Strategy

Have you ever decided to join a kayaking race and jumped in without a paddle? You can’t steer away from potential accidents, or even keep up with, let alone, pass the competition to gain the lead. Building a business without a strategy is just as frustrating. How will you avoid the inevitable pitfalls, or adapt to a rapidly changing market in order to maintain a competitive advantage? How will you even know where you’re going in the first place? At first, answering these questions may seem daunting. However, successful businesses understand the winning formula – developing an effective marketing strategy.

Your job is to run your business, make the best bread, take the best pictures, sell more houses, or whatever it is that YOU’RE great at. When you have your own business you’re now responsible for everything, from changing the light bulbs to creating a website. You know marketing is a huge part of what makes or breaks small companies but it’s hard to know where is the best place to invest your limited resources. Sadly, over 90% of small businesses fail within the first five years and the majority of the reason is either bad management or awareness.

To get started on strategy you have to understand three things:

Where do you want to go?

Identify the road ahead. Do you want to open another location, hire new employees, expand the business or are you happy with the way things are but are focused on keeping your current audience?

Where are you now?

First, assess your business’s current situation. How are you doing compared to the competition? Are profits increasing or decreasing? What changes are happening in the market?

How will you get there?

Now it’s time to develop a detailed strategic plan that includes the brand’s positioning and how each element of your marketing efforts will work together to support that positioning.

We can take the marketing portion off your hands and help you through the process so you can focus on running your business. We can:

Identify your right audience

Your talents are unique to your business and there are plenty of people who need your services! You could have the best idea, but if you can’t get in front of the right people, how will you be successful? How do you find new customers? And once you know who to target, how do you reach them? We can help you with Market Assessment (link to other solutions page) and Positioning and Planning (link to solutions page) to focus your message on the right people/audience and reach them where they’re at.  

Show you how to talk to your audience

Do you know if your message is resonating with potential clients? Does your website and social media presence show your personality, professionalism, and why you’re the right choice for them? Do you even have a website or a Facebook page, and are those the right tools to start reaching your audience with? Not only is assessing your current marketing efforts a crucial first step, but it’s really important to fix or tweak your messaging and understand the proper execution (link to other solutions page) of your detailed messaging strategy.  

Help you allocate your spend in the right places

When you’re running a small business, usually every dollar is spoken for even before you make it, so you can’t afford to waste your resources on efforts that won’t give you a good return. Most design or ‘ad agencies’ will try to get you to spend as much money as possible without taking into account what would really work for you to reach the right customers. Once we’ve worked together to find your right audience and where to reach them, we’ll identify the best, most cost-effective way to spend your marketing dollars to get the best return on your investment.

Execute on the Details

Once you know who your target customers are, how to reach them and what to say to them, now how do you make it look good? Anyone can quickly throw up a website, but customers are taking longer and longer to reach out to businesses and spending more time researching. Over 70% of the decisions are made before a customer every fills out a form or picks up a phone. You need to put your best foot forward to all potential customers, whether that’s your website, social media presence, mailpieces, or advertisements. Spending a little more money upfront to get the right design, look and feel will translate into a better first impression and bigger impact.

Need Help? Get in Touch.

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