6 Reasons Why Churches Should Use Social Media

by Karen Petrauskas | Feb 7, 2019

Is your church on social media? Part One

If you want to reach more people, you have to be where the people are. Fact. That is relevant to businesses large and small as well as churches – of any shape and size.

Often the church gets left behind because it doesn’t see the need to be like other organisations or businesses, by being online or on social media, or even without a website in some cases, but in fact as society evolves and more people turn to technology, the church is left in an open space of not reaching out in effective ways to grow and build their church.

If you take some time to Google ‘why should churches use social media’, you will be bombarded with case studies and reasons as to why the church should be online. It may even be too much for you comprehend but in the society that we live in, it’s important to get a grasp and understanding of how important social media is to the life and community that our churches are within.

So why should a church be on social media?

Your church needs to be found

When people are searching for a church, gone are the days where someone will look in the yellow pages or local newspaper to see what churches are in their area. A person is 95% more likely to turn on their computers or mobile device and Google ‘churches in my local area’. From that point on, it is down to what they can source online as to where they may end up on a Sunday morning.

They may find your church through the website listings, they may even find it through a relevant Facebook post, but a website and social media work together to build an online presence where the church is reachable and attractable to those they want to reach out to.

When planting a new church, a church needs to dedicate time to ensuring they can be found on the map. This means including SEO (search engine optimisation) into website copy, speaking the language of your audience and building an online foundation of what your church is about so people can experience before they try. (this is a whole topic on its own really, so feel free to get in touch to find out more about SEO for churches)

Social media and websites do not compete for attention, they work together to build a customer’s journey and experience and to build relationships.

When a church can be found online, it allows a person to experience what the church is about before they even decide to make a visit. The more they can find out online either through a website or a social media presence, the more they will know if it is a place they feel called to. Social media provides customer experience, a reason to want to find out more, and gives an open invitation to all those who are seeking.

Churches on social media can have influence

Putting time into building a social media strategy for your church is so worth its time. Often it’s the social media marketing that gets left behind when a church runs out of time, money or resources but how many more people could you reach if a strategy was laid out to specifically grow the church and target people in this way?

We are called to help and serve others, to influence and be salt and light – how can we do that if we’re not connecting with the world? How can we know what influences are attracting our young people, what issues are surrounding our community and what emotions people are feeling if we are not right there seeing it with them? It’s about supporting a hungry and hurting world in a place where they feel safe and secure. If people realise that there are churches there ready to help and get stuck in, they’re more likely to take a step of faith to come into the building on a Sunday (or any day of the week for that matter) and start connecting with you.

Church, be where the people are

People are on social media. You only have to walk past the bus stop, look in a coffee shop, stand in the university canteen to see that a large majority of people will have their heads down in their mobile devices or laptops. People are hungry for information, people are searching for answers. If the church can get out in front of those people and provide the answers to their questions and show care and attention to detail, they will respond. People are crying out for life support – and we as a church should be there, ready and willing to dive in and help. We can’t wait for people to walk through the church doors, we need to step out, be a beacon of light and invite them in. These invitations can come through the tactfulness of a social media post, a Facebook campaign or even network groups where relationships and trust can be built.

Social media can build relationships

Why are you on social media (personally)? It’s to connect with friends, to check in with family, to see the next job opening, to keep up with news. And the church can use this in just the same way to build the church and to reach their community.

A church Facebook page should automatically attract the members of that church, if the content from the page is engaging and fulfilling, it will encourage those users to share the posts. These posts will then be seen by the friends and family of the people sharing the content and before long you have a whole new audience who has the potential to see your posts. What can you post that will grab the attention of a non-believer? What content could you share that will spread the gospel? What images and videos can you post that will share the love of Christ throughout Facebook? If a social media plan is followed, a church can easily build up a stream of content that is there to build relationships with their whole community and way beyond.

Just like walking the local streets and leaflet dropping, a single Facebook post could have the same effect with more impact than that one leaflet. And it’s a lot easier for people to share that post with others than handing one leaflet around to friends. The potential in social media posting is incredible and the church can really get to know people, can start to communicate with individuals and help where they can through the various social media platforms.

