Marketing and Business Support
It’s never been more important to understand the imperative of a strategic approach to your business’s marketing initiatives and to grasp the potential pitfalls of reactive marketing.
If you’ve ever found yourself frantically deploying marketing measures in response to unexpected success or failure, only to question their effectiveness later, then read on. Here’s what you can expect to explore:
The Power of Strategy: Discover the significant benefits of a structured marketing strategy. We discuss how a well-thought-out strategy acts as a road map, ensuring that your marketing activity is directed towards achieving specific, bespoke goals.
The Perils of Reactive Marketing: Understand why marketing initiatives that are reactive rather than proactive can lead to missed opportunities and poor return on investment. We dissect the risks of the ‘spray and pray’ method and explain why it’s often a recipe for disaster.
What If I Don’t Need a Strategy? Learn about other, less strategic, but equally important marketing and business support services that can complement your broader marketing efforts. We explore scenarios where a full-blown strategy may not be necessary.
Is There a Right Way to do Marketing?
When a business experiences unexpected success, the significance of marketing suddenly becomes apparent in a ‘make hay while the sun shines’ kind of way. However, marketing initiatives undertaken at that point are typically too reactive, meaning the action taken is without forethought and is directly in response to the unexpected success.
In reality, it’s not the marketing itself that’s a problem; it’s the approach.
Reactive marketing is rarely a good thing because there’s no time to think it through or make a plan, and this can lead to missed opportunities or, worse still, unintended misrepresentation. Furthermore, it’s common for the activity to be random, inconsistent and for the messaging to be off-brand. It sounds dramatic. It is. Advertising execs in the 40s and 50s called it the ‘spray and pray’ method – an entirely random/non-targeted way of getting to as many people as possible and hoping to get a response.
Not surprisingly, the result is usually a poor return on investment and an unsatisfactory overall experience that leads to the commonly held view that marketing isn’t cost-effective.
Get into the flow - the flow of strategy
The antidote to the often chaotic approach of reactive marketing may not be immediately obvious, but it is straightforward. It’s having a strategy in place.
Developing a marketing strategy is what you do before you go off, guns blazing, potentially doing and saying all the wrong things.
The strategy is a controlled process that determines the path to a set of predetermined, bespoke goals and plots every step for how to achieve them. It’s the road map for your marketing activity.
Whilst many variations exist, this flow chart demonstrates the high-level steps every marketing campaign, small or large, local or national, is likely to follow.
In reality, strategy is the whole process, but it sits at the top because it embodies the think-don’t-do-yet part, as it’s the process of determining the steps you must take to achieve certain goals and the right way to go about doing it. Indeed, the strategy is typically developed and agreed upon before any output action takes place.
In marketing terms, a good strategy requires a clear understanding of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and takes full account of the competition, current market trends, and the needs of the most important group of all – the customer.
What if I don't need a marketing strategy?
Not every aspect of marketing for your business needs to be strategic. Sometimes a business simply needs a set of professional headshots photographed for their staff, or regular content created for their blog, or perhaps their privacy policy updated to comply with the GDPR, and so on.
Each of these and many more marketing and business support services are available at any time to everyone, as our Marketing Alliance Solution Professionals provide a vast array of specialised services and will happily discuss projects of any size with you.
Whatever stage you’re at on your business development journey, we’ll help with any or all of the services you need.
What's your next step?
You’re likely to be reading this because you need help with your marketing and growing your business, and you may have tried working with other providers who have not quite hit the mark with you.
Most business owners begin their marketing journey in a random way, trying to figure out what they need and the best way to go about it. If that resonates and you’re determined to find a more controlled way to put your business on the map, then let us help you. The best way to begin this new journey is with a strategy workshop that quickly establishes where you are now, what your goals and aspirations are and how best to get there.
Below you will find a link to a simple questionnaire about you and your business. It doesn’t commit you to anything, but it is most likely to be the next best step.
ANY QUESTIONS? WE'RE HERE TO HELP
Take The Marketing Strategy Health Check Now
Take The Marketing Strategy Health Check
Wherever you are on your marketing journey, we'll show you how to attract and convert more customers, consistently outperforming the competition.
In this Marketing Strategy Health Check, we'll run through a few thought-provoking questions looking at the following key areas:
Your Business
How clear are your company’s vision and goals? How well do you measure your progress?
Your Strategy
How important is an overarching marketing strategy to you? Do you see it as key to growth?
Your Brand
Does your brand compete effectively in your marketplace? What does it say about you?
Your Audience
Do you really know your audience? What are their needs, and what are their expectations of you?
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SOME OF THE CLIENTS OUR SOLUTION PROFESSIONALS WORK WITH, INCLUDE:
