2018/07/27
Do you have a plan?
Marketing is such a broad discipline that without a plan of attack and a focus on your objectives, you could find yourself spending alot and achieving very little. Having a written marketing plans helps businesses by thinking about and defining those actions that you believe will best get your message out to your target audience. Having a formalized strategy helps the business identify targets and set goals and objectives for business building activities. The Marketing Strategy in many ways sets the growth course for your business and is not something that you should shoot from the hip.
What should you include?
Think about the marketing basics, those four P’s (Product, Price, Place, Promotion). A solid marketing plan reviews these against your current activities and then builds in programs and activities to support growth. A comprehensive marketing strategy accounts not only for the current activities that you have planned already but also integrates plans for focusing activities on growth where you desire. The plan should include strategies for the products/services you offer, the price points for those solutions, details on how these solutions will reach your targets, and the advertising and marketing channels you will use to reach those clients. The details of your strategy will provide the clarity you need to more effectively grow your business.
Know your ideal targets
Marketing strategies assist businesses in defining who their ideal clients are and how best to reach and convert them. The more specifics you can define around the target audience will provide you with increased effectiveness around your campaigns and communications to those targets. Deep diving into the specifics will provide you with great insight for identifying the market and which channels could be most effective for reaching those targets. The days of the “one size fits all” approach should be left in the past. In today’s market, the more you can reach the right contacts where they are, the more effectively you will be able to communicate your message and reach those targets. Additionally while you are doing your research on your targets, don’t forget the importance of researching your competition.
Set measurable goals
Strategies provide you with a plan for achieving your goals. In building these plans, it is critically important to establish goals at the onset of the plan. What are you hoping to accomplish from the actions you are planning? Financial goals should be established defining items like, increasing sales or reducing marketing expenses. Goals should be clearly spelled out and should be set for any expense activities you are planning.
Execute, Measure, Adjust
Once you have implemented your strategy, any goals and targets that you establish in your marketing plan need to be monitored for performance. These targets should all be established and agreed to so performance against plan can be measured throughout the program. Measuring and monitoring performance of your activities I recommend monitoring the performance of programs so that you can make any adjustments needed to improve performance and ensure your programs focus on helping you reach your objectives.
Being strategic around your choices of marketing tactics has never been more important for businesses. With the wide range of marketing channels to reach different audiences, some might be asking themselves, “where do I begin”? If you find yourself facing these types of obstacles in the creation of your plans, you can consider self learning from networking groups to provide access to other entrepreneurs where topics can be posed in a forum, you can spend time googling to learn what some others are doing, or you can invest in a consultant to bring in direct access to the skill set you are needing and collaborate with them to develop a specific plan for you. Should you need help, I am here to assist you, just contact me.