Always Start With A Marketing Plan & Strategy

One of the biggest challenges business owners face is…focus. This applies to marketing as well.

There are so many tools, resources and ways to implement marketing today, businesses need to choose which ones are the best for their specific industry and how to make the best uses of them. Creating a marketing plan can be very overwhelming. Where do you start?

Here are a few items you and your marketing team will need to look at:

1. What are your business goals?
   1. It is important to look at short and long term goals.
   2. Are the realistic?
2. Look at your business.
   1. What is your vision/mission?
   2. Perform a SWOT analysis – where do you need to improve?
3. Look at your top three competitors.
   1. Where is your niche? How are you different?
4. Look at the companies you admire.
   1. Why do you admire them?
   2. How can you implement those items?
5. Who is your target market
   1. Personify them. Make them human.
   2. How do you solve their problems
6. Create a very specific 12-month strategy.
   1. Create clear actionable items.
   2. Create a calendar.
   3. Decide who will be responsible for each item
7. Be accountable to the items in the strategy.
   1. Commitment is from you is key – a marketer can’t do it alone.
8. Practice Patience.
   1. Marketing is not an overnight investment.
   2. Organic (vs. paid) growth is always better.

We love to help create strategies with our clients. Contact us for more information on how to get started.