If you want to increase sales and grow your business, you must develop a marketing strategy. However, many business owners fail to budget for business events, branding, web design and social media which are essential to growing your brand and driving revenue. Marketing is an investment that should not be overlooked and needs to be adequately funded.
Create Your Strategy
When you are developing your marketing plan, you are trying to figure out what strategies and tactics will have the biggest return on investment. Moreover, how you will reach as many of your audience in the most cost-effective way. Your marketing plan is your How and your marketing strategy is your What. In your marketing plan you created a clear set of goals, such as revenue and profit goals and marketing goals to position your business in the marketplace. While most business owners post on social media, sending email campaigns, attend events, these efforts should support your business and marketing goals.
For example, your goal is to reach $100,000 in annual sales revenue. Now, look at the strategies and tactics you will use to support those goals! One strategy might be to start using digital and social ads. So, you decide to set a monthly budget of $600 to spend on Google and Facebook ads to drive traffic to your landing page with a promotional offer. A well-throughout marketing strategy can help you raise awareness, attract more customers and boost sales. Here are a few steps to get started.
- Start with your goals – what are your revenue and profit goals for your business? What are your marketing goals that will support the business goals? When setting your goals define what you want your marketing efforts to do to help you reach your business goals.
- Who do you want to reach – define your target customers by identifying key characteristics such as age, location, gender, and lifestyle. If you are B2B; size, revenue, industry, years in business or buying patterns.
- What activities will you implement to reach customers so you can effectively achieve your goals through marketing. There are many marketing tactics to choose from. This is where it gets hard to decide what to do because your budget maybe limited. Think back to your business and marketing goals to determine which channels will help you reach them. Marketing channels are things like, social media, trade shows, direct selling, etc. Think back to your audience, which tactic is better suited for the people/businesses you are trying to reach. Think through each and consider costs, ease of implementation, potential customer reach, and length of time it might take to reach and convert.
- Prioritize the top three-five tactics that make the most sense to test and measure. You cannot tell what’s working if you are not measuring. Measure and track conversions, purchases, signups, and walk-ins for the tactics you put in place.
- Create Your Budget – research and price all the strategies and tactics using a promotional budget worksheet. Depending on how aggressive you want to market, allocate anywhere from 5% to 15% of your gross revenue.
- Get Financing – It takes money to make money. Now that you have your marketing strategy and budget. How will you pay for this? Consider obtaining a microloan from a CDFI to give you the funds you need to reach your business goals.
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