Marketing is often thought of as seasonal or campaign-based. But it shouldn’t be that way. Your business likely exists year-round, so why shouldn’t your marketing?
Always-on marketing takes this into consideration, allowing your business to shine in the spotlight all year long. If you’re wondering what always-on marketing is and how you can use it, wonder no more. Let’s take a closer look at everything you need to know to drive marketing results year-round.
Contents
- What is always-on marketing?
- Why is always-on marketing important?
- 12 always-on marketing ideas
- Awareness stage always-on marketing ideas
- Consideration stage always-on marketing ideas
- Decision stage always-on marketing ideas
- Next steps: how to always succeed with always-on marketing
What is always-on marketing?
Often, you turn to marketing for a specific purpose. You want to promote a new product or service, drive website traffic during the busiest times for your business, and so on. With always-on marketing, there’s a purpose, but it’s not as hyper-focused as a campaign-specific type of marketing.
Always-on marketing is a form of marketing where you’re constantly running campaigns to ensure you always have an online presence and are getting in front of your target audience throughout the year. Unlike seasonal or topical marketing, always-on marketing is simply, always on. It never stops.
Because always-on marketing is constantly running across various marketing channels, it’s often more general than a single campaign or product-specific approach to marketing. Your always-on marketing message may be focused more on the benefits of working with your business rather than a specific promotion or product type.
For example, if your business has a busy season, you likely run campaigns during that rush. But an always-on marketing strategy means you’re promoting your business beyond just your seasonal campaigns so that you can keep your customers engaged year-round.
Your always-on marketing approach helps your business maintain growth across platforms year-round.
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The benefits of always-on marketing
Consider these six benefits of always-on marketing.
1. It ensures you always have an online presence
First and foremost, always-on marketing ensures you always have an online presence beyond your basic website. When you’re running always-on marketing, you can rest assured you always have one or more marketing efforts that are (hopefully) drawing attention to your business.
Over time, always-on marketing can then lead to:
- An increase in overall brand awareness and familiarity
- More word-of-mouth awareness and conversions
The above can result in long-term, consistent growth!
2. It leads to ongoing engagement
When you have an always-on marketing strategy, potential customers always have ways of stumbling across your content or site.
Coupled with the aforementioned awareness benefits, you can see exponential growth in your engagement as more and more people become aware of your brand.
3. It helps with lead nurturing
When people have the chance to come across your marketing all year, not only does this help with familiarity and overall engagement, but it also allows for better lead nurturing.
Think of your current sales cycle. Often, one of the largest hurdles salespeople face is educating customers on your brand, offerings, and so on.
With always-on marketing efforts, people have an increased chance of coming across your brand before a sales engagement. From there, they can learn about your brand and find themselves naturally nurtured over time.
4. It can expedite the sales funnel
Beyond engagement, always-on marketing efforts can help expedite your sales funnel or sales cycle. When people are likely already familiar with your brand, your sales team has less heavy lifting to do. This can free up your team to focus more on providing service, and less on education.
5. It informs other marketing efforts
Always-on marketing can result in a treasure trove of audience data over time. Unlike campaign-specific marketing, which results in a load of data over a set period, always-on marketing provides consistent data over a longer period.
Once you have always-on marketing in place, you can make it a habit to assess:
- Which ads performed well?
- Which audience groups are you having the most success with?
- Which types of marketing collateral are converting?
An added bonus, not only will the above data help you finely tune your always-on marketing, but it will also help you craft more effective campaign-specific marketing.
6. It makes your advertising campaigns more effective
One of the most important reasons you should prioritize always-on marketing for your business is that it can make your advertising more effective. How? Machine learning automatically improves campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads over time.
Starting and stopping your campaigns seasonally will disrupt that. With always-on marketing, you’re continuously collecting historical data to get smarter campaign recommendations, bid optimizations, automatically created assets, and more.
12 ideas for always-on marketing
While always-on marketing is often a little more general than topical or seasonal efforts, it doesn’t mean it should be totally vanilla. Instead, it’s important you craft always-on marketing material that speaks to each of your marketing funnel stages—awareness, consideration, and decision.
