Marketing Strategy & Planning

Every business needs a marketing strategy and a marketing plan. That goes double for small businesses. A fair amount of small businesses argue that they don’t have time or resources to spend on either strategy or plans.

They’re right. They don’t have time. That’s exactly why they need a clearly defined strategy and a plan. It’s so that when marketing (or whomever gets assigned marketing as one of their many roles) gets down to market, they know exactly what they need to accomplish and how they’re supposed to do it.

Otherwise, it’s like starting from scratch. What do we need to do…again? Did our goals change based on that conversation two weeks ago? How did we say we were going to do that? Social media, Search Ads, Flyers, Podcast interviews? What gets lost besides time and money is consistent communication with your customers, and that communication breakdown is the costliest of all.

Strategy + Plans

Put simply the strategy is the “what” of your business and the plan is the “how”. For small businesses, this can seem intuitively obvious. But over time, shit happens, things change, and businesses pivot to solve new problems or meet existing customers’ evolving needs.

Strategies and plans help you stay focused, have a record that employees can refer to rather than asking the owner ever time they have a question, and help you recognize when you need to change focus, which may also mean reallocating resources, hiring new talent, and changing your marketing spend.

Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategies are long-term, forward-looking approaches to planning. They include an explanation of the goals a company needs to achieve with its marketing efforts. Using segmentation, targeting & positioning, and promotional tactics, we build a strategy around what your business needs to accomplish to be successful. We also identify ways to monitor marketing progress, assess engagement, and evaluate effectiveness.

Strategies don’t have to be complicated but they do have to be clear. We let your goals dictate the level of complexity and make sure the strategy can clearly translate into a plan.

Marketing Plan

The plan constitutes your marketing department’s marching orders. It’s a roadmap for marketing.

Your marketing plan can be a comprehensive 40 page blueprint or a two-page table that clearly spells out how to get the right message to the right person in the right format at the right time.

Not every company needs a 40 page marketing plan, but every company needs a plan. Let us help you find the plan that works for you.