You wouldn’t walk into a hairdressers or barbers and say to them “I don’t mind what it looks like, why don’t we start cutting and we’ll see where we get to”. However this is the approach many owners and managers take with their business.
So many small businesses look at their marketing and decide ‘we need to do some more social media’ or ‘let’s offer a 10% discount to get in more sales’. However, are these really the right things to do for your business? The answer to this is that you can’t know unless you have an idea of the bigger picture - where you want to go and what you want to achieve. In essence you need a marketing strategy.
Mention strategy to most business owners and they run a mile, thinking it’s some long, complex theoretical process that won’t help. Believe me I’ve been involved in one or two of these in my corporate days, but I’ve always believed simpler is better.
So my approach is to structure your strategy around 3 simple questions:
Who are we going to target?
How are we going to get them to do what we’d like them to do?
What are we trying to achieve?
Focus
Having a strategy will provide focus internally. Everyone will know where they are aiming, what we want to achieve with the marketing and will be heading to the same place. It also provides a way to prioritise activity and focus resource to maximise it’s impact.
“Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers. ”
It will also ensure you focus on the customer. Every good strategy starts by looking at the market, not the company or the product. Jeff Besos talks about Amazon’s customer obsession. It’s very easy, especially in start ups, to start with the product and try and find the customers, but by starting with the customers and looking at what they need you’ll deliver a product that resonates with customers and attracts more of them.
Synergy
Again, there are internal impacts here. If everyone is working towards the same objectives, synergies will be created within the company. If you have your sales and marketing teams all aligned to a new customer group, their impact will be more than the sum of their parts.
The synergies also exist externally. 95% of customers use three or more channels to connect with a company in a single service interaction. If all the marketing is aligned, there will be consistent of brand, experience and message at every customer touchpoint. Take Apple for example, whether you experience them through their stores, their devices or their advertising the experience and messaging is all consistent. Having a consistent experience and set of messaging will increase the impact of and reinforce those messages.
Cost
Lastly and probably most importantly for many, the costs will decrease or you will be able to make more out of the same pot of money. It makes sense that if you target just 2 segments out of a market of 10, it will cost you a lot less to reach them. Granted, you are excluding 8, but the impact within the 2 you do target will be much higher as you develop relevant marketing for them.
“The odds of hitting your target go up dramatically when you aim at it.”
Similarly if you are clear on our priorities, you can also be clear on where not to spend your money.
The impacts of having a strategy seem very logical and attractive, but creating a strategy can seem daunting, which it doesn’t have to be. If you’d like help creating a marketing strategy, which will unlock your marketing, please contact us at hello@clairebestmarketing.com