Why You Need Strategy Before Tactics!
Does your business seem to keep running into one of these problems lately?
- Your business is seen as a commodity
- You’re not sure what marketing tactics make sense
- You’re attracting the wrong types of clients
- You are struggling to stand out from your competitors
The answers you have probably been looking for aren’t strictly found in one tactic like SEO, social media, or website content – these are strategy problems and they can only be addressed with strategy-focused solutions.
Getting started with a solid marketing plan can be difficult and even overwhelming. There are thousands of resources out there with many different opinions and recommendations. But which one do you choose to follow?
As a small business owner, how do you make sense of this all? Your business is unique so you have to be sure that you are focusing on the right marketing approach instead of wasting your money on tactics and advertising that does not work.
We have worked with hundreds of small businesses, and more often than not, marketing is the least understood component of any business. That is why we are offering the Strategy First Engagement to our clients.
Because we know that your business is unique you require a marketing plan that is based on your business, your clients and your industry. But not to worry, your marketing plan isn’t going to be dozens of pages long and we do all the heavy work.
The Strategy First Engagement consists of clarifying your marketing message, describing your ideal clients, analyzing your competitors, and we provide recommendations on content and how to best get your message across. There are three meetings throughout the process as well to ensure you and your team are involved and so we can better understand your business. Once completed, you will have a blueprint that will drastically improve your marketing efforts. We do this by focusing on strategy and tactics that have the most significant impact for your business.
9 Steps in a Strategy First Engagement
Initial Discovery Meeting – During this meeting, we’ll learn about your business, your current marketing efforts as well as future goals and objectives.
Online Presence - We take an in-depth look into your total online presence including your website, social media and search engine optimization to see where improvements could be made.
Core Message and Ideal Client Persona Development – We will interview 3-5 ideal clients to discover your most effective competitive advantages. This also allows for a different perspective on your business. You will receive access to interview summaries, ideal client profiles, and our recommendation for a core marketing message that will attract the right clients.
Competitive Landscape – We’ll study your biggest competitors and create high-level summaries and a report on their marketing strengths and weaknesses to create comparisons on how you can stand out.
Editorial Plan – Based on our keyword research we’ll build a content strategy using our “hub” pages approach that will allow you to map out 3-6 months of content as part of your ongoing marketing efforts.
Check-In Meeting - In this meeting we discuss our research with you and present the core messaging to ensure we are on the right track and aligned with the vision for your business.
Customer Journey Map – Using our proprietary Marketing Hourglass system we will help you create a roadmap of suggested marketing tactics for each of the phases of the customer buying journey: know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat and refer.
Priority Growth Recommendations – From our research and an audit of your existing marketing and online presence we’ll recommend the highest-impact activities you need to consider fixing or implementing today.
Presentation of Findings – Once we complete our work we’ll schedule a time to meet with you and your team to deliver the items above and map out what we believe is the best strategic approach for you to take with your marketing. From this point, you’ll have several options for how you put our recommendations into action. We can provide training for your staff to implement the marketing plan or we can do it for you!
The entire process takes about 30-40 days and involves three meetings with you and your team.
When you receive our strategy findings you’ll have a clear direction for standing out and attracting the ideal client, as well as a roadmap of the most effective tactics to support your strategy.
Contact us today if you would like more information or watch a copy of our webinar outlining the process.
The Strategy First Engagement service with EDGE is available for $7,875 + GST.
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Posted: April 27, 2021