First impressions count

We could emphasize the need for social media in churches all day but if accounts/profiles are not updated on a regular basis, it will not give a good impression to the people who stumble onto their page. Just like anything, social media needs to be a regular occurrence. It’s better to do something well than to do it badly. And this is the sad case with many social media accounts. Churches see a need to set up a Facebook page for example but then leave it idle for months on end, meaning that when people are searching for churches in their area or something for their youngsters to get involved in for example, the church looks disinterested, old and tired.

The same goes for a church website.

Whether it be a Facebook page or a website that a user finds themselves on – if it doesn’t look attractive or meet their needs, they will leave and search for something else. What could you be including that will meet a need?

We need to strive for excellence, we need to give people what they are searching for. Take pride in the appearance of presentation and your online presence. Be excellent in all that the church stands for.

Showcase your church’s vitality

Social media platforms are the perfect opportunity to showcase what your church is about. This is a place where people come expecting to see what is happening, what groups are on, what help they can get, what youth and children’s work is taking place. Social media is a place where you can get visual and creative, bringing your Sundays and mid-week meetings to life in front of thousands of people. With the use of Facebook, Live video, Instagram and other ‘visual’ platforms – how much more of the church can you share with others! You can reach people on a Sunday who simply can’t get out of the house. You can let the world know that you have a safe place where children can come and play, meet new friends and learn more about the love of Christ. Social media is supposed to be engaging and social! Use that opportunity with every ounce of passion you have to reach the lost and seek to see your communities changed.

Does your church offer free wifi? If so, you can encourage your attendees to share their experiences of your church whilst there! Church life in action, so to speak.

Social media is no longer a fad, it’s here to stay and it’s only going to get bigger. Are you ready and prepared as a church to use social media to have an impact on your community? Are you ready and prepared to use social media to grow your church? Are you ready to step out and take action in order to reach those who need the church? Churches need to be doing all that they can to engage with the public online and in this way – your church needs to be accessible.

Here at KJP Creative we love to work with churches in order to see all the above taking place, and more! We have a heart to see souls set free and hearts won for Jesus, and we do this by working with churches to help to achieve this. If you’d like to work with a Christian social media agency, we’d love the opportunity to speak with you. Get in touch today!

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10 Reasons Why You Should Be Using Facebook Advertising

by Karen Petrauskas | Feb 1, 2019

Are you using Facebook advertising for your business?

As a business owner, it’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of everything that’s going on and jumping in with two feet trying to do it all: video marketing, blogging, email marketing, SEO, social media marketing – there are many options, it’s endless.

But the reality is that we cannot do it all – that is without burnout! Therefore, we must focus our efforts on what works, where our audience is likely to be and what attracts them. If we’re not reaching our audience, we might as well give up.

If we try to do every form of online marketing, we can find that we stretch ourselves too thin and work becomes sloppy, disengaging or not to the point and sales become a dream. In order to make online marketing effective for your business you need to establish what works for your business and stick to it.

There is one fact we know. Your audience is on social media. The social platforms are dominating all things online and this is where you need to get specific and dig deeper into how to target your audience at a personal level. Don’t throw all your eggs into one basket either, test what gets results and measure what works for you.

There is one platform though that can give your business amazing results if worked correctly, and that’s Facebook, in specific, Facebook advertising. Why do we choose Facebook? Here’s why:

Your audience is on Facebook!

With Facebook being the biggest of all social networks (2.32 billion monthly active users) it is providing individual businesses the biggest opportunities to get right in front of their ideal audience. It may not be your ideal platform but your target audience is on there somewhere, if you know where to look.

Facebook ads are cheap!

They’re not free, but they can often not be far off. Facebook ads can be the cheapest form of online advertising if your targeting options are correct. You can easily set daily budgets so you can be assured you don’t spend more than you intend to.

How far can you get with the budget that you have? It’s about creating a clear focus and following a simple strategy that aligns with your targets, goals and budget.

