Marketing is like a recipe for your business. Get one!
Why do you need a Marketing Strategy? Let me put it to you like this: If I asked you to make me a home-made Cheese Cake and you didn’t know how, could you do it? That is, could you make a Cheese Cake from scratch? Let’s assume you don’t know how. To make me that cake, you’d need a recipe, directions that tell you what ingredients you need and then how to prepare everything with them in hand. Make sense?
Many times, our clients will put in a great deal of time and effort to promote their business online, using a tactic or two that they find online. Some usually meet with some level of success, but rarely, if ever, substantial enough to warrant continuing with said tactic(s). In a way, it’s like trying to make an omelette with a single egg that you haven’t cracked yet. It’s close, but not quite. More work needs to be done.
In fact that “shotgun approach” often misses its mark and fails to produce results. It’s not a single silver bullet technique that makes a marketing strategy work. It takes someone coordinating many of these “silver bullet” techniques in unison to help get you to where your business is growing.
Simply put: There’s a lot of thought that needs to go into the creation of your next marketing campaign. Doing so not only saves time later, but potentially reduces costs considerably as the campaign progresses.
Don’t Put Marketing Tactics Before Strategy… Ever!
You’ve heard the phrase “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.” Seems like sound advice, right? If the knife wielding person did some research, or had some help they might not to that fight ill-equipped. Just sayin’!
Putting together an effective marketing plan not only requires planning, but it requires a lot of work! A lot of effort is spent on keyword research and refinement. This phase helps determine your keyword strategy and is required for your marketing strategy to be successful and it also saves costs.
In this phase you identify your target audience, markets and identify pain-points, while building value with your strategy. Understand who you want to sell to VS. who you’re selling to now. Often these two items end up being completely different! Also, understand HOW you’re talking to your audience. That is, do you talk about how awesome your company’s services are? That’s awesome, but you ought to be talking about how your company can help customer X do this thing or that project better than any other product. Build value for your customers; tell them the story.
These details should definitely be ironed out before you get started. Period. Once a plan has been set forth, everyone is on the same page, the strategy is defined and will be consistent. It’s not easy, and, yes, it’s a lot of work. The question is: How much is your business worth to you? Is it worth waiting, to get something done right the first time?
About Alex Vasquez
