Here is a 5 step TOTAL marketing process to design, plan, act on and measure your marketing program this year.
1. Target your audience. Think carefully about your ideal customer. The clearer you are about who you are targeting, the more focused you can be with your marketing approach.
- Narrow down customers’ unique pains instead of what “features” make your business unique. Focus on them, not you. The rules “people love to buy but hate to be sold to” and “people buy for their reasons to buy and not your reasons to sell” apply equally to marketing where you are ‘selling’ a message in order to both qualify and attract the right potential candidates.
- Identify the places you will be able to reach those customers so you don’t waste time, money, and effort trying to reach everyone.
Marketing can be complex because it can be hard to know where to reach your customers. Once you have your ideal client profiled, the next step is to buy, borrow, or create market research that tells you where you will be able to target your ideal client.
2. Decide on your Outcomes. Many marketing programs fail because people aren’t clear on what they want to achieve.
Marketing is a journey. You must look at your customer across their entire journey with your business (from early pre-sales through retention and renewals) and select where in the journey you need marketing to create the desired action.
3. Tactics. Once you are clear about your strategy and outcomes you can determine which marketing tactics will suit you best. Tactics include PR, paid advertising, direct mail, search or SEO, social media, thought leadership, events, or trade shows.
Your selection of tactics will depend on both your marketing outcomes and the best way to reach your ideal client. Map your tactics to the phase in the customer journey you wish to impact (awareness, consideration, purchase and post-sell).
4. Take Action. The first step to action is to create a plan. You know what you want to achieve and now you need to identify the actions that need to be taken on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to achieve your desired outcomes.
Develop a marketing plan for this year which includes:
- Clear outcomes (specific, with timescales and metrics)
- Clear accountability for the different people involved
- A specific focus for each month or quarter
It needn’t be any more complex than a spreadsheet showing your targets, the tactics you are deploying and the results you achieve.
You will also need to consider what you do in-house and what, if anything, you outsource.
5. Learn. Marketing requires a constant feedback loop. You need to track and optimize marketing programs as you go to ensure you receive the best ROI. Which tactics are bringing in the desired results, and which need tweaking or ditching. Be ruthless. Too many people tolerate low performing marketing activities out of habit, or a belief that it is better than doing nothing or a fear that they don’t know what else to do.
The TOTAL marketing approach is for those who want to make sure their marketing:
- Generates, qualifies and nurtures leads and prospects during the pre-sales phase just as well as their Sandler Selling System does
- Reinforces and reassures customers during their time with your company, supporting retention and further sales and stimulating referrals
- Aligns to their sales process