Helps organic reach

Facebook encourage businesses to advertise and want you to spend money (of course!) but favour those who do. This means that your organic social media reach will go further. We totally believe in organic posting for Facebook – adding in paid Facebook ads will help boost your organic posts.

You don’t need a huge budget

As we said, you can do Facebook advertising on a budget. Typically, £5 worth of ads could get your business in front of 1,000 people. Just think how much £50 could reach, or even £100 – amazing, right! And you can be extremely picky on who those people may be by using in the targeting options when setting up your ads.

Facebook Ads are fast

Yes, Facebook advertising drives traffic almost instantly, and you can see immediate results. You could start reaching thousands of people today! If you’re looking for a quick way to drive traffic or to create conversions, this is a fantastic way to make this happen.

Brand Awareness

This is what all small businesses are striving for in a busy digital society, to be recognised and known. By using Facebook advertising you can create brand awareness very easily. It’s a great way to let people know what you’re offering and to promote services or products. If someone has seen your business in their news feed, they will be more likely to make a purchase when they realise this is something that they need.

It’s easy to target customers

Facebook ads are brilliant at being able to target specific details, whether that be demographics, interests, job titles, or down to post codes – you can get specific with your audience. And you don’t have to just use one target, you can layer those details depending on what your promotion is offering. Save your target audience for another time or change them as you go – the options really are endless.

Once you’ve found an audience that converts, you can replicate them – this is called ‘lookalike audiences’. Facebook will take a custom audience and reach new people who are similar to that audience – meaning new targets for your business and new opportunities for conversions.

Facebook re-marketing

This option is also amazing! Re-marketing basically allows you to target people who have already taken an action, for example visited your website, used your mobile app, or given you an email address etc. These ads are presented when users visit other websites or use social media, watch videos and such like. It’s an extremely effective and powerful tool that could triple your conversion rates.

This option is ideal for hard offers – for sign ups, downloads, consultations etc.

Facebook increases website traffic

Facebook advertising is a great way to get more traffic to your website. By simply setting up a website click campaign, you can have users visiting your website in minutes. Once you’ve done this a number of times, you’ve got a batch of information to use for further retargeting campaigns and to entice people who have already taken the bait. Website click campaigns can be done from all forms of advertising but the joy of doing it within Facebook is the fact that it’s so precise and cost-effective which makes it more beneficial than other forms of advertising.

Quick advertising

Facebook adverts have a simple set-up process and produce fast results – the perfect equation for any advertising campaign. Compared to Google advertising, managing Facebook ads is a lot easier and once you are familiar with the process it can become an easy task to complete.

Don’t forget that using Facebook adverting will bring new users to your website and you will see an increase in your activity but this is not the end game – you want to see conversions! Ensure that when users visit your site or landing page, they are presented with something that is true to your business, provides value and gives solutions to what they are looking for. Make sure that your landing page doesn’t look tacky and it’s branded exactly the same as the advert they clicked on in the first place, including your tone of voice.

Your Facebook ads are still the voice of your business and should be professional and welcoming at all times.

Have you tried Facebook advertising for your business? What are your thoughts?

If you’d like to see bigger results this year and are ready to push forward with targeted social media advertising, we’d love the opportunity to chat with you. Get in touch and let’s talk.

Have you tried our 2020 social media awareness days calendar? Download for FREE and get your social organised.

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New Year, New Goals To Grow Your Business

by Karen Petrauskas | Jan 23, 2019

We’re well into January now, a new year and are you ready to grab it by the horns and get stuck into goals and targets for the year ahead?

There are many things that go through your mind as the year begins but planning and getting organised is key to ensuring that your year goes to plan. What do you need to do to get your business headed in the right direction and geared towards your core values, reaching the audience that have grown to love and adding value every step of the way?

Get started with the basics and make sure that your online presence is how it should be right from the outset. When people see you online, this is often the first impression they get of your business, of your brand, and what they see will have an impact on their first impression of you. Will they like what they see? Will they be able to relate to you? Are you offering value or solutions to their questions? Are you easily contactable or easy to find on social media?

