8-Step Gap Analysis: Digital Marketing

If you are selling products and services business-to-business, via distribution channels, or direct to consumer, we recommend using our quick gap analysis tool before initiating or expanding your digital marketing plans.

Experience tells us that this gap analysis proves incredibly useful in accurately determining your current performance as compared to your true potential. In other words, by pinpointing gaps you are able to compare current/actual results against your desired outcomes and goals.

Ultimately, we believe there are two reasons you should do a gap analysis, as follows:

(1) Paid search and social media channels, marketing automation, email, events, and organic SEO all require a commitment of time and budget. Realistically gauging where you are now will help to form the right roadmap for creating demand.

(2) Key performance indicators (KPIs) cannot determine your current growth stage—startup, emerging, established—or your current online visibility, brand recognition, market demand, available content and sales starters, buyer behaviors, website experience, and sales process.

So, with this said, take a step back and see how your company stacks up by considering the questions and results in this Digital Marketing Gap Analysis.


STEP 1
Does your product or service require long sales cycles and conversations with a representative?

[YES] Nurture prospects with a content marketing strategy that follows an editorial calendar.

[NO] Consider a direct response campaign initiative to identify buyers and spur immediate purchase.


STEP 2
Does your product offer a free trial period, quality images, online demo, or self-diagnostic?

[YES] Ensure that your web pages include prominent promotion and ways to engage.

[NO] Determine what sales starters you have to lure prospects and convert on your web forms.


STEP 3
Can buyers purchase your products or services online without speaking to a representative?

[YES] Ensure that your e-comm strategy integrates with your CRM, order management system, etc.

[NO] Ensure that your web pages include prominent promotion to engage sales or customer support.


STEP 4
Are your target buyers proactively seeking products and services that you offer?

[YES] Survey customers to see where they hangout before dropping lines in the water.

  • For Overall Online Presence, start with market analysis to see where your competition is getting traffic from.
  • For Search Marketing & Organic SEO, start with keyword planning to understand audience preferences.
  • For Social Media, start by analyzing how your competition interacts with prospects and vice versa.
  • For Online Engagement Automation, see what is preferred—email, text message, webinars, retargeting.
  • For Industry Specific application of online marketing, consider focus groups and market testing.

[NO] Consider offline tactics to drive demand—tradeshows, associations, direct mail, etc.


STEP 5
Are your target buyers likely to click on sponsored ads via search, social, retargeting?

[YES] A 30-day pilot campaign based on keyword and competitive research will help determine the strength of your ads and offerings and inform broader marketing plans.

[NO] You could set the goals of your campaigns as awareness builders and competitive disrupters to gain attention vs. direct and immediate lead generators.


STEP 6
Are your target buyers searching for local providers?

[YES] Leverage Google My Business to support not just local SEO and appear in purchasers search results, but also to appear on maps for them to navigate to your physical location.

[NO] Consider leveraging Google My Business to generate verified reviews and build credibility for new prospects researching your company.


STEP 7
Do buyers have competitive options to your product or service?

[YES] Differentiate your value proposition and call-to-action to steer buyer interest to you?

[NO] Define how you will convince people to try something new (e.g. regulatory, market conditions)?


STEP 8
How do you perceive your brand recognition on a scale from 1 to 10 (10 being the highest)?

[If under 5] Consider a rebranding initiative, corporate website optimization, and/or a search & social media overhaul.

[If over 8] Maintain successful programs with high-value content and determine new footprints and growth initiatives for upsell and expansion opportunities.


If you need an experienced third-party perspective to sort out your findings, give us a shout.

Have Valuable Content? Try Some Media Buys

List buying is easy. And there are good and bad sources based on your budget. In business-to-business (B2B) sales and marketing, working the list is hard because the contacts are “cold”, they don’t know you’re coming, and the typical buyer doesn’t like to be spammed. If you’re a realtor who blankets a specific geography or a provider of consumer goods and services, we could have a different discussion. Nonetheless, you can spend good money on lists and yield very little.

TARGETED MEDIA BUYS

If you’re already budgeted to purchase lists and you have valuable content that would attract new prospects, consider digital marketing media buys through trusted sources who have built-in and opted-in audiences relevant to your industry, product, or service. This could be horizontal and vertical publications, member-based professional organizations, and online resources with vast networks to reach buyers. In the world of technology, Tech Target and Spiceworks are examples of online resources. Essentially, some places where buyers hangout.

MEASURABLE CAMPAIGNS

The media buys that we are suggesting are those that can be measured against an actual contact, like an email address. The strategy is to let the media sources drive conversions of your content. Most media sources can offer projected expectations of leads as well as comprehensive reporting and intelligence. For those contacts who go to your landing page and don’t convert are showing interest but are simply not ready to raise their hand—so, while your brand is now getting noticed you could do separate campaigns to draw them closer.

CAMPAIGN EXAMPLES

Sponsored and exclusive e-blasts that are sent to your landing page. This is typically good for promoting your expertise and thought leadership with an epic piece of content like an e-book, solution guide, trend report, research findings—essentially any educational content that requires a person to complete a form.


Sponsored webinars where the publication, professional organization, or online resource promotes the event and manages the registration. You provide input for the Evite and show up to present your topic and interact with the attendees and follow-up on the leads. With some sources, a minimum number of registrations are guaranteed. Many companies will re-purpose a compelling webinar which saves a lot of time.


Topical newsletters whereas the publication, professional organization, or online resource displays your ad within specific news and information blasts to a segmented and opted-in list. For example: digital engineering, business continuity, urban air mobility, data center analytics, healthcare IT, government contracts, etc.


Content syndication of e-books and many of the items defined above under “sponsored and exclusive e-blasts” can be promoted mostly via publications and online resources and across their vast networks. They can often control the visibility of your content and the frequency of your download reports based on your budget and the bandwidth of your sales team.


Some publications and online resources can also offer visibility to your content through sponsored blogging and their other social media channels.

If you sell a B2B solution to a niche market, we encourage you to entertain the idea of using 3rd party media buys to expand your content marketing and let me know how you make out.

If you need help sorting it all out and/or help developing the content and promotional materials, give us a shout. It starts with some research.