(Hint: There are three simple content marketing strategies you can do right now)

Ladies and Gents, we are one month away from starting Q4, which (from all of my experience working in marketing departments in large corporations) means it’s “hair on fire” time to reach that marketing goal by the end of the year. For many companies, it also means that all of the marketing money that’s been budgeted for the fiscal year doesn’t have a lot of flexibility, so you have to work with what you have.

I recently had a non-profit networking group reach out to me to help them hit their marketing membership goal by the end of the year. Not only is their chapter not growing at the rate that they had hoped, but they are losing current members due to disengagement and they have very little marketing money from corporate. And they have three months to hit their membership goal.

Maybe this isn’t your EXACT situation, but I’m sure you can relate to the urgency of their needs. Due to the short time frame and limited budget we have to work with, I created three strategies that will bring in fast results and build long-term relationships with new and current members.

If you are not trending toward your marketing/leads goal for 2017 and you are tapped out of budget and ideas, read through this case study to learn about three ways to amp up your brand’s traction across multiple digital platforms. 

1. Stop focusing on organic SEO. Start creating landing pages with paid advertising.

This is the only time you will ever hear me say, “don’t focus on organic SEO.” Let me be clear: you should always maintain your standard SEO strategy, which should include publishing a certain amount of organic, optimized content per month. However, you should not rest on your SEO strategy bringing in a ton of new people in the next three months.

Let’s face it – if your organic SEO strategy hasn’t helped you hit your marketing goal for the first nine months, it isn’t going to help you in the last three. Side note – this is a big indication that your strategy needs to change.

Instead of putting more manpower toward organic marketing in hopes that the strategy will kick in and help you reach your goal, focus more on creating three landing pages specific to your top three converting keywords, and then use whatever marketing budget you have left to push these pages across Facebook Ads and Google AdWords. This will give you the fastest, most targeted results. Just be sure to add in conversion elements on the landing pages, such as contact forms and free downloads in exchange for basic contact information. Then amp up your email marketing to the people who engage with your landing pages.

2. Social media marketing is the best strategy for short-term wins.

For this specific organization, their social media marketing strategy had taken a backseat to other marketing methods over the past several months. Because of the lack of social media marketing, their current members were becoming disengaged and word about their organization wasn’t spreading to potential new members.

To help this organization gain brand recognition and excitement across Facebook and LinkedIn (which I identified as their two strongest platforms), I created a strategy that focused on the emotional pull of why members should join their chapter. After all, people want to know the value a membership will provide them before they dedicate their time and money to a group. To show the value of this organization, I created a strategy to highlight the following posts:

• Member spotlight – This type of post will give a face to the organization and will also allow the featured member to talk about how the organization has helped her grow professionally. When other people read this on social media, they may realize the value in this organization that they otherwise wouldn’t have seen.
• Event recaps – This organization is consistently hosting networking events as well as leadership events where they bring in outside resources for training and workshops. By posting photos and testimonials from the attendees about the value in the events, others may see this organization on social media and want to get involved.

The best thing about both of these social media marketing strategies is that they are completely free and they produce fast results.

3. Engage with the community.

You may be thinking, “how does community engagement help our marketing goal, and how in the world can we throw a community engagement event without spending our budget?” OK, I’ll admit that this one doesn’t work for everyone. BUT, for this networking organization, this community engagement event is vital to re-engage their current members and to spread the word about their organizations to new members.

This organization specializes in joining together women in the healthcare field into a community to promote career and leadership growth, as well as to stay up to date with industry changes. A great way to spread the word about their organization is to reach into the heart of the medical community by partnering with a huge medical organization in their area and helping them during their annual end of the year community event. Now, this organization has limited marketing budget, so the way they will join forces to help the event is through volunteers and manpower.

By joining forces with this large medical corporation in Tampa to host a community outreach event, this organization is accomplishing several marketing strategies in one shot, such as:

• Spreading the word about their organization to the medical community during the outreach event
• Leveraging this event to promote their brand across social media
• Raising awareness of their organization to the women who work for the medical corporation they are partnering with

This is the big strategy that will not only rejuvenate the excitement of current members, thereby improving retention, but also increase new membership and create the momentum necessary to start 2018 strong.

So, if you are trending off of your anticipated goal and you are limited on marketing budget, use this case study to redirect your marketing efforts to the quick and easy wins that will help you hit your goal and set you up with a strong momentum moving into the new year.

Do you need help reviving your digital marketing strategy? Is your brand stagnant and you haven’t seen an increase in growth in the last several months? Contact our digital marketing specialists to set up a consultation and learn what you can do to resuscitate your brand. Our team at Burg & Co. Marketing is certified in inbound marketing and social media marketing. Contact us today to schedule a consultation.