What can you do to ensure that your online presence is ready?

Website content

Make sure that your website content is the very best that it can be. This is your shopfront and the place where people come when they want to purchase your services. If you walked into a shop and found spelling mistakes on signposts or offers that didn’t match what being shouted about, or the branding was wrong, you wouldn’t trust them. The same goes for your website. Everything that is on your site needs to shout ‘your brand’, it needs to speak your voice and portray the message that you speak about on your social channels. Try not to give mixed signals or conflicting advice.

Take a step back from your website and visit it as if you were a customer. Do you like what you see? Does it make sense? Do you have good SEO in there? If you search for your business name in Google, what appears? Would you trust and buy from your site?

Check all your copy, check grammar and spelling. Ask a friend to check also if it gives you peace of mind, a second pair of eyes is always a great idea!

Grow your business in 2019 with our top 7 tips. New year and a new start - easy steps to follow to see success

Social media channels

Social media marketing is here to stay – fact. It’s not going anywhere and it’s only going to grow moving forward. A business needs to be using social media to market their business. By all means use other forms of advertising too if you are confident that the ROI is worth it, but social media needs to be your first choice.

Have you got social channels in place? Are you using them? Do you have a strategy in place to ensure that it’s all reaching towards goals and targets?

Make sure that all your social channels are branded and are linked to your website – make the customer journey as easy as possible to jump from one place to another. Customers are looking for answers and instant fixes – can they get that from your channels?

Also, the message that comes across from your social channels needs to be inviting and informative and consistent with the content on your website. If you’ve got offers coming up on your website – share them on social! Tell a story with your social channels, use them to show behind the scenes of your business and how everything comes together. Understand your customers and what they are looking for – and give them value on your social media.

Blog for business

If you don’t already have a blog on your website, now is the time to start. People are hungry for information. There is an influx of content available online and yes this does cause competition but it’s a way to really engage and reach your audience in a way that’s relevant to their needs. This is a chance to stand out from the crowd and offer more than your competitors. It’s the easiest way to keep fresh content flowing from your website and a way for search engines to know that you’re active and engaging. Be sure to incorporate SEO keywords into your content and posts. Do your own research: If you were searching for a particular topic, what keywords would you search for on Google? Use these keywords in your blog post and add them to titles and tags.

Marketing In Your Car – Listen Now!

You may not be great at writing, and as with anything, writing comes with practice. You may even find you enjoy it after a while! Set time aside on a weekly basis to write. In this new year, schedule time in your calendar specifically for this. It’s often a task that gets put on the back burner but it is so important to raise brand awareness and great for your business.

You can even outsource this task if you think it’s too much for you to commit to, just to ensure that it gets done.

Define goals

As you start the year, you may have in your mind where you want your business to go but putting everything down into a business / marketing plan that you can action and measure results against will benefit you much more. This enables you to set goals that you know you have complete. This helps you when you hit a brick wall and are stuck on where to go next. It helps you stick to schedule and complete tasks that may otherwise be forgotten. Your marketing strategy needs to be a big part of this. Clearly mapping out a strategy and plan on where you want your business to be this time next year and how you’re going to achieve that within your marketing will give you direction and clarity. Plans can be adapted along the journey and goals tweaked or extended but direction is key. Schedule goal updates on a quarterly basis to align all that’s taken place and what’s next. Plan and map out your social media marketing along with any paid advertising or content creation that needs to take place.

If you need help with social media management, just ask! Learn how to maximise your business to see growth this year. Top tips to growing a small business

Optimise your customer experience

The journey that your customer goes on when they’re interacting with your business needs to be smooth, exciting and helpful for them. They need to feel their worth and know that they’re getting value from you. If they feel they’re just another number, they’ll go elsewhere. Take time to create great customer service plans and procedures should you need them. This year make it about creating outstanding customer service and smart solutions that drive business values. Provide reliability being on hand to customer when they need to, responding to all enquiries in a timely manner. Social media is a great tool for this and gives instant access to any potential customer – make your impression count.

