Exposure Plan & Sales Funnel
Exposure Plan (Also Known As a Marketing Plan)- The uniqueness of your Brand enables you to develop a targeted exposure plan with a strong focus on social media. Ultimately, your exposure plan should be to create, generate and encourage awareness, interest, interaction, shares, follows, and more customers. Your Exposure Plan is a guide to keep you on message as you drive traffic down your Sales Funnel.
Exposure Plan Development Phase
a. Exposure Plan
b. Market Share & Target Demographics
c. Sales Funnel
d. Annual & Monthly Content Calendar(s)
Your Exposure Plan is a one-page document that you base all your exposure efforts off of. We like to build a fresh Exposure Plan every year to ensure we are maintaining a high-level of knowledge on our industry and how it is evolving.
Start with your intent. Your yearly intent is where you place value. It is where you will spend money to make money. Your intent can be one thing or many. Try not to limit yourself if you feel your scope is larger than most.
Next is your budget. Your budget is what you plan to spend for the year on your branding efforts. As you grow, this number will grow. That is how you expand your audience. Don’t shortchange yourself on this, a typical marketing budget usually averages around 5-25% of a company’s total budget, with approximately 30% of the marketing budget going directly to online and social media marketing.
After that, define the duration of each Exposure Campaign. We recommend beginning with a 90-day cycle for all of your planned campaigns. 90 days will give you a great perspective on your efforts and results.
The next step is a quick paragraph on Topics/Events. This should be an extension of your intent, as it is meant to briefly outline high-level commitments you are aware of for the year. This section helps you stay on message throughout the year as you build your Monthly Content Calendar(s).
Next up is establishing a Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) tracking code. Your UTM tracking code is a snippet added to the end of a URL and allows you to track clicks and distinguish traffic sources within your Exposure Campaigns. Standardizing this sequence based on specific Exposure Campaigns will make identification of specific efforts far easier to see. Keep in mind that you will not always be able to set this yourself. In instances such as Google Ads, it is set for you and integrates to your website’s analytics.
You can also choose the location(s) of potential consumers that you want to market to by making your Exposure Campaign more specific to chosen regions. Locations might vary depending on different products or services, which can be local, regional, national, or global.
Lastly, you’ll need to choose your Platform Focus, such as Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc. Not every platform works for every business or industry. The simple fact is that digital platforms are the most effective way to get your company in front of potential customers. This is not to say you need to be an expert on all platforms, but you should at least familiarize yourself with them. When you are first starting out, try a few of them out and see what happens.
Market Share & Target Demographics
When you are just starting out, analyzing Market Shares for potential competitors is a futile effort. Unless you are building a Business Plan for a bank or trying to attract investors, analyzing competitors’ Market Share will do little for your overall plan. You should certainly be familiar with your immediate competitors and how they attract customers, but knowing their Market Share will not help you establish yourself within the industry.
Instead, you should be aware of the overall Market Share for your industry as well as the Local Market Share for your area. You need to know there is money to be made and a piece of the pie for you to take. From there, you can set your plan in place and begin to track your Market Share vs. your closest competitors over a predetermined period of time.
Market Share- So what is a Market Share? Simply, it is the overall revenue of a specific product or service within an industry divided by the overall revenue your product or service has brought in within that industry. For example, if Industry A generates $200 million in revenue over the course of a predetermined period of time, and your business generates $20 million in revenue during the same time period, your Market Share is 10% of the total market revenue of Industry A.
Our approach is simple and is designed to easily show you the big picture with your slice of the pie inside of it.
Target Demographics
Next up is establishing your Target Demographics, the potential consumers who, by marketing to them, will bring the greatest potential sales to your Company.. You could literally spend days on breaking down specific demographics, though you can simplify your efforts by breaking down demographics into five primary categories:
Age
Gender
Location
Industry
Interests
These five categories will keep your Exposure Plan simple. Take a look at the image below to see how we cover Target Demographics.
Sales Funnel- Your Sales Funnel should be fun to build, analyze and alter as necessary. Imagine yourself as a consumer. On some level, we are all consumers, so this should come easy. Now think of something you purchased online recently. If you didn’t intend on purchasing the item when you woke up that morning, how did you end up reaching the purchase stage? If you did plan to purchase, how did you decide between so many competing brands? Understanding the mind of a consumer is easy, just think about how you shop. From there, it’s as simple as mapping out the buying process from initial exposure to purchase.
In keeping with our belief in simplicity, take a look at this image to see how we view a functional Sales Funnel.
Don’t focus to deep on the Sales Funnel right now, we will show you how you can turn this into an invaluable tool for analysis later on.
Next, let’s jump into the structure of Annual and Monthly Content Calendar(s).
Annual and Monthly Content Calendar(s) will help keep you focused on your intended message, which should be outlined in your Exposure Plan. If you have planned events or holidays which you want to target, keep in mind you should start your Exposure Campaign months in advance. For example, if you plan to offer sales for July 4th, you’ll need your Exposure Campaign in place at least three months prior, with targeted marketing going live at least 30 days in advance. Maintaining an Annual Content Calendar is simply tracking known commitments for the year, planned events, topics to cover, sale efforts, etc. This is meant to be the higher-level view of your year from which you will build your Monthly Content Calendar(s).
