Market planning & Strategy
If you’re looking to grow your business to the next level, you’ll need a plan – a marketing plan.
You should think of it as a strategic plan of attack for driving business into your sales pipeline. It marks out who you’re targeting, where, how, when and why. The plan is like a map and the strategy is preferred roads you’ll take to get to your destination (with some alternate backroads built in – just in case of roadblocks).
A good plan tracks its success against your objectives on measurables such as;
- numbers of clients
- types of clients
- lead generation
- sales conversion
- retained customers
- average sale
- referrals
or whatever it is that’s important to your brand and your goals. For us, it’s all about having the right kind of people see your brand, turning that into love for your brand which in turn helps you grow your business (just like the picture above).
We believe taking a strategic approach to your planning is critical. Rather than rushing in producing marketing materials without taking heed of where you’re heading and what your customers want is a very hit and miss affair. It might look pretty, but if the brochure, presentation, website, etc doesn’t deliver the results you’re after, it hasn’t done its job.
Key steps in the market planning process should include;
- auditing your brand, its messaging and your customer touchpoints – there’s no point doing more of what might not be working,
- reviewing customer expectations and experience – fixing any glitches and finding the customer love,
- developing a 12 month marketing calendar (with quarterly KPIs)
- building the all important sales pipeline process – which ensures that your new business activity becomes part of “how we do things around here” for your organisation. It also takes the focus off you having to do it all moving forward.
