“I need to do some marketing. So I’ll get that bloke I know to run a social media campaign for me, because social media is free marketing isn’t it? I’ll get some flyers printed up and post them through the doors on the local industrial estate and wait for them to call. I’ll get my website revamped; I’ve had an offer from that bloke I met at the networking meeting who said he could do it for £5,000. I’ll put an quarter page ad in the local freebie magazine which goes into 7,500 homes locally.”

“That should do it. I can sit back now and wait for the phone to ring……..”

Except it doesn’t.

Why doesn’t it do what we want it to do? What have we missed?

I often get asked “What’s the best method of marketing my business?” and the answer is always the same; “Well, it depends”

It depends upon what you are selling, how the customer perceives it and what the benefit is of that product or service to him. If he doesn’t see the value of what you are selling and how it fixes the problem he has, then however good your product or service is, he won’t buy it.

It depends on whether you understand who your client really is, what problem your solution is solving for him, and whether it’s important enough to him to decide to do whatever he has to do to buy from you.

It depends on the nature of what you sell, and how much trust you need to engender with your prospect for them to decide to buy from you. If you’re helping him plan his estate he will want to know your background and that you’re trustworthy, but if you’re selling him a magazine he will be less concerned about who you are, but will want to know that the magazine gives him information he wants.

It depends upon how and where your prospect receives information and processes it. So, there is little point in putting together a social media campaign (which, of course, is never free)  if your target client doesn’t read social media. There is no point in creating a new website unless you then have the means to drive the people you want to see it.

The first steps to putting a marketing strategy together are to understand what you are selling, who you are selling it to, and what the benefit to them is from buying it. Is the pricing right, and have we defined the marketing message in such a way that it is attractive to them, and they see the benefit over competing products or services?

Then we need to understand the financial picture. What is the price point for the product, does that represent value for the customer, can we make enough out of it to make it worth our while, and what can we afford to spend to promote it?

It is only then that we determine what marketing methods are available to us (here at Smart Support we have identified 55 marketing methods) and which ones to try. Once we have selected the methods we are going to use, we need to determine what activities we have to undertake, and what measures we need to put in place in order to determine whether they are working. Marketing Analytics

Once we have undertaken the marketing activity we then need to identify whether we are getting the leads we need in order to make it work, and if not, what we will do instead.

Daunting? 

Here at Smart Support we have the tools to help you determine what you are trying to achieve and how you should go about it; we can help to put together a marketing strategy and plan which will enable you to make the most of your marketing spend.

Why not take our free Marketing Review to find out what you need to do to put your marketing strategy on track?