A 7 Step Marketing Framework That Works
One of our goals here at Indispensable Marketing is to remove the mystique from the entire marketing process and clarify it. We want to clarify it for CEOs, business leaders and business owners.
So it’s not unusual that I find myself increasingly teaching and speaking on this topic. I’m not a guru, by any means. I am just a practitioner who is learning through trial and error.
The practitioner part is important because as Seth Godin says, “The best way to learn marketing…is to do marketing.”
Doing it, is where a lot of people and businesses fail. In fact, the marketing field is full of fluff and mediocrity, if not downright incompetence because people don’t do it.
Here is a 7 step marketing framework that works , so you can start doing marketing. And doing it in a way that builds strong relationships with prospects and customers. These seven steps provide the foundation for your marketing plan.
- Define Your Marketing Goals. The key here is know your why. Get clear on why you’re marketing? It is sales dollars, awareness, to develop new relationships, etc. It doesn’t matter you just need goals and objectives that will serve as benchmarks and lay the foundation for your marketing framework.
- Identity Your Ideal Client or Market. It’s simple: “If your product or service is for everyone then it’s a product or service for no one.” You must determine, exactly who wants and needs what I have to offer? The best thing about this question is there’s only one wrong answer, and that’s: everyone.
- Educate To Address Those Needs . Once you’ve identified your ideal client or market you need to create all your marketing materials, including your website, to focus on education. Realize that you have an opportunity to educate your prospects to succeed at whatever they wish to succeed at. As soon as possible, learn what it is that your prospect wishes to succeed at, and then show how what you are selling can make that success achievable.
- Differentiate or Die. You should, no, you MUST be able to effectively communicate your difference to your ideal client or market in both print and verbally. What if you don’t have any? Find some, create some, or develop some. This will lead to more orders, continuing valuable relationships, and more success. Pricing only matters when customers and prospects can’t tell the difference between your products and services and a competitor’s.
- Choose Your Tools. Noticed I said tools. Instead of believing that single marketing tools such as advertising or a website can work alone, know that individual marketing tools rarely work on their own. However, marketing combinations do work. A wide assortment of marketing tools is required to woo and win customers.
- Test Your Marketing. You must test your marketing efforts. On a consistent basis test various aspects of your marketing to maximize your results. Think holistically across the entire marketing process.
- Refine and Redevelop. Your marketing can grow stale and with a fast pace marketplace you need to be always looking for ways to refine and redevelop your marketing. You need to keep optimizing your process to improve your revenue.
The bottom line is that marketing is key to gaining market share, increasing profit margins, and growing revenues.
Business is all about marketing.
Question: What do you think? Are you currently employing all seven components of this model?
Indispensable Marketing takes a process approach to developing and installing your small business marketing.