Are you “doing marketing” or do you have a marketing strategy?

When people find out I own a marketing agency, they usually tell me all about how they’re  “doing marketing.” They may be “doing digital,” or “doing some TV and radio” or “doing TONS of SEO.” Then I’ll ask them how their strategy is doing, and they usually don’t have a good answer. 

That’s because more often than not, all this “doing,” (think tactics, metrics, deliverables, etc.) isn’t being executed as part of a thoughtful, well-documented plan to achieve real success. 

The biggest problem with this scenario is that while it may be getting some results, their marketing efforts aren’t reaching their full potential without a rock-solid strategy guiding them. 

They look and sound the same as their competitors. They’re vying for attention in the same places as their competitors. And the only way they can get ahead with marketing like this is to outspend their competitors, with no guarantee of better performance. 

Most importantly, your marketing strategy has to focus on achieving positive ROI and converting more leads than your competitors. It should answer every question about why your company’s solution is the best available, and tailor your message to your audience’s specific needs. 

With that in mind, here are three key areas we focus on when we engage companies to help sharpen their marketing strategies. 

Understand your most important challenges

A good marketing strategy solves problems from the top down. It prioritizes tasks and campaigns to attack the toughest challenges first, because eliminating those provides the most value. 

But this is impossible to do if you don’t understand the importance of each challenge that you’re facing. Not growing your social media followers and missing back-to-back quarterly sales goals are two completely separate problems in terms of severity. They also have very different solutions. 

Strategizing like this also informs your budget. Once you have your marketing priorities set, you can create a budget around a practical ROI model because you now have a better grasp of how it affects your bottom line. 

You can now build in benchmarks to track success and rally your team around. By taking the time to thoughtfully analyze your biggest obstacles to success, you build a strategy that is optimized for results. 

Dig deep for the insight that differentiates 

One of the biggest pitfalls of “doing marketing” is that you become so focused on execution that you neglect reinforcing your competitive advantage to your audience. Perfectly optimized Facebook and Google campaigns will never deliver to their potential if your ads look and sound like everyone else’s. 

To be successful on cutthroat awareness and lead gen platforms, you have to nail your value propositions and highlight your unique selling points. A lot of companies skip the discovery process of really nailing these down, and as a result, their campaigns are generic and ineffective. 

Having a comprehensive marketing strategy ensures that your vision, mission and key messages are incorporated into all of your efforts to promote your company and brand. 

Think of it as a checklist that has to be followed for all ad creative before launch. Another advantage of having a truly differentiated strategy is that it gives you a great platform for A/B testing to further optimize performance and provide even more valuable insight. 

It becomes proprietary knowledge that you leverage to pull ahead of your competition. You create an experience for your prospects that instantly positions you as the leader in your space. 

Plan for value and value your plan

When we schedule a meeting with a company that’s interested in partnering with us, we always request a copy of their current marketing plan so we can analyze it in advance of the meeting. More often than not, they either can’t produce one, or what they are able to produce is half-baked and out of date. 

When you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and this is especially true when it comes to marketing. Your marketing plan serves as a guide that identifies timing, tactics, resources and budgets. It’s your roadmap to get from where you are today, to where you need to be to achieve your most important goals. 

It also has checkpoints in place for performance evaluation. If campaigns aren’t producing after 60 days, it may be time to pause and reassess vs. continuing on cruise control for any longer. 

A good marketing plan also pokes holes in your strategy, identifying weak spots before you launch (and start spending) so you can address them now. Once you have everything documented and finalized, your team will be aligned because they’ll all have a clear understanding of their role and expectations. 

Documenting your marketing strategy also gives you the opportunity to continually improve as campaign data rolls in, and add new tactics to the mix as you identify what’s resonating with your audience. 

If you’re ready to stop “doing marketing” and start getting strategic, get in touch with the BroadBased team and we’ll help you apply these ideas to your business.