My Growth Plan: what do I get and how does it work?

If you’re interested in signing up for our Growth Plan, we’re assuming that you already know a bit about inbound marketing. But just in case, here’s a quick recap before we get started…

The inbound methodology is essentially a new way of marketing that came about due to the changing habits of buyers. In today’s world, people like to do the research themselves before they make a purchase. Due to modern technology, it’s now easier than ever to research, find and buy products and services. Plus, with the rise of social media, the focus has shifted from print advertising and cold calling to online blogging and digital marketing. The inbound methodology takes all of this into account and sets out four stages of the buyer journey: attract, convert, close and delight. Your Growth Plan is a critical piece of your digital marketing jigsaw and will help you to align your business objectives and growth goals. It will help you set actionable monthly tasks that need to be completed in order to achieve your marketing goals and of course, ultimately, your business and growth objectives.

How do we do this and how much of my schedule is this going to need?

First up, don’t worry - we know you’re busy, which is why we’ve fine-tuned our Growth Plan process over the years so we can do as much as possible behind the scenes without taking up too much of your time. We’ll need a total of three meetings over the course of six to eight weeks which shouldn’t amount to more than four hours per team member. We can even conduct these meetings here at Angelfish HQ, or online if it’s easier for you! 

Ready to get started? Let’s go! 

Step One: Persona Development 

What it is: Buyer personas are semi-fictional characters based on real-life research of your target audience. By creating personas, you will get a clear picture of who you’re marketing to so that you can create a targeted strategy. We’ll identify their demographics, job titles, goals, challenges, the questions they ask you and what they dislike about your competitors. This information will help to influence and inform your marketing strategy, especially when creating content that your personas will find useful.

What we need: We’ll send you some initial homework (30 mins tops!) and then we run a two-hour online session where our team will help develop your persona stories for your top two target prospects. We’ll also have our content team producing ideas live with you for future content for your blog, news, email marketing, and social campaigns.

Deliverable: At the end of the session you will receive a full write up of your personas.

Keyword Research 

What is it: You’ve probably already heard about keyword research, but what does it actually involve? Well, essentially, we will identify relevant words that your personas are searching for. To identify a good keyword, we’ll take into account the volume (number of people searching for this term per month) and the competition (how many other websites are competing to rank for this term), as well as user intent (the motive a person has for carrying out a search query). The higher the volume and the lower the competition, the better. We’ll also assess your current rankings in order to identify any quick wins and see if these can be incorporated into your strategy, too.

What we need: Send us your top five keywords and we'll do the rest!

Deliverable: At the end of this stage, you’ll receive a targets and recommendations document which will identify the core opportunities in your space. 

Situational Analysis

What it is: This bit is where we look at your website and identify its strengths and weaknesses. We’ll check out things such as your domain authority, review your current on-page SEO efforts. We’ll also review your current social media activity and look at your organic links and backlinks as well as your on-page and technical SEO and how healthy your website is. 

What we need: We don’t need anything at all from you - just your website URL and you can leave the rest to us!

Deliverable: A complete website health check, identifying all strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement so you can boost your lead generation. 

Competitor Analysis

What it is: In this stage of your Growth Plan, we take a look at your competitors and what they’re up to in terms of SEO and where they stand in comparison to you. We’ll start by identifying their domain authority, which will give us a clear indication of the strength their website has. We’ll then go on to analyse the content throughout their website, the usability of webpages, and what they are doing that you could adopt. We look at all the things we looked at for you – organic research, keywords, backlinks, domain authority,

What we need: Again, leave it to us! All we need is a list of five competitors and we can get cracking.

Deliverable: At the end of the Competitor Analysis stage, we’ll provide you with two in-depth competitor reviews.  

Content Ideas and Mapping

We then move onto the content mapping work. Our content team will align carefully thought-out content ideas to your personas, their buyer journey and the topic areas that will help inform your social media strategy, your SEO and keyword targets so we can put together a clever content strategy using the relevant keywords we identified earlier in the Growth Plan. 

What we need: We need you again for this bit! Join us for a one-hour session to review and approve these ideas.

Deliverable: You then receive your content map, a content calendar and a big list of ideas for future content marketing campaigns.

Goal Setting and Planning

Next, we move to goal setting and planning. We’ll review, analyse and interpret your existing web traffic and Google analytics. If you don't have google analytics set up, then we set this up for you and start tracking. During our session with you and your team, we’ll review (or estimate) your required traffic and leads to fit in with your business and growth objectives and discuss what to do to meet your goals. 

What we need: We’ll run a one-hour session with you and your team to review your goals and discuss your Growth Plan solutions.

Deliverable: Your final Growth Plan for your business. 

Your Final Growth Plan 

A 65-85 page Inbound Marketing Growth Plan including: 

•         Situational Analysis & Health Check
•         Competitor Analysis
•         Persona Stories & Key Challenges
•         Keyword Research & Opportunity Identification
•         Targets For Year One
•         Solutions & Planning To Achieve
•         Content Ideas & Plan/Calendar
•         PPC Explainer & Plan
•         SEO Explainer & Plan
•         Social Media Explainer & Plan

At this point, you can use us for training, delivery of your campaigns or just advice to help you achieve your business and marketing goals. Our next step delivery solutions start at £500 per month for tactical support or training and our full inbound marketing solutions start at £1,500 and can run to £10+k for large organisations with aggressive growth requirements.

However you choose to implement your digital marketing, whether you go for a DIY approach or use additional support, you now have a solid Growth Plan to get you where you want to be!

Still not sure? Check out our blog, “Why do I need an Inbound Marketing Growth Plan?” to discover why a marketing plan is absolutely essential to business growth.