Framing from the Ground Up
The idea behind the marketing maturity model is that every business needs to begin by building the foundation for their marketing. Once they’ve built a solid foundation, they can start to grow and later ignite, or amplify, their marketing approach. Website, content, social media, SEO, and email marketing are the primary five channels. In the framing phase, now that we’ve built those foundational elements, we can begin to build them out further and add on paid lead generation, sales enablement, and customer experience.
Components of the Framing Stage
Marketing Website
Now that your site is mobile-friendly, has a domain-connected email, is clear on its promises to solve problems, and is quick in response time, it's time to continue building upon your site. In the framing stage, it's time to add your business’s story and incorporate your customer into the experience. It is now that you will create segments so that visitors feel like the story you’re telling is speaking directly to them. During the framing stage, we will also address additional technical concerns, such as HTTPS security.
Approach to Content
Once you’ve begun the process of creating content, you want to use it as a lead generation tool. In the framing phase, the focus should switch from getting traffic to winning conversions. In the foundation phase, you established a site with a review funnel, video, and core pages. The next step is to create hub pages. Hub pages are a great way to create assisting content for your website. These pages bring together all of your relevant information on a given topic all under one roof, and so readers love them. Not to mention, Google rewards hub pages in their rankings.
Search Engine Optimization
In the foundation stage, you established your Google My Business page, ensured that data directories were all correct, and included descriptive, keyword-rich title tags and meta descriptions for all pages of your website. As part of the framing stage, we begin thinking about SEO beyond the bounds of your own website. How can you get other people to link to your content? Utilizing guest posts, reaching out to relevant thought leaders, and building other external networking opportunities are a great place to start.
Social Media
Once you’ve established your branded social media presence, you want to begin thinking about generating engagement. This is about asking questions that get your followers involved and start a conversation. It’s also time to think strategically about how to get people to like and share your content. Reaching out to influencers in the industry is another part of outreach. How can you get those who already have the attention of your ideal prospects talking about your products or services?
Email Marketing
In the foundation stage, you secured your business domain email and cleaned up your contact list. In the framing stage, you'll also be utilizing your hub pages for an additional benefit. Visitors will be convinced by both the quality and quantity of information on these pages that you are the subject matter expert, and so they’ll feel there’s a good reason to give you their email address in exchange for more information. Once you have obtained their email address and captured, you can begin to nurture your relationship with them through effective email campaigns.
Paid Lead Generation
Paid lead generation is about advertising on social media and search engines. It is during the framing phase that you should begin boosting your existing content on social media. You can’t boost content that doesn’t exist, and you don’t want to begin spending money to generate leads if you don’t have a solid foundation of content, reviews, and trust elements for them to look to. Spending money to drive prospects to a bare-bones website will not generate leads and may, in fact, scare people off. Prospects need to have a clear sense of what they’re supposed to get out of your website once they arrive there.
Sales Enablement
The first step of sales enablement is looking to establish strategic partnerships. Are there other business owners that you can network with to generate leads for your business? These partnerships are great because they’re mutually beneficial: you get access to their existing network and vice versa. This is also the phase where you should introduce a discovery process. Someone visits your website, clicks your ad, or gives your business a call—now what? How do you know if they’re a good fit for you and if they’re someone you want to work with? In this phase, you want to build a concrete process around what you do when someone expresses interest in your business.
Customer Experience
Marketing is about so much more than just getting the sale; it’s about keeping an existing customer happy and coming back for more. Once you acquire a customer, what happens? What does their welcome kit look like? How do you set expectations moving forward? How often are you getting in touch with your customers (and not just about asking them to buy something from you)? This is the stage in which you will want to begin developing your customer experience process to make sure they always feel taken care of. It is during the framing phase in which you'll want to build a structured onboarding process for new customers.
Promise
• Higher quality traffic and leads
• More ideal client interactions
• Search engines and maps rating
• Automated lead capture and follow-up
• Increased sales conversion
• Increased rate of referrals and reviews
Challenges
• Not enough time to produce content
• Not sure what content to produce
• Online advertising seems too complex
• Not converting enough leads
• Not retaining enough clients
Attributes
• Not converting enough website traffic
• Struggling to get on page one/maps
• No engagement on social media
• Not following up with leads effectively
• Not sure how to use online advertising
• No solid sales process
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