Pencil Point Marketing | Marketing Strategy & Plans
ok, so you have decided you want to grow your small business!
there are just 4 steps to grow your business with marketing. here is a general outline of what to expect…
we talk. i ask a ton of questions about your specific business.
develop unique positioning, benefits, personality/tone.
plot marketing activations along the customer journey.
do the marketing stuff.
we talk. (heads up- this meeting will take several hours)
this is where i ask you a ton of questions and really get to understand the core of your business, your goals and how you would like to grow.
i really like to meet face-to-face, but we can video chat if that is not possible.
i may also request access to marketing platforms you may be using and any relevant information you have developed (like, brand guides, customer surveys, paid advertising reports, etc…)
(2 – 4 weeks)
competitive review. i’ll review 3-5 competitors in your market and gather insights on their benefits and how they talk about their services. we want to uncover their strategy and if they are doing anything right or interesting. from this review, we can figure out where your business can differentiate from the pack.
positioning. now that we understand how your business is better, we’ll develop statements around your unique position in the marketplace that you can use in marketing materials. this may also include a personality and tone recommendation.
target customers. as part of our initial chat, we’ll talk about what customers are your best customers. this piece of the plan will document what these customers care about and how to speak to them in marketing.
i may want to speak to some actual customers here!
(2 – 4 weeks)
define the customer journey. we’ll get down your marketing funnel from awareness to loyalty.
marketing audit. let’s look at your current marketing stuff – print, social media, website, etc.. i’ll review how you compare to your competitors.
marketing plan. this is the big deliverable! the plan includes assigning marketing activations to the customer journey. for example, if you are trying to create awareness of your local cleaning service company, a possible marketing tactic could be to invest in some paid, geo-targeted social media ads. but, that is just an example.
marketing plans are very specific to your business. this plan will be very in-depth and it will come with a hot-sheet of items to do right now and then also a list of marketing stuff to do to grow your business in the future.
(varies – some things are quick, some take a little longer)
execution of the marketing plan. yep, we’ll eventually get to doing the actual marketing stuff. there are some options at this point.
1. you (or your team) can execute the marketing plan all on your own. i try to make the plan realistic so that you can use free or low-cost tools to put it in motion.
2. i can do it for you! sometimes marketing just isn’t intuitive or fun and you just want someone else to do it. we can discuss what this looks like as a monthly fee. the first step here is development of a marketing calendar and measurement tracking doc. in some cases, i may refer you to someone that may be way better than me in that form of marketing (like technical seo!)
3. a combination of #1 and #2. you do some, i do some. we work it out so that you are successful and do what you can handle and then scale up or down as needed.
remember that no matter what you choose, you can always contact me for advice once you are a client.
