Update your Marketing Foundations to Recharge Growth
Supply chain shortages and delays, rising transport costs, changing working arrangements with your team, softer sales results compared to more bullish times….is it time to recharge your business strategy to ramp up again?
Short of doing a strategy roadmap for your company, here is a faster way to dive into five key areas of your business to identify where you can lift performance and improve results. This applies whether you have a production-based business, provide services, or deliver online or offline. This article addresses the first and the remainder will follow in next updates.
This is a summary only, to get you thinking about your business and potentially improved results. The other areas to be covered in separate emails are: Clients and Account Management; Product & Service Offerings; Commercial & Financials; Team & Resources and of course, a 90-day plan to implement any changes you need to recharge your business growth!
- MARKETING FOUNDATIONS
You need to be very objective and honest with yourself when you assess how effective and on-target your marketing foundations are. Spend some time answering these questions to determine if you need to sharpen up your marketing to get better results. It’s a competitive market out there, and the business with the clearest message directed specifically to their ideal prospective customers, will have the best chance of winning new business:
Target Market
Do you still have a handle on who your ideal target market is? Has it changed at all in the last few years or does it need to change? Sometimes we can get caught up in winning business and taking on new customers because that’s how it happens, rather than remain true to who we service best and why.
The wrong target market can have a negative impact on the success of your business, if it takes you away from your most profitable activities and your core capabilities.
You always need to be very clear on the pain points of your target market and the emotional
triggers that will make them buy – and buy from you in particular.
Mastery/Your Value Proposition
It’s not uncommon for the value proposition to be missing from a company’s logo, tagline or
messaging. It’s the key differentiator of why prospects would choose you/your company
over any other alternatives.
Make sure yours is clear and compelling for your target market. It doesn’t need to be slick
but it does need to be genuine and clear.
Messages & Content
Content marketing is the information you put out into your target market’s world to give them advice, help, ideas and value.
It is usually based on your core areas of expertise and includes the core messages you want to convey about your business/your products/service/your philosophy around those.
To get your messages in front of your target market, you should be creating and communicating content on a regular basis (social media, blogs, online publications, podcasts, videos, traditional media etc).
Your company’s messages need to be clear and compelling like your value proposition.
Marketing Assets
Do you have a strong and consistent portfolio of marketing assets? These would include assets such as: website; social media platforms; blog content; testimonials; videos; brochures; signage (on cars, buildings etc); consistent branding.
Do any of these assets need updating, or do you need to create some new marketing assets?
Marketing Program
Do you have a calendar of marketing activities to continually promote your business and offerings to your target market? Any marketing activities need measures in place so you can assess results and allocate marketing focus and funds.
Have a look at some of your strongest competitors and how their marketing foundations stack up. Also have a look at companies from any other industry who have their marketing foundations working well based on the above checklist.
Do you have some work to do in the next month? You have the checklist so time to get marketing!
