Why You Need a Marketing Strategy
For starters, knowing where you want to go and how you plan on getting there directs everything you do next.
Plus, Stats show that documenting your strategies gives you a 538 percent greater chance of being successful in your efforts.
Pretty amazing right? And I know you! You’re really smart and you might be thinking “Duh, thanks Captain Obvious” but let me ask you this next question… Do you have a marketing strategy in place for 2022? And please don’t cringe if you don’t - I am not SHAMING YOU! I totally understand… You are busy doing other important things.
It might make you feel better to know that most businesses I start working with don’t either.. Even the really big ones!
A marketing strategy plugs your business goals directly into your marketing plans.
Ever wonder if your marketing is effective? And what exactly you are achieving looking at followers, engagement, responses to your email campaigns etc.? What kind of results you get from what you spend your money on? Posters? Flyers? Are these even working? I know a lot of my clients wonder what marketing they should do for their business.
Well.. it all starts with the strategy.. And your business goals in fact. So let’s start there.
Over the next four weeks, I’ll write more articles about building your marketing strategy, creating a marketing plan and stellar content planning. Sign up to our newsletter to get notified!
Alright, so your business goals. Last week, I tried a cool new goal-writing trick from digital marketing guru Amy Porterfield. It worked really well, though I should mention that I’ve been noodling around with my 2022 business goals for a while now. My sense is that you have been too if you’re anything like me! Either way, here’s the exercise I definitely recommend doing right now.
Take 30 minutes and write down all the things you want to accomplish, have to accomplish or are in the process of accomplishing in 2022.
Think projects but also business transformations, structure changes, new skill development, hiring new staff etc. Don’t stop yourself! Just write everything you think of until you have nothing left.
One you’ve done that, reduce your list to 3-7 for the year. WHAT!? I know, it’s madness. But I see what Amy did here. We need to be super focused if we’re going to achieve our goals and create big impact. Less is more. And you know what? You still have all the other day-to-day things to address on top of these bigger goals.
Next, and here’s where I give you a little break.. I tweaked the next step which is to break down the year in quarters. Jan-Mar, Apr-June, July-Sept… and choose 3-7 goals down by quarter. This way you can maybe have more than 7 goals, although I kept my overarching list to 8. It also helped me spread out my goals throughout the year. Amy suggests breaking your annual goals into smaller ones over each quarter which is also really smart but I would go with what works best for you. I realised that some goals won’t take a full year, so I got to say, I’ll achieve x in this quarter or copy paste it across two quarters if it will happen over more than 3 months... you get the idea!
After this exercise, you’ll have your top goals and things to focus on in 2022. Brilliant!
Now we start looking at building your marketing strategy.
Look at your goals for the year and mark down what kind of goal they are. To make this easy, use the traditional departments of a business as markers. Is it an HR goal? An IT goal? An infrastructure goal? A sales goal? A marketing goal?
Need more marketing help? We’re here to help. Start here.
Pull out the sales and marketing goals if you have any, and make a new list. IF you wrote something around increasing revenue or making x dollars, I want you to drill down further and ask yourself (from a holistic point of view) how you plan on doing that. There’s a likelihood here that you’ll start thinking about sales or marketing activities that will drive this goal. If so, add those goals to the list too.
Once you have this list of business objectives that relate to sales and marketing, you can start to think about how you will use your marketing resources to achieve these goals. Think about your customers, do you need to attract new ones? Different ones? Do you need to generate awareness around your company? Your brand? A certain product? Do you have a product or service launch? Do you want to create buzz and excitement around what’s happening at your co. this year? Jot all of these thoughts down. This will create the foundation of your marketing strategy. The what.
In the next article, we’ll continue developing your marketing strategy by getting clear on your value proposition.
Much love & happy marketing!
Emilie
Rise
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