BRINGING STRUCTURE TO YOUR MARKETING
Do you struggle to structure your marketing efforts effectively?
You know how great your services/product is, but don’t find yourself shouting about it in a structured way.
In my experience, there are a few reasons for this:
Resources and time are significant factors. You probably have limited budget, hours and staff to dedicate to your marketing. You prioritise business development in isolation from marketing and other aspects of your operations, which means you don’t have a marketing plan built to support long-term brand awareness and growth.
You have a limited knowledge of your target audience. Effective marketing requires a deep understanding of what your audience is thinking, their pain points, and their challenges. Without this understanding, it is tough to create tailored marketing campaigns that resonate.
There’s minimal marketing knowledge or experience across your team. You and anyone you work with focus primarily on your own areas of expertise and throw what you can at marketing.
Why is structure important when it comes to Marketing?
Without a structured approach you’ll confuse your audience by marketing sporadically. You’ll also work in isolation of your business objectives so you won’t generate long term success - whatever that looks like to your business.
This is where marketing consultancy can provide help and support.
Small businesses come to me needing direction as they don’t have the time, resources and/or expertise to design a structured approach to marketing their service/product.
My role is to help you work through those decisions: what your marketing needs to achieve, where your attention is best spent and how your activity can support the business. From there, you can turn your strategy into something practical.
What does a structured approach to marketing look like?
Structure can come in many forms - a roadmap of top-level activity, or a campaign plan with tactical activity.
A campaign plan sets out the main activity needed to support your marketing objectives. Start with the business goal, then work through who you need to reach and what they need from you. Add the timing, responsibilities and resources needed to make it happen.
For example, imagine a small training provider preparing to promote a new workshop. One part of its plan could look like this:
Objective: generate suitable enquiries for the next workshop.
Audience: people managers who need help supporting new team leaders.
Theme: the challenges new team leaders face in their first few months.
Activity: one practical article, supporting LinkedIn posts and an email to relevant subscribers, all linking to clear workshop information.
Owner and timing: the trainer supplies the expertise, the person responsible for marketing prepares the material, and both agree the publication dates ahead of the workshop.
Measure: relevant enquiries and bookings, alongside the questions people ask before deciding.
Turn the campaign plan into the next 2-3 months of work
Look at the next milestone and identify what needs to be ready first. In this example, that could mean confirming the workshop details and improving the booking page before promoting it. Then give each task an owner and a realistic date.
Check the workload against the time available. If it won’t fit, reduce the activity or move the timing. Review the plan regularly so it stays useful as the business changes.
The activities should connect with one another. My post on integrated marketing explains how that works from your customer’s perspective. If you need support deciding what belongs in your plan, you can also read about my marketing advice and direction.