The focus for almost all marketing is to drive leads, close sales and retain customers all in an effort to increase profit and drive business growth. It’s an ambitious goal so it would be wishful thinking to imagine there was one simple solution or big marketing idea that would solve everything and deliver outstanding result, particularly in the current environment where consumers are bombarded by marketing and advertising every day on every device.
So what’s the answer?
Alongside having a cut-through strategy and marketing plan, the answer is to have a robust strategic marketing program that builds MARKETING MOMENTUM.
Ad hoc or inconsistent execution of marketing activities and campaigns just doesn’t get the cut through or the compounding effect needed to build awareness, engage prospects and drive them to purchase. So what can you do to start building some marketing momentum for your business?
- Strategise and Plan – develop a clearly articulated marketing strategy and marketing plan that sets your objectives, defines your target market, their pain points, your beneficial contribution to those pain points, your Unique Selling Propositions, your brand vision and identity, your position in the market, your key messages, your channels to market and of course your 4 P’s (Product, Price, Promotion, Place)
- Schedule – develop a schedule or marketing activity calendar of the marketing activities you are going to roll out over the coming 3months, 6 months, 12 months. Make it actionable and measurable include due dates, who the project manager/owner will be in your business, the expected outcomes and the strategic goal (awareness, lead generation, sales, retention, etc.)
- Integrate – stretch your marketing efforts across multiple channels to maximise the results from your effort and spend. For example if you write a blog, see if it can be re-written for a press release or social media or develop an offer on the topic to go on your website or in and inbound marketing funnel, etc.
- Report, Review and Refine – there is no point undertaking marketing if you don’t get results but how will you know what results you got if you don’t measure them? So put a process in place from the beginning to measure and report on the results of the marketing activities you undertake. Then make sure you review and refine your marketing activities based on the results to continually optimise and improve conversions.
So before you invest in any marketing campaign, make sure they are well planned, integrated and actionable. You want to be consistently and strategically implementing your marketing activities to gain some traction, leverage the compounding effect and gain share of mind and wallet with your prospect. Don’t throw good money after bad with ad hoc or non-optimised marketing campaigns, take the time to strategise, plan and rigorously implement, and report to drive your marketing momentum.
