Creating a Marketing Strategy
One of the most important things you will do for the profitability of your business is to create a consistent marketing strategy.
A great marketing strategy has two parts:
- Short-term gains
- A long-term growth strategy
The long-term component comes from merely having a strategy or a marketing process as I call it, that is consistent.
Consistency is key.
I have been working with business owners for the past 10 years.
I have learned the most powerful thing we can do in our marketing is to be thorough, focused and consistent. This will blow my client’s competitors out of the water.
Why? Because 80% of small businesses are not consistent at marketing, their efforts aren’t very strategic – they are mainly 100% focused on short-term gains with no long-term strategy.
What this causes in a business is feast or famine and neither of those are a strong structure to build a business on.
When you experience extreme highs or lows in your business it is a result of not having a long-term strategy.
This very common weak spot is how I crush it and rank my clients above their competitors.
Creating a Marketing Strategy: Long-Term Factors
Let’s go over a few long-term factors of a marketing strategy.
One of your greatest assets is a website that’s highly searchable for top keywords which your target market uses to search for what you sell. This will pay your business back in dividends year after year.
As a matter of fact not enough business owners understand that a website is not merely an expensive business card. It’s job is to make your business money.
When a website is designed well and strategically used it’s literally like interest that compounds over time.
Another very important piece of the long term growth marketing side (even though it does have short term rewards) is tools like your Google Business Place and having a very strong focus on receiving good reviews. And also using your business place properly and all the bells and whistles that comes along with it.
As a matter of fact to be specific I have one service-based business client in my practice and he has a small business that grosses a little over a million dollars a year and in 2017 we added over $200,000 in Revenue to his small service-based business merely from having a very hard focus on our Google Business Place and consistent reviews.
Another part of long term is growing your list and leveraging it in a way that allows you to stay in front of people who are using your services and/or at one point has used your services or was interested.
For many businesses this one facet – this powerful facet of marketing(leveraging the list you already have) goes unused which leaves tons of money on the table that could be in your bank account.
Marketing efforts that are consistent and have a long-term Focus pays your business dividends over time and reinforces the short term gains that you’ve paid money for.
Once you build a great online presence and your customer can find you at the top of your search – you can spend less on paid ads – most businesses are so focused on NOW they totally miss the mark here.
Creating a Marketing Strategy: Short-Term Gains
Now let’s talk about an instrument used for shorter-term gains I am talking about using paid online ads.
Your potential customer or client goes to the internet and they search for your products and services.
Now they simply take out their mobile phone and they will do a voice search.
If you want to grow your business it’s very important you appear in this search – but not just IN it at the top of it because that is where the action is.
Often I’ll have someone ask me should I do Facebook or should I do Google ads?
It’s actually not a question of this one or the other because Facebook and Google ads work very differently.
So my short answer is both …….you need both because again they work very differently.
Let’s talk about Facebook just for a second:
Facebook ads is what is referred to as disruptive or passive marketing, because you have someone on Facebook they’re minding their own business they’re reading their feed looking at their friends pictures and then here comes your ad.
They aren’t necessarily looking for a dentist for example but there you are.
Now there is value in this type of marketing and your business SHOULD be there. Because as long as you are appearing in their feed eventually they are going to need your service. Eventually.
Eventually is an important part of a longer term marketing strategy.
As a matter of fact every client I have has a smaller budget allocated to Facebook. It’s not the star of the show but it’s definitely an important co star.
The lionshare of an online budget should be used to appear in searches that are conducted for your services – you want to be where people are purposefully seeking what you sell.
Facebook has one way to use their platform that is VERY powerful and I LOVE it. You can actually upload your customer list and only those people see your ad.
This is the where my 3 R’s of Marketing come into play.
Using Facebook for marketing to custom lists of people is a great way to reinforce, remind and rekindle relationships. This is not considered passive marketing if you use FB this way.
I actually consider this type of marketing an asset on both sides of the spectrum long and short term marketing. Staying in front of your existing customers and past customers is very important and once again reinforces an investment you’ve already made to bring them into your business.
If you have a service-based business whereas you know people are actively searching for your products or services your short term gain focus should be using something like Google adwords.
In using this tool if your website doesnt appear naturally in search results this is a way to ensure you are there and also at the top. If you aren’t doing this – this alone will make a positive and quick impact on your revenue.
Once again I want to state a great marketing strategy has two parts:
- Short-term gains
- A long-term growth strategy
How are you doing at both of these things and how can you do better?
Cheers!
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