Before you can do any effective marketing for your small business, you need a marketing plan. Before that you need a marketing strategy that will provide the long-term goals and core elements of your marketing. Let’s look at what a marketing strategy contains
Strategic Marketing
Providing the direction and objectives for the marketing of your small business
Vision and Objective
What do you want to achieve for your business and why are you doing it? This first phase sets the tone for everything else and needs to be communicated to all stakeholders, both inside the business and externally.
What are you selling and to who?
Again, this seems obvious on the surface, but you need to go deeper. Do you find yourself talking simply about your product, or service, and what it does? Have you looked at them from the clients’ point of view?
Nobody can sell one product to everyone – or anyone. The largest companies in the world have multiple products, all aimed at specific market segment. To grow your small business into something bigger, you need a clear picture of who you are selling to, what they are buying and how they will benefit from buying from you.
What are your messages and how are you getting them in front of your audience?
Nobody cares what you do! Harsh, I know, but think about it for a moment. They care about how you can help them. Your marketing strategy needs to clearly define what you are going to say to show how you can help them and then the key marketing channels. Will your leads come to you, or will you go and find them? Will you go directly, or use partners to find them? All this needs to be mapped out in your marketing strategy before you start planning.
Why you must do this first
Your strategic marketing plan gives you the basis on which to build your marketing. It allows you to work out your marketing budget, the resources and skills you need and the targets that need to be set. If you want to maximise the ROI from your marketing, it needs a strong foundation – a marketing strategy.