Build a community

When your brand is known, you’ll gain trust and loyalty. You can build an online community with your customers by engaging and encouraging them on a regular basis. Ensure that you’ve got a sign-up list on your website or social channels, so you have an email address to be able to get in touch with them. This is so important for growing your business, providing snippets of value at the simple drop of an email. Email marketing will grow your business – is that what you’re looking in 2019? Great content speaks volumes. It’s not just what they can see from your website or social, it’s about adding a little extra after they’ve experienced that.

Build a Facebook group where you can provide even more content and value than you already offer from your Facebook Page. This can be in the form of a closed group where people can come and ask questions that they may not want to do publicly, it can be a place where you can closer with your customers, engaging with them on a higher level providing expert knowledge and advice – all of which will set you apart from competition. If people like what they see and hear, they will recommend your business, and you’ll experience business growth.

This year, build community into your marketing plan and make it a goal to grow your business through community.

Stay up to date

Trends and marketing tactics develop and grow year on year. It’s important to stay up to date and keep in line with what is happening online. What was working 2 or 3 years ago may not be the best plan of action for 2019. It’s even more important for small businesses to stay up to date so they can stay in line with larger businesses who have more resources. Small businesses can grow too! And 2019 is your year to grow. Make sure you research. Perform social listening. Set yourself up for Google alerts. Listen to podcasts. Watch the trends on Twitter. Read, read, read. There is so much you can do to learn and understand what’s going in the digital world around us. Tap into this and use it with your targets for the year. Adapt your marketing strategies as trends change, social channels appear and tactics shift.

What are you going to this year to make your business grow and stand out from the crowd? Are you going to make 2019 your year for success and business growth? You may have been holding back in years’ past, you may have been focusing on other things, on growing yourself and ensuring that your mindset is right, you may have other commitments that are surrounding you.

Whatever situation you find yourself in, it’s time work out what you want for your business, to set your goals for how to achieve them and to give 100% to your business plan. Only you have the power to make it happen. Only you have the motivation to make the shift and put in the effort. If you’re ready to see results, you’re ready to stand up and been seen.

If you’re looking for help in social media marketing for the new year, we’d love to chat with you. Feel free to get in touch and let’s start a conversation. Grow your business in 2019 with these top 7 tips. New year and a new start - easy tips to follow to see success

You can also download our FREE social media awareness days calendar – to get you organised throughout 2020. Enjoy!

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KJP Creative Launches Their New Website!

by Karen Petrauskas | Jan 18, 2019

At the start of 2019 we are extremely excited to launch our brand new website, ready and enthusiastic in all that is to come over the coming year and beyond. The launch comes with new direction, high expectations and clear focus for KJP Creative as we venture into a new season.

With months in the planning and strategy behind the website and what’s on offer, KJP Creative brings to you an agency that offers expertise, passion and energy in all things social.

Social media marketing is at the heart of what KJP Creative is about – with a mission to see businesses of all sizes grow and flourish with the help of online marketing, specifically social media and content marketing. From start-ups to small or medium sized business, we will create bespoke marketing plans according to your specific business goals and needs, working with you or your marketing department to put together a marketing strategy that gives clear direction and targets to enhance brand awareness and to increase sales and see business growth.

With expert knowledge and experience, KJP Creative can get creative with any type of business, no matter what industry you are in. It’s in our nature to be creative (hence the name!) and that’s what we love to do! We are positive that we can create great results for your business, having received nothing less than 100% positive feedback from all our clients so far, we’re not ready for that to dip anytime soon. Get to know us, let us get to know your business and allow us to become your voice within your online channels.

KJP Creative launches their new website - offering expertise, passion and energy in all things social. Get in touch to find out more! The KJP Creative new website launch also means that we’re stepping out and supporting a few charities that are close to our hearts. Take a look at our ‘Helping Others’ page and find out what’s important to us and if you’d like to get involved. We’re hoping that during the year, we’ll be able to take on sponsored charity events to add even more value – watch this space and get in touch if you’d like to get involved.