🗓 Get more ideas for always-on marketing campaigns that last all year with our free marketing calendar!
Awareness stage always-on marketing ideas
Awareness stage marketing efforts should attract your audience that’s vaguely aware of their problem, or maybe not aware at all, and help them dive deeper into the subject. Here are some examples of ways you can deploy always-on marketing campaigns that fit the awareness stage of your sales funnel:
- Top-of-funnel (TOFU) blog posts: Create blog posts that speak to a high-level problem. In these posts, make sure you link to content that’s further down the funnel.
- High-level downloads: Develop high-level downloads, like infographics or checklists, that you can also promote via paid search and social media marketing. These higher-level pieces should be like their blog counterparts, and focus more on familiarizing the audience with an issue.
- TOFU how-to videos: Launch TOFU how-to videos that educate your audience on a relevant issue while subtly promoting your brand as a solution at the end. Again, don’t get too in the weeds.
- TOFU white papers and ebooks: Create white papers and ebooks that aren’t too far down the funnel, but instead focus more on industry-wide issues, large-scale problems, and so on.
- General ads: Draft and launch more general ads that lead to the items above or to general landing pages where people can learn more about your services and dive further.
An example of a top-of-funnel piece of content you would work into an always-on strategy like a monthly email marketing campaign.
Consideration stage always-on marketing ideas
Next, you need to create always-on marketing for the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey that helps your audience decide on a solution, while not getting into product specifics (yet).
- Original research: Original research is often time-consuming and costly but can be an effective form of always-on marketing. If possible, obtain and launch research that speaks to specific issues (that aren’t too topical) that your products are an ideal solution for.
- Middle-of-funnel (MOFU) blog posts: MOFU blog posts should dig deeper than their TOFU counterparts. Instead of driving general awareness around a problem, focus on more long-tail keywords and speak to in-depth problems you can solve.
- Product comparison pieces: Product comparison guides or graphics are great consideration stage material, and they’re ideal for always-on efforts. Make sure you revisit these pieces every so often in case products and offerings have changed, though!
- Case studies: Case studies offer a look at how you’ve helped a client, including real-world results. Once launched, make sure your case studies have a permanent home on a landing page, and then create always-on ads that point to them. In fact, case studies are ranked as the most effective marketing tactic by SaaS marketers.
A customer testimonial video that features a success story or case study can be an effective part of a MOFU always-on strategy.
Decision stage always-on marketing ideas
Now, it’s time to seal the deal with always-on marketing tactics that help customers make a final decision. These strategies can be more sales-y and focus heavily on your product, how you can help, and how you’ve helped others.
- Demo-focused ads: Craft ads that speak to your product and lead to a demo-oriented landing page. From there, the landing page should offer an in-depth look at your product, offer real-world results, and close with a demo or consult call to action (CTA).
- Conversion-focused tools: Tools and tests are an engaging, fun way to get your audience interested in what you’re doing. Create a tool or test that helps people decide on a product or find a solution, and then close with a CTA that leads right to a product suggestion or demo follow-up.
- Recorded product demos: Lastly, recorded product demos are a great form of always-on marketing. Make sure the demos close with an offer or demo CTA, and then house them on a landing page you can promote year-round with an ad.
An example product demo video that would speak best to an audience further along in the marketing funnel.
Always succeed with always-on marketing
Always-on marketing may run in the background, but persistent effort is key. Don’t get complacent with your always-on marketing. Instead, make sure you’re monitoring performance throughout the year and noting what’s working and what isn’t.
As you invest in new strategies or campaigns, incorporate it into your always-on efforts, especially if it’s not too topical or seasonal. For example, that new evergreen post on how to do X, Y, or Z? That’s a great candidate for always-on marketing and an ad.
Lastly, don’t be afraid to make tweaks as needed. Audience desires will change over time, and competitors will shift. As the market or your audience changes, so too should your always-on marketing.
With persistent effort, you’ll soon find yourself with a treasure trove of data and always-on marketing that drives long-term success. Plus, you don’t have to do your always-on marketing alone, see how our solutions can help you maximize your campaigns all year long!
