Have you ever got really pumped up about ramping up your marketing, so you start taking heaps of action but don’t really see any results for your efforts?
*SIGH*
This can be really disheartening, but we’re here to tell you to not lose faith 🙌 You were probably 80-90% there already, you may have just been missing a little strategy behind what you were doing.
People often get confused by the difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy, the strategy is more about why you’re doing it and what the overall big picture goal is, whereas the marketing plan is about how you’re going to do it and the steps you will take to get there. So maybe when you were working super hard and taking heaps of action with your marketing, you just got a little excited and skipped step 1🙈? Not to worry though, we can go back and develop a kick-ass marketing strategy RIGHT NOW and you will probably be able to see what was missing in your original marketing execution.
Taking the time to develop a marketing strategy now will save you a heap of time when it comes to your marketing plan and will help to make sure you start seeing better results for all your hard work! So… you’re ready to develop a kick-ass marketing strategy now? Let’s do it!
✋ Firstly, let’s have a quick chat about what a marketing strategy will help you achieve because without understanding what it does, it makes it pretty hard to write it! Having a marketing strategy will help you 👇
- Accurately describe your business and it’s products and/or services,
- Clearly explain where your products and/or services are positioned in the market,
- Help you understand your customers and your ideal market,
- Identify your competition, and
- Provide you with goals & tactics for what you want to achieve from your marketing efforts
Now we know what a marketing strategy will achieve, let’s chat more about each of those topics to help you apply them to your own business. Psst… now’s a good time to grab the paper and pen! 📝
What Is Your Business and What Does it Do?
Now, this may seem like a stupid question to ask yourself, like *DUH* who would know your business any better than you do yourself? However, when you really take the time to get to know your own business from the inside out, it’s surprising what things pop up or ideas that spark when you start working through the motions and let’s be honest…there were so many grand ideas we all had had when we first started our business that has been forgotten about since we got the ball rolling (🙋 guilty!). Get that paper and pen out and just start blurting everything out:
- What do I sell?
- How do I deliver my products/services (online, in person, video calls, retail store, membership subscription, etc)
- Who am I selling it to? (we’ll get more specific on this in a min)
Once you have dug deep enough with the above questions, performing a SWOT analysis on your business is the next important task. What are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as a business? Doing this exercise may seem silly and feel like you’re not getting anywhere closer to the exciting part of marketing, but it will help you to clearly see what opportunities there are within your business you may not have thought of before, as well as what threats you could be faced with that had never come to mind. Knowing this now will help you massively get ahead or save a lot of heartache in the future 💔
Who’s Your Target Audience
If you don’t know your target audience, it makes it really hard to execute your marketing plan. Think about it, there’s a big difference from talking to a 55yo woman compared to a 25yo male. If you don’t know who your target audience is, how do you know what language to use in your marketing activities? You don’t! Whereas, if you have a clear picture in your head of exactly who you’re talking to, it makes it so much easier to talk in their language and relate to them. Now, this isn’t to say that you’re never going to sell your products or provide your services to anyone but your target audience, but it means your marketing is targeted at the most important segment of the market for your business. Do you have an ideal client, an absolute A-grade customer? Focus on finding more of them!!
Get that paper and pen back out because we ain’t done! Let’s detail, and I mean detail, who your target audience is. Really think about it as a real person, don’t be generic, get super detailed. THIS will make it sooo much easier for you when you go to plan your marketing. healthy
- Gender
- Age (be specific within 5 years!)
- Geographic Location
- Interests
- Hobbies
- Other products or services they would use/buy
- What do they enjoy?
- What do they dislike?
- What ‘pains’ do they have in their life that you can solve? I.e. too busy to buy healthy ingredients to cook dinner (oh look, a HelloFresh Facebook ad telling me they can deliver healthy groceries to my front door with recipes to make for dinner, problem solved!)... get what we mean?
Once you know who you’re talking to in your marketing, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to get your point across and speak in your ideal customer’s language to become more relatable 💡
What Are Your Marketing For – What Are Your Goals?
Again, this may seem like a silly question because we all market our business to grow it. But how do you plan to use marketing to grow your business? Is it to increase market penetration (sell more products to existing customers), or is it market development (selling products to new customers). Perhaps your marketing isn’t around getting the sale but more so about brand awareness? Or maybe it’s about adding value to your audience in your area of expertise to show you are the expert?
Once you have the above figured out, then get a bit more detailed. Do you want more sales? How much do you want your sales to increase by? Do you want more leads? How many more per month? Do you want a higher conversion rate? What rate do you want to hit and by when? Do you want to increase engagement with your audience? By how much?
If we’re not specific with our goals, we never know what we are working towards. Again, write this down. ✍️ The power of writing your goals down is super important!
Who’s Your Competitor?
We’ve all got one…or two…those businesses that always pop up and remind you they’re there…competing for your audience’s attention. Focussing on your competitor’s isn’t about getting peeved off or to get you down, it’s about figuring out what makes you stand out from them!
If you’re competing with someone for your audience’s attention, you need to show your audience what sets you apart and makes you unique compared to the other businesses you’re competing with. Write down a couple of your competitors and then give yourself a little confidence boost by working out what makes your businesses better than theirs and sets you apart from the rest. If you can’t find anything, maybe it’s time to make a little change to stand out from the crowd?
What Marketing Tactics Will You Use?
Now you have a more clear idea of what your business is, what you are selling, who you are selling it to, the opportunities in front of you, who your competitors are and what sets your business apart from the rest, you can start to think about what marketing strategies will work best for your business, as well as where you’re more likely to get in front of your ideal audience:
- Social Media
- Email Marketing
- Google Ads
- Facebook Advertising
- Other Facebook Tools such as Groups
- Website
- Blogs
- Video Content
- Influencer Marketing
Test, Learn & Adapt
Now’s time to have some fun, play around with ideas and see what works best/gets you the results you’re looking for, but also remember to be persistent with marketing activities as they can take time to develop and work the way you want them to, it won’t happen overnight.
Remember your marketing strategy is something to always refer back to, we find it particularly handy to get us focussed on the task at hand when developing a marketing plan each month, it gives you purpose, a direct focus and puts you in the zone where you need to be to speak to your target market. By sticking to your marketing strategy it will also help you keep your marketing consistent over different platforms.
Remember to share your marketing strategy with your team or even have their help to develop it, often they can become the voice of your business, so you want to make sure everyone is on the same page and speaking the same language.
I understand how busy it is running a small business, I’m in the same boat 🚣♀️ Which is why I find it important to delegate tasks, in actual fact I have the help of my team to run my marketing activities to take the pressure off. If you’re feeling lost or not sure where to start with your marketing strategy but really want to execute your marketing activities, get in touch with us today. We may completely run some small businesses entire marketing activities, but if you just need help with getting started and then you want to manage the rest yourself from there, we can do that too! Get in touch with us today to see how a strategic marketing plan can help get you set up to run kick-ass marketing campaigns for your business 👊