“2019 is our year to get serious about helping others. We’ve always been serious, but this year we’re digging deeper into how we can add value to every business or individual that we come into contact with. If we can help, we will. That could mean setting you up with social channels, providing training sessions for you to manage on your own social, or managing your social media marketing for you. We also love to write… and have some buzzing ideas ready to bring to the table. We want to work with local businesses and those from afar, we want to make an impact on all who we meet and get them serious about social too.” – Karen Petrauskas

We’d love for you take a look around our new site, get familiar with what we have to offer and invite you to get in touch if we can help in any way. If you want to grow your business during 2019, you need to be using social media – and using it effectively! Make it fun, start engaging and be creative with all that you do.

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DOWNLOAD our FREE social media planner – get organised in 2019 and be prepared for what is to come!

How To Improve Your Blog Writing Skills – Create Killer Content

by Karen Petrauskas | Dec 15, 2018

It’s not difficult to work out that if you write well, people will want to read what you’ve written. But writing well doesn’t come naturally to some people and some find it hard to put pen to paper (or fingers to keys!) to express what they want to say.

If you’re new to content marketing and are looking to engage more with your audience, you need to concentrate on creating content that speaks directly to your reader. So let’s focus on the writing aspect of content marketing, how can you improve your writing skills?

Create powerful headlines

This is the first thing that your reader will see when your post or article appears, your headline is the most important part of your content. Grab the attention of the reader, and they’re more likely to keep reading the rest of what you have to say.

Within your headline highlight the most important concept of what you want your reader to know. Rather than padding out with ‘waffle’ be blunt and to the point. Many people skim read and when people are using mobile devices whilst on the go, they will only pick out content that hits them hard with something that will give them value. Stating that in your headline will give them curiosity and the desire to read more.

Make your writing easy to read

If you’re using Yoast SEO in your blog posts, it will let you know whether your article is easy to read. This is a great start when you first start blogging or writing.

Next, take time to read through your content and see how easy you find it to read it. As we mentioned, many people skim read so it’s a good idea to lay out your writing in a way that allows the reader to just take out the bits they need. This comes with your headlines, but it also comes with the way that it’s laid out and presented. Big chunks of text with no space for breathing can be hard on the eyes. Neatly titled sections allow eyes to skim through much easier. Adding in images to your content breaks up the text too. Although this isn’t part of ‘writing’ it shows that you are thinking of the reader when you’re putting your content together. Images and visuals can be as powerful as a good title, so use this within your writing to create breaks and demonstrate what you are talking about. Presentation should always be good.

Ensure correct grammar

Editing as you write is not a great idea, you may lose track of what you’re writing about or lose momentum and miss the point. Our advice is to just write, write and write and then afterwards go back and check for spelling and grammar. Take time after you’ve finished to edit and make amendments, even ask for a second pair of eyes if grammar is not your strong point. You could even use an app to check this for you. We can recommend Grammarly which is a great tool to get both spelling and grammar correct.

Proof read

This is part of the above point but always proof read everything you write. This goes for your blogs for sure, but it also goes for all content that you are producing, whether it be a Facebook post, a quick tweet or even the hashtags in your Instagram posts. If you have spelling mistakes within your content, it looks unprofessional and like you haven’t had the time to check correctly.

When it comes to your social media posts, if you have time, create a marketing calendar each month where you can schedule or draft all your posts ready to publish – then you can go back and proof read them all to ensure they are correct. Or you can send them to a friend to check for you.

Get into the habit

Writing is like anything and the more you do it, the better you will get. Practice makes perfect! If you’re blogging or writing a lot of articles it’s a good idea to get into the habit of writing. If you can manage a little every day, it will improve your writing skills. The more you write and the more frequent you get into the habit of writing, the more natural it will become for you.

Benefits of writing daily…

Writing can make you happier
Writing leads to better communication and understanding
Writing gives you an outlet to share expression
Writing leads to better learning
You’ll actually be surprised at how easier it becomes the more you write!

