The marketing cycle: uncovering the mystery

Anyone in business should know a bit about marketing. Perhaps surprisingly, though, many business people find marketing to be something of a mysterious black hole that gobbles up money. If you are one of those people, this post is for you.

At Signpost Consulting, we like to take you through our ‘Match-Fit-For-Business cycle’. This entails the full marketing service from discovery, planning, implementation, evaluation and review. The idea is to ensure your business evolves with new trends, markets and opportunities.

Strategy
The first stage is strategy. You must figure out what you’re selling, how you are unique (USP), who you’re selling to and what they look like.

No one can please everyone, so be specific. Think about whom your ideal clients are — those who are most profitable to you; those you are best equipped to service. The more specific you are the more effective your marketing is likely to be.

Develop a three to five-word strapline that explains to your ideal clients WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) —what problems you can solve for them. Then, create key messages that explain your offering and ignites their interest. Make sure you focus on the benefits you offer, like saving time and money, and why your organisation is best to solve their problem.

Action

Once you’ve clarified what you’re selling, who your ideal client is and how you are going to ignite their interest, it’s time to put together a plan of action.

Where are your ideal clients?

To know where to invest your resources, you need to know where your prospects are. Do they attend trade shows? Do they use social media, and if they do, are they on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter? Maybe they just prefer traditional mail, particularly if from an older generation.

Knowing where your ideal client ‘hangs out’ enables you to determine the most profitable spend for your marketing budget.

A lot of marketing and promotion can be highly effective at little cost if you get your key messages right at the strategy stage. In fact, you can spend as much as you like on promotion and advertising, but if you don’t have your key messages right, it’s easy to throw good money after bad into that ‘big black hole’.

Implementation

Now is the time to profitably enhance your product/service to appeal to your ideal clients and promote like crazy. Think about logistics? For example, who will carry out each task, like organising a website or liaising with the printer? When does each task need to be complete? Make sure everyone involved takes ownership and knows what’s expected of them.

Review

How is your marketing going? Are you getting more leads? Are you achieving the reach you want? Measure your progress. Thanks to online tools such as Facebook and Google analytics, we now have access to a wealth of data. If you’re achieving your goals keep going. If not, start the process again. Remember, marketing is an on-going cycle.

If you want more profitable ideal clients but need help to ignite their interest, Signpost Consulting is here to help. Give us a call.