Whether we're working together to build a website that generates leads and elevates your brand or kicking off an inbound marketing strategy to help you reach revenue goals, our first step is to understand who your company is, what makes you different, and why that appeals to customers. This discovery step applies to nearly all of our engagements and includes competitive analysis, benchmarking, and documentation of current processes to understand where you are now and how you should move forward.
Step 1. Discover We get to know your organization and audience with honest conversations and research.
- Components:
- Brand,
- Audience,
- Competition,
- Benchmark
Brand
Document Your Messaging, Voice, and Image
Raka reviews your organization's existing brand guidelines to help identify potential gaps in the story you're telling online including the messages you're sending and how they’re delivered.
Audience
Attract the Prospects You Need
Raka creates or refines your buyer personas to document who your target audience is, what their challenges are, what questions they have during the sales process and how your solutions can help them.
Competition
Understand Your Competition
To recognize opportunities or deficiencies, Raka reviews how your competitors are using online marketing. Our competitive analysis normally includes two direct competitors and one aspirational competitor or model organization.
Benchmark
Define our Starting Point
Raka reviews and reports on your company's relevant, current online marketing performance. This is our starting point that informs tactics, goals, and future measurements of wins and losses.
Step 2. Plan We work together to define your goals and how to reach them.
Raka is a digital agency and we fully embrace the inbound marketing methodology. One of the first challenges we'll tackle with you is setting SMART goals that guide and test our marketing efforts. SMART? It's an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. We help your company solve business challenges and this is the step where we collaborate to set the ground work for our partnership together. By understanding where your organization is with online marketing and where you need to be, we can work together to define tactics, metrics, campaigns, and technology to help you set a comprehensive online marketing strategy and reach your online marketing goals.
- Components:
- KPIs,
- SMART Goals,
- Tactics,
- Content Map,
- Technical Specifications
KPIs
Define Metrics for Success
Raka sets specific key performance indicators to measure the overall performance of your online marketing. These often include website traffic and sources, conversion rates, lead generation, keyword rankings, and revenue.
SMART Goals
Measure Your Performance
We know you want more customers, more revenue, more conversions. We all do, right? Instead of simply wanting "more" or "better," we help you set specific goals with deadlines. They're attainable but not easy and they inform our tactics and tools.
Tactics
Define Tools and Plan Tasks
We have a variety of tactics to deploy. Email marketing, SEO, content offers, social media, conversion forms, paid advertising, video, webinars, and the list goes on. It can be overwhelming without a clear plan to decide which tools to use.
Content Map
Get Found as a Helpful Resource
When we've defined who your buyer personas are and what they are searching for, we can plan content to target their keyword searches and provide the answers and resources they need.
Technical Specifications
Plan the Technology You'll Need
Now that we’ve defined your audience, goals, and the tactics necessary to reach them, it’s time to move on to the tools that will help you get there. From selecting a CMS to incorporating marketing automation and third-party integrations, our tech specs define how it all gets done.
Step 2. Create We bring your online marketing strategy to life in design, development, and campaigns.
With our plan in place, we work to make it happen. This step may be a new website design, branding improvements, landing page development, copywriting, video production, marketing automation, or something else. If we're creating a new website, this step includes planning basic user experience through site architecture and wireframing and then proceeding to design and development. If we're collaborating on an inbound marketing campaign, this step may include creating content and online properties.
- Components:
- Architecture,
- Wireframe,
- Design,
- Development,
- Launch
Architecture
Plans to Meet Your Marketing Goals
The site architecture process produces a site map (how pages relate to one another) that consider SEO, user experience, and brand messaging.
Wireframe
A Blueprint for Website
Wireframes show the general organization of content on a web page and how its components relate to each other and the user, taking into account the weights and balances and potential functionality of the website.
Design
You Won’t Believe How Good You’ll Look
At this stage, Raka designs how your website will look and feel. We apply everything we’ve learned about your brand, audience, and business goals to create your organization’s online presence.
Development
The Nuts and Bolts That Make it Work
Here’s where it all comes together. Our developers work closely with our strategists and designers to bring the vision to life and ensure an end result we can all be proud of—your shiny new website.
Launch
Let's Make This Come Alive!
After a thorough review with your team and quality assurance testing, Raka launches your website, application, campaign, or other product.
Step 4. Measure We monitor your online marketing performance through data.
In this step, Raka gathers reports on the metrics we’ve identified together as your company’s key performance indicators during our strategy phase. Everything we launch is planned to use a variety of reporting tools including Google Analytics, HubSpot, Moz, SEMRush, HotJar, and more. When Raka works with your organization as a long-term partner, we provide customized regular reporting monthly and/or quarterly so we both know what’s working and what can be improved.
- Components:
- Reporting,
- Communication,
- Accountability
Reporting
Customized to Show the Data You Need
In the first months of our retainer partnership, Raka works with your team to prepare a report specific to your needs. Whether we’re supporting you in paid advertising, content marketing, e-commerce maintenance, or other ways, Raka shares the metrics and visualizations that work best for your team.
Communication
Regular Calls, Status Updates, and Reporting on a Schedule
Throughout a website project and once we are working with you on retainer, Raka sets weekly calls, weekly status messages, and regular reporting.
Accountability
Know What’s Working and What Isn’t
Online marketing includes innovation. Trying new tactics mean some things will work well and some will not. Raka gives you the full picture and tells you when it’s time to change course. We’re good. But nobody’s perfect.
Step 5. Evolve We analyze your data to improve and reach new goals.
Online marketing requires ongoing measurement, support, and adjustment if it’s to be effective. That may seem daunting but don’t worry! You’ll be working with an experienced team of professionals at Raka who’ve done this for lots of different clients in lots of different industries. Raka’s team, who has become part of your team by this step, provides interpretation of data to give you clear guidance and innovative ideas and suggestions on how to improve results or aspire to new business goals.
- Components:
- UX,
- Lead Generation,
- SEO
UX
Improving User Experience with Regular Testing
By interpreting data and testing how visitors interact with your website and online properties, Raka leads the ongoing improvement of your UX.
Lead Generation
Improving Conversion Rates
Along with improving UX, Raka looks at ways to adjust your conversion rates. It may be adding new functionality such as chat support, simplifying forms, or testing different messaging.
SEO
Continue to Get Found and Get Found for More
Raka’s ongoing search engine optimization services include maintenance, technical improvements, content strategy, and more to keep up with changes in search and your marketplace. Google waits for no man, woman, or company.