Your goal

You want to reach a specific audience to offer great products or services. 

 

Your problems

Your current marketing is not effective enough.  You are about to spend an arm and a leg on a traditional marketing strategy with no way to track the return on your investment. You've heard about social media, blogging, email marketing, and analytics, but are overwhelmed.  

 

Where do you start

If you want to get more out of your hard earned dollars, your best bet is to start with a plan.

 

I'm taking a finance class right now.  The class is full of people 'in transition' and small business owners looking to get an edge in the marketplace by understanding the essentials of financial management.  One of my small business owner classmates mentioned that he was starting to work on his website.  He got the domain name a while ago and hired someone to start doing the design. I asked him about his strategy.  He laughed. "We don't have a strategy.  We're just going to put something up." 

What's wrong with this picture?  Here is a smart person who crafted a solid business plan, figured out how to get financing for the start up costs, and is taking a financials class to better protect his investment.  But, when it comes to a plan for reaching his target audience directly and setting up an on line system to guide customers through the sales cycle, he hasn't given it any thought.

 

"But, that sounds like a lot of work"

Many owner operated businesses are concerned that they don't have the time to develop a strategy (and then managing it once it is all in place?...are you kidding?). 

It's true.  There is work involved in maintaining an integrated marketing strategy.  Fortunately, it's the kind of work that (when following a plan) can be fun, personally rewarding, grow your business, and gets easier once you learn some of the basics.

 

6 steps for an effective marketing strategy

  1. Set goals
  2. Analyze target audience
  3. Craft content that solves their problems
  4. Deliver content in their preferred format
  5. Measure response to content
  6. Be available to support them after the sale is made.

 

Start at the beginning

If all this talk of strategy is giving you an ulcer, take a deep breath. Forget about everything else and just start with the first step.  What do you want to accomplish with your marketing?  What are your goals?  Do you want to attract and engage quality customers, sell more of a certain product, get feedback for developing new products, connect with peers in your industry...? 

Set one or set one hundred, but just get started. The best way to get where you want to go is to decide what that destination is.

If you go back to the beginning of this article, you'll see I've given you one already.  Add a couple more that are specific to your situation.  Starting is much less work than procrastinating.

 

 

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