are still relevant.