Social Media Platforms- We are all very familiar with social media platforms; how they look and feel, how they function, how to use them, and most importantly, how they bring us down our preferred brand sales funnels. Now it is time for you to build your own. Having social media pages are not enough, you must use them with purpose in mind. There are two main exposure routes to go down when it is time to drive traffic: (1) Organic and (2) paid. The most successful approach is to do both, at least in the beginning while you are building your audience. The theory here is that the paid method of advertising will increase your audience while the organic one will build brand loyalty and word of mouth exposure.
Organic Posting- Organic posting is everything you do on social media that does not involve paying for an ad. It is posting on your page, someone else’s page, in a group, in a DM, responding to comments, etc. This method generates brand loyalty because it is your personal interaction with your audience. The more strategically impactful your postings and comments are, the more likely you will generate far reaching conversations. Remember, social media algorithms are based on a popularity-first system.
Pay Per Click (PPC)- PPC campaigns can be scary for a new business owner, we get it. This is where your carefully planned Exposure Plan will take over. You are paying money for exposure here, so you will certainly want to make sure your branded message is professional and in accordance with your Brand Identity. It should be engaging, interactive, and alluring. You can also make it funny and trendy within the scope of your Brand Identify. The whole goal is to get perfect strangers to be interested in you and your message. See how it all starts to come together? Your ultimate goal with PPC campaigns should be to generate awareness and increase the sales of your product or service.
Each ad you run should have a Call to Action. A Call to Action is simply your way of helping guide your audience into your Sales Funnel. Examples would be “Click Here to Learn More,” Shop Now,” or “Read More.” Depending on your industry, it may be more prudent to guide your audience with less aggressive Call to Actions.
Social Media Platform Tip: Avoid using your personal social media account(s) as your business platform. Instead, create a separate social media account(s) using your company name as the username and your logo as the profile image. You may not be able to get your exact name since there are so many claimed names out there, just get as close as you can to keep with your branded image.
Here is a list of some of the popular social media sites and what they are used for.
-
Facebook – Family & friends.
-
Twitter – Town hall & news.
-
Instagram – Image and short video entertainment.
-
YouTube – Short and long video education and entertainment.
-
Pinterest – Image based entertainment.
-
LinkedIn – Business & networking.
-
Podcast – Educational & entertainment.
Google Account - Google ads are directly linked to your website and products/services which build exposure and drive traffic directly to your Sales Funnel. The higher the Google ranking, the greater the conversion rate. 1st page ranking is the make it or break it point for paid ads. Typically, 1st page Google searches consume 95% of customer sales.
1. SEOs should be meticulously researched and assigned to each product/page.
2. Content should be relevant and complementary of SEOs.
3. Onsite and offsite linking should be utilized to connect all aspects of online presence.
4. Site construction should be built and optimized to support SEO strategy, i.e., headers, bold fonts (where applicable), proper image placement and sizing, proper image descriptions, linked social media, dynamic “About Us” page, etc.
Sales Funnel Platforms
Website- A key component to your Exposure Plan and Sales Funnel is a website. Website development has become increasingly user friendly to the non-coder. Plug-n-play websites such as WIX, GoDaddy, Shopify etc. have given the everyday business owner the full control necessary to build and brand as needed. Before you begin building you should have an idea of how you would like your website to look and function. The best approach here is to create a Site Map first before you start constructing your website.
Site Map- Your Site Map is such a valuable tool when you need that 10k mile view on how your website should look and function. It is the blueprint for your website. Constructed correctly, it will show you page configurations, content flow, internal and external linking, social media linking, shopping cart integration, and so much more.
Site Map- Your Site Map is such a valuable tool when you need that 10k mile view on how your website should look and function. It is the blueprint for your website. Constructed correctly, it will show you page configurations, content flow, internal and external linking, social media linking, shopping cart integration, and so much more.
Key components to your Site Map Strategy should involve the Form, Fit, Function perspective of business operations
*Form (Visual Appeal & Branding)
*Fit (Content Relevancy)
*Function (Intended Use)
Website Build- The first step to building your website is to establish your domain name. This is your company URL, you know, the sequence of words, numbers, special characters etc. you type into the search bar to reach a website. Once you have that established, we recommend setting up a professional email address through your chosen platform. This just adds a bit of professionalism that will help your branded image.
Here are a few things to keep in mind while you are building your website:
· SEO’s and Meta Tags are key components to ensuring google can index your website properly. We will dive into how to do this in our website building tutorial (currently under construction).
· Images and graphics. It's good practice to develop your own branded images and graphics as often as time and money allow. This ensures a consistent look and feel is always accomplished. It will also force you to stay on message when it comes to your Branded image.
Manage your growing customer base with Hubspots cutting edge software. Click Here to get started.
Once your Exposure Plan is complete, you can move on to building your Exposure Campaigns. Click Here to get started.