Don’t fill for the sake of it

People are busy and they want to read the necessity, grab what’s valuable and then move on. If you spend ages writing about something that’s not providing value or adding sections that are not relevant to what the article is actually about, you will lose your audience. They are there to read what the title says it’s about – not what you had for lunch! Longer articles are not always better. A short, to the point and valuable blog post is much more effective than a long, drawn-out article that hardly touches on the point in question.

Use your proof-reading time to take out any filler content which will make your article much easier to read and more appealing to your audience.

Read lots

If you’re wanting to write for other people, it makes sense that you read lots yourself. This gives you an idea of the type of content that you enjoy reading and the type of content that your readers with similar interests will enjoy too. You should be passionate in your writing and have good understanding and knowledge of the topic that you are writing about. Reading and researching provides this back up and resource for your own writing. Always take notes – this is a great habit to have as often you’ll have a whole load of notes that you can put together to create worthwhile reading.

Try subscribing to websites that you enjoy reading from and bloggers that can give you advice on the topics that you love to write about. You’ll gain lots of inspiration and valuable ideas that you can utilise in your own blog posts, help you learn which style of writing you want to aspire to and then help you to create killer content that everyone loves.

At the end of the day we are all unique and have our own style of writing, but keep in mind that when you’re writing for an audience, you are writing for them! Be unique in your style and create your own story telling ways, be inspirational and motivational where you can to give your readers something to take away from your posts. And most importantly, check everything more than once and ensure that it reads well, spelling and grammar are correct and that it tells the truth. A key to good writing is providing value – nail this and you’re well on your way!

Here at KJP Creative we love writing. We write on behalf of a number of clients across a variety of industries. If you’re looking to add good content to your online marketing but simply don’t have the time, ask us about our Content Marketing packages, we’d love to help. Get in touch today!

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How To Revamp Your Marketing Strategy

by Karen Petrauskas | Dec 11, 2018

As we approach the end of the year, it’s a good a time as any to think about what has worked and what hasn’t this year in your business marketing strategy. This can give you an opportunity to revamp your marketing strategy ready for the new year ahead.

Every business wants to see leads coming in, but if those leads aren’t seeking what your business is offering, there is no point to them and your efforts have been wasted.

It’s always good to look at what’s around the corner and what’s coming up as new trends, innovations and competitors all play a part in how well your marketing works with your audience.

Take a look back through all your data this year – what can it tell you? As a small business owner, it can be hard to stay on top of marketing objectives but if you’ve played your cards right this year, you’ll see your results clearly and be able to take from it the things that have worked well to be able to replicate and do even better in the future. On the flip side, you can take out the things that have not worked so well and make changes to those processes.

Don’t get stuck into just looking at the data in a single vision tunnel. Use more than one analytical tool to measure your marketing – and don’t just trust Google Analytics! If you’re using third party social tools, many come with analytics or insights. Check these regularly and record the data, or save the reports so you’ve got comparisons throughout the year.

Tip: It doesn’t matter how successful you’ve been this year, it’s always good to tweak processes to ensure success again next year.

Things change year on year. If you have something in your marketing strategy that was good last year, it may not be applicable next year and this is where a revamp comes in.

Revamp your marketing strategy this year and drive your business forward

Goals: Be specific

Ask questions to realise what is important to you and what is / is not working in your marketing so far.

Are you reaching out to the right audience on the right platform?
Are you meeting the needs of your audience?
Who are you competitors and how can you use their business to benefit yours?
What’s worked best / worst for you this year?

Goals: Put your specifics into targets

Use the specifics in your questions and answers to create goals that you can work towards and are attainable. Setting goals too high can lead to disappointment. Be realistic in your thoughts and plans.

Increase website traffic by X%
Reach X% of customers more than last year
Hit a £XX target by first quarter
Achieve X% higher engagement rate on social media

These goals need to be monitored on a regular basis, set goals for different periods of the year: Q1, Q2, and check if you are reaching those goals each time. If you’re doing well and over achieving, there’s a window to re assess the marketing plan and set your sights even higher. If things are not working as well as you first thought or assumed, you can revamp to more achievable targets.

