What is the strategic backbone of effective digital marketing? At BoomNow, we simplify it
through this phrase: “start with purpose, conclude with value.” While this phrase is simple
enough to read, running this is more challenging because it forces you to be mindful of how you
communicate to your audience.
Many people in business just run things by ear from the very beginning, figuring things along the
way without a framework of what they do, why they exist. And while business can still grow that
way, it can struggle to scale faster as reaching customers gets harder over time. Remember the
marketplace is saturated as it is now. And the sheer volume of options for people necessitates a
better plan to get attention.
Strategic digital marketing is way bigger than just offers and sales funnels. It takes on the macro
picture of your brand – what it stands for and what it means to the market.
Purpose provides for clarity
Clarity is at the very core of all your online marketing efforts. What you do for people, what
makes you different and why should they keep buying from you – these are the elements that will
allow you to dig deeper into your “why’s.
So, why are you here? What’s the goal? What’s the metric of success? When you are clear about
why you are doing what you are doing, communicating your offers and the value you provide to
your customers become easy.
And this “ease” will be vital as you push for content marketing. You need to be comfortable,
clear and guided as you write, record, edit and publish content. The content creation cycle can be
both repetitive and yet creative. Clarity allows you to explore as much as you can while always
being grounded by the very things that make you, you.
Brand pillars as a communication guide
Now that you have asked the right questions and outlined your answers clearly, what’s next? You
use all that to list down your brand pillars, the main ideas of your business that make it unique or
better than its competitors.
If you are a restaurant, this could be the unmistakable beef casserole in your menu that you have
been serving since the ’60s. If you are a dentist it could be the name of your clinic which has
been opened by the first orthodontist in your family 3 generations back. Every business across
industries always has that unique attribute going for them.
A brand pillar can also be a strategic advantage, a positioning decision you want to pursue, or a
pivot move you are executing in response to developing situations.
Brand pillars can be:
- Your unique selling proposition
- Your location/s
- A known story about your store
- The people who work in your company
- A very popular product you pioneered in the market
The list goes on and on.
When you have these figured out, you can now start the content ideation process. You can make a
“documentary” video of your beef casserole. Or you can start a funny dentist comic series with
the lead character carrying your family name. You can even run a podcast with your team or
make videos about your very popular product, etc.
Now you can see it’s shaping up. It started by just digging deeper into your purpose!
Content is the vehicle of value
Your brand pillars will help you create content and facilitate the ideation of things you can
publish online for your brand. This is important because it is easy to be carried away by trending
posts or viral content themes that can maximise “likes”. But that is the last thing you want to do.
In a very crowded virtual business environment, standing out by being who you are is more
advantageous in the long term for your brand building.
What’s the lesson here? Post things that you want to be known for. With messaging clarity and
consistent content, more people who will likely buy from you will find you. They will become
fans and eventually build a community around your brand. Not because you are posting what’s
popular or trending but because they were able to align their needs with your offer.
Value as the driver of profitability
The phrase “start with purpose, conclude with value” is based on the strategic truth that value is
the main driver of long-term, sustainable profitability.
Where is value sourced? It is from the purpose of your business. Your purpose will allow you to
clarify the value you want to give to your market. This “value” is what makes people like you
and in due time, advocate for you. The Internet is word of mouth in steroids. This underlines the
importance of purpose, clarity and content.
Provided you want people to advocate for you, what will they say to their friends to “sell” you?
This is where your content comes in. This is where your exacting messaging will be appreciated.
With laser-focused business communication, what you do and who you are can be “passed”
around better online.
