Neuland Development & Training
As part of the marketing team at Neuland Development & Training GmbH & Co. KG, I got the exciting opportunity to help set the goals for a new marketing strategy and realign the content management.
Contributions:
- Analysis of the actual state
- Creation of personas
- Marketing & communication strategy
- Content management plan
1. Actual State
With a small marketing team consisting of three people (and freelancers) tasks must be prioritized and planned particularly well in order to measurably increase booking numbers.
Different Channels
Many different channels were used for communication – at irregular frequencies and with different messages.
To get an overview, I listed the channels and defined their individual communication goals.
For example:
While MailChimp reaches existing clients with product information, the blog should inspire and entertain the entire audience – client or not.
2. Target Audience
To be able to evaluate which channels and measures are relevant for our customers, I defined three steps:
- Understanding the Target Audience
- Defining Communication Goals
- Experimenting & Measuring
„I bear a great responsibility for the development of our employees. If something were to go wrong, it would have far-reaching consequences for me.“
1. Understanding the Target Audience
By creating personas, together with the sales team, I could find out more about the different target groups (HR, head of HR, management, independent trainers).
Furthermore, I collected data about the target groups on social media to gain more insight about their media usage behavior.
3. Communication Strategy
After reviewing the current status, we defined three main communication goals that could be derived from the corporate strategy:
- increase brand growth & gain trust
- occupy relevant topics & show competence
- increase product visibility & generate sales
To ensure that each target group would get the right information at the right place in the sales funnel, I created the following matrix and a journey map of digital and analog measures in the Sales Funnel.
Based on the target group insights, we defined the relevance of our channels and talked about possible ways of measuring the communication goals‘ success.
Example:
For Xing and LinkedIn we had defined the goals below. To measure their success, I collected statistics on the social media platforms at regular intervals.
Goal 1: Customers as Ambassadors
Increase customer engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares)
Goal 2: Leads & Purchases
Increase traffic on website
Generate more bookings
4. Outcome
In order to be able to keep track of the team’s tasks, I started a Kanban Board on Trello. It allowed us to assign responsibilities, create labels for different groups (e.g. blog post, newsletter, social media) and have an overview while working from home.
In addition, I introduced new social media formats and involved the team in content creation so that they gradually lost their shyness. Clients and followers were able to virtually join trainers and coaches on their journeys, get insights into how we work, and interact.
5. Lessons Learned
Stay Focussed
As the marketing strategy and its successful implementation are an ongoing process, it is almost impossible to show quick results. Staying focussed and taking the measuring part seriously over a long time is very important – only then you will get the results!
Get your team on board
Creating a content marketing plan is easy. Sticking to it is far more challenging when the daily business is demanding more and more time. Agreeing to our goals as a team with the management having our backs made it successful.