What can you look out for within your marketing strategy?

Trends

Everyone wants to be on top of what’s to come. This means staying on top new trends. You can achieve this by social listening, connecting manually with businesses and industry leaders on social media and keeping a general watchful eye on the social media channels. They shift very quickly, and all are moving at a pace that can be unexpected in marketing spheres.

Expand your reach with social media

You’ve dabbled in social media marketing this year or in the past and know what it’s capable of which now gives way to you digging deeper into your social media and utilising everything that you’ve learned to reach even further. There is power when it comes to social media marketing and the horizons are bright when it’s used correctly. Create different ways to engage with your audience, that will showcase what you have to offer and what value your business will provide.

Here are some ways to get engagement:

Seasonal or promotional campaigns
Surveys / polls
Ask for topics people would like to read about
Get website feedback
Competitions
Create shareable content
Use quotes and inspiration content

Inbound

Attracting customers from an inbound way may sound hard work but actually it’s not if you have everything in place ready and waiting.

Say for example a business is looking for a company to provide delivered lunches to the office, they discuss it within their management meeting and give the task of finding a provider to the office administrator. The first thing they will probably do is Google “delivered lunches to offices in XX town”. If you’ve done everything correctly within your marketing strategy, you should hopefully appear somewhere near the top of that search list.

The website that looks the most attractive with good and detailed information, that are easily contactable, perhaps have a good social media following and can show customer testimonials etc. will probably be the one that will contacted first. All these components together portray a good online image and with no extra effort from yourselves, you have attracted an inbound client.

Therefore, everything needs to be within your marketing strategy from start to finish, not leaving any options out. Website / social media / SEO / content marketing – the whole lot comes together to form your business.

SEO

This means ‘search engine optimisation’ and is the optimising of your content so that it appears higher in search engine results. So, if someone is searching for ‘social media agency’, for example, you’d hope that your company lists high up in Google for your business to appeal to those searching. Therefore, your SEO strategy plays a part in your overall marketing plan. Take some time to ensure that all the keywords that people would be searching for when it comes to your business industry or service area, are within your content. This is important on your website, but it’s also important in your social media content too. All content is searchable, and you want to aim for the highest search results possible. This can be maximised by your content marketing.

Content marketing

Content is key! Recent surveys show that businesses who invest in their content marketing have a conversion rate of six times higher of those that don’t. Content marketing relates to blogs, articles, podcasts, video and social media as a vehicle for driving traffic and raising brand awareness.

The Content Marketing Institutes states this: Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

The key word in this definition is ‘valuable’. This is what attracts and retains a reader and is what turns them into a customer and a long-term client that is sustained. Anyone can post content but is that content worth reading and is it worth looking at the business behind the content? If you can grab the attention of the audience by using key words that trigger emotions, you will create a hook for that person to keep reading.

Give a call to action with your content, once a person has read the value you have, they need somewhere to go next. Can you give that to them or will they hop onto something else?

Conclusion

There is much that can be done to revamp your marketing strategy but it needs to start with good brainstorming and research and come from a passion to really want something to happen. If you do not give your marketing plan 100% focus, you’ll not stay on the right track and will be distracted easily. Take time to perform as much research as you can and to watch competitors as they handle their marketing. What gaps can you see that your competitors are missing that you can use and provide value in? Where do you see your business heading and what do you want to achieve by this time next year?

Need a little help in putting a marketing plan together? Do not fear, you’ve come to the right place! We’d love to help you get organised and with a plan ready to implement. Download our social media marketing calendar first off and then get in touch for an initial chat… start the year as you mean to go on! Are you looking to see better results in your marketing? Perhaps it's time to revamp your marketing strategy

WORK WITH KJP CREATIVE

If you’re looking to get a clear business focus in 2020 and to put together a social media strategy to lead your business forward, ask us about our WORKSHOPS.