Strategic Planning

Or Why all of my meetings end up in making a marketing strategy first

If you don’t have a plan, it doesn’t matter how beautiful your web design or how well written your email newsletter. All great marketing starts with a plan.

If you’re a professional and you want consistent results, everything you do, marketing or not, starts with a plan.

Just like in counseling, typically a client will come to me with a presenting problem:

We need a website!

Then we meet and talk and I learn about their business. Turns out, they have a huge following on Facebook that loves their posts, and their product sells the best to impulsive people browsing Facebook. They don’t need a website as much as they need to see how critical Facebook is to their sales.

The problem they thought they had wasn’t the real problem.

So we make a sales pipeline out of their Facebook posts and measure what sells best on there. Once we have that answer, we EXPLOIT IT TO THE MAX!

Ok no.

Not really.

Or at least not in a way that people notice, because we don’t want to be Seth Godin’s example of marketers ruining everything.

So for that client, they didn’t need a website as much as they wanted more sales.

Talking about marketing strategy makes sense

It’s hard being an in-house marketer. You can be so embedded in the business that you don’t know how to speak to outsiders anymore.

Or what about the overwhelmed small business owner that wants to run their business and serve clients? They don’t want to figure out Google Ads and Facebook boosts.

That’s why we need to talk about marketing strategy. Business owners might not be sure if what they are doing is right or if it’s the best use of their time. One client I met with was overwhelmed with all of the ways he could market that he was lost in where he should begin marketing.

After some research into your market, your target customers, your hottest leads, and your most profitable offerings, a marketing plan is like a breath of fresh air!

Here are the steps.

Here’s what we’ll measure.

Here’s how we’ll know it worked, or when to see that it didn’t (and what to change).

Guesswork marketing is a drag

What you do at work all day is refreshing when you know what you’re doing and why. A strategic marketing plan helps you stay on target with your

Target audience

If it’s “everybody” and you’re not Coca-Cola, you really need a marketing plan! Know who your best customers are and how to reach them.

Value proposition

What you have to give that audience and what differentiates you from everyone else.

Marketing goals

You want to sell the thing that makes you the most money, right? Don’t just stay in business, give ‘em what they want!

KPIs – Key Performance Indicators

A bunch of likes on Facebook makes the boss feel good, but let’s measure sales. Let’s know for sure if our marketing efforts are working.

Then trust the system you made

When you were in your right mind and weren’t stressed with budgets and angry customers, you made a marketing plan. Keep to it and trust your wiser self. Adjust the plan only after you’ve given it enough time to prove itself a success or failure.

Every failure will become input the next time you revise the plan.

Track it.

Measure it.

Test it.

You’ll find making a strategic plan was the best investment you ever made for your marketing.