Submitted by Lyndon Johnson on
If you're planning a big year for your business in 2013 then now is the time to start planning. Here are a few things you need to think about as you build your marketing plan:
Get to know your audience. Intimately.
Understanding who your prospects are customers are is the most important part of building any marketing plan. If your business is B2B then understanding their role, what drives them, how they measure success [both business and personal], whether they have the final purchasing decision [if not, you need to know who does and who influences the decision] is essential. If you have a B2C business you need to know your target audiences' age, gender, lifestyle… their favourite brands, what newspapers they read, etc. Nowadays it's also essential to know which social networks they use.
Know your competition.
Who are you competing against for customers? Which companies are you trying to emulate? Which of your competitors market well [and which ones don't]? What is that customers like about one competitor and hate about another? Study the marketing strategies of your competitors - it'll be a gold mine of information that will help you learn from their successes and avoid making their mistakes.
Develop your proposition
Be clear about what makes you different. If you can't explain what you do and why you offer something your competitors can't in less than two sentences you need to think about it some more. If you're not clear, how do you expect your prospects and customers to be. Understanding your proposition also makes talking about it much easier and, most importantly, makes it much easier for customers to buy it.
Define your Message
When you get the chance to talk to your customers and prospects, what are you going to say? It could be the difference between they buying from you or a competitor so it's essential to get it right. Make it simple, thought-provoking and memorable.
What will your call to action be?
What do you want your audience to do? How do you persuade your target audience to do it? Do you want them to signing up for a newsletter, visit a blog post or clicking buy on a special offer you are offering via your e-commerce site. This is most often the piece of the marketing plan that is missing - and one of the most common reasons that
Identify the influencers
These could be bloggers, traditional media journalists, Facebook fans, twitter followers - but there will be people that can indirectly help you to achieve your business goals. Whoever they are, you need to know who they are in order to use them effectively.
Develop a plan
In the olden days they by-word of all marketing communications activity was campaign. Multi-layered instruments that ensured that a target audience couldn't fail to get your message, understand your unique selling points, choose your product or service over a competitor's. More recently the term guerrilla marketing has become more common - it is less strategic, more immediate and takes advantage of ad-hoc opportunities. While there's definitely a place for guerrilla in your marketing plans, the focus should be on campaigns that utilize both traditional and new media/social channels.
When marketing budgets are tight understanding the specific role of each part of a campaign in delivering ultimate success is key and a campaign will ensure that your money works as hard as possible for your business.
Execute
Building a considered and well-planned marketing plan makes it easy to deliver it effectively. If you've done the work up front you'll understand your target audience; the message will be spot on; it'll focus on what differentiates you from the competition; it'll use the channels/networks that your target audience want you to communicate with them via; and it'll get them to take the actions you want them to. Most importantly for a small business, it'll be as efficient on resources and cost-effective as possible and enable you to track its results so that you can learn from the experience when you build your next campaign.
So, what are you waiting for? For more advice on marketing, PR and social media communications visit www.thinkdifferently.ca, call me on +1 647.773.2677 or email lyndon@thinkdifferently.ca
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Comments
Lucie M.H. Fournier replied on Permalink
Traditional marketing
Hi Lyndon,
When you talk of traditional marketing - what do you believe to be the most effective in today's times?
Lucie
Lyndon Johnson replied on Permalink
Traditional Marketing
Hi Lucie,
Great meeting you last night andapologies for the delay in responding to your question. I'm going to sit on the fence a little and say it depends... it depends on your target audience; it depends on what you are trying to achieve; it depends on what your budget is; and it'll depend on what your call to action is.
Targetted activities like mailers and email marketing pieces are good if you want to talk specifically to a small group of people. Email is particularly good if you want your audience to take action and click on a link. That said, consumers [both B2B and B2C] get a lot of them so there's a risk that it may not get seen, or may be dismissed as 'just anothe e-mailer'. Advertising is great for brand building. Where there is no specific call to action or it's simply about awareness, then an advert can still provide a really good return on investment if you target it correctly and get the message right. PR can also work well - but requires real targetting to be effective. It gives you the ability to have a conversation with your audience over a prolonged period of time - where advertising, email and direct marketing pieces are often a one shot opportunity. It's also a better tool for communicating a complex proposition [longer than a short sentence].
I know this probably hasn't made things any clearer, but the key is to understand your audience, what you want to say to them and what you want them to do. If you can figure these pieces of the jigsaw out then you find that the best marketing tool for the job at hand becomes obvious.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions and I'll be happy to answer them.
Best wishes,
Lyndon