How to Build an Strong Marketing Strategy in 24 Hours

“I’m active on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.”

“I’m blogging and networking regularly.”

“I’m using PPC (pay-per-click) advertising.”

“I feel like I’m doing everything right, but I’m not seeing results.”

Do any of these statements sound familiar? A lot of small business owners and CEOs I talk to feel like they are doing all the right things.  But, they aren’t achieving their business goals.

A recent survey from Infusionsoft confirms this is common. “Sales and marketing activities are among the most challenging tasks for small business owners. Generating leads, getting new customers and gaining marketing expertise are some of the biggest challenges small businesses face today.”

So why is everyone struggling? I’m not quite sure as to WHY, but in this article, I’ll show you HOW you can overcome this obstacle…and overcome it in the next 24 hours.  Let’s roll!

First, let’s identify what strategy actually is. It really doesn’t have to be that complicated. Strategy is simply a plan of action designed to achieve an expected goal.  So, we need a goal to get started. For the purpose of this article, let’s say that our business goal is $5 million in revenue and to meet that goal we need to increase visibility, and generate 50 qualified leads per month.

A worthy goal.

Now, we need a plan of action that will get us there.

Note: You may have a different marketing goal, so just apply this same framework in order to backtrack from your business goal, to an activity plan.

If we’re going to generate 50 qualified leads per month, we need to define a “quality lead”. Let’s pretend we’re a website company that provides website development services for contractors like roofers, electricians, plumbers, etc.  The sales team says that if they can get a Demo Request, they consider that a quality lead.

Okay, so now we’ve got an ideal market and we know what a quality lead is.  We’re getting closer to being able to build our plan of action.

Once we know who our ideal customer is and what our goal is, we need to locate our ideal customer.  What industry are they in?, where do they network?, where are they located?, what do they read?, what do they listen to?, what challenges do they face?, how do they buy? You’ll want to look at social media, blogs, websites, and forums.  Make a big list!  Here’s what I might do if I were looking for contractors.

First, I’d dive into contractor online networking groups. I know LinkedIn is better for B2B, so I head there first. There are tons of various groups, so I started looking for groups full of my audience.

I will continue my search for “HVAC”, “plumbers”, and “electricians”.  After spending some time gathering a list, hopefully I’ve identified at least 25 solid groups that have my target audience.

Next, I’ll explore other social media options to see if there is anything industry specific. After spending some time on Google, I run across Houzz , a social network for contractors, builders and remodelers.

Still further, I’ll spend some time on Google again looking for events, conferences, forums and other websites where I might find my ideal customer.

At the end of this research process, you should easily have 20-50 channels (in-person events, forums, blogs and other websites), groups (on LinkedIn or Facebook) and communities (on Google+) on your list. Now, we’re getting somewhere! We’re narrowing down the Web and locating the corners in which we want to spend our time and effort.

Ok, just to re-cap.  We now know:

Now, it’s time to dig for the greatest challenge. As you’re doing your research and visiting groups, websites and blogs with your audience, start listening. What does that mean, really? How do you listen? What are you listening for?

What you want to do is listen to the problems that your ideal customer is expressing. You want to write down the questions they are asking.  Write down the things they are complaining about. You want to be able to speak their language.

You’ll start to see different discussion questions, comments on blogs, or frustrations. Here are a few sample discussion topics I pulled from a LinkedIn Group full of roofers.

Obviously, you want to identify challenges and pains around the product or service you offer, but sometimes you can get some really powerful insight just by writing down any common questions or problems. You’ll start to see some trends.

As you’ll see in the next section, we want to use these questions, pains and problems in our content and messaging.

Alright, now we’re ready to create a content calendar. Most people want to rush into this step because it feels like you’re accomplishing something. However, this step won’t be worth much if you haven’t dedicated the time to your research.

Note:This will be a high level overview.

Basically, now that we’ve got a sense for what our ideal customer is dealing with, we can brainstorm some effective monthly themes, maybe some blog, webinar topics and definitely some e-book ideas.

On a strategic level, content marketing must mean more than a blog post, status update or tweet. You must think about your content as an asset to serve your business over time.

By strategically creating content, your organization puts itself in the pathway that current prospects are learning, asking, and shopping for products and services.

Action Steps for Content Calendar:

Your distribution plan is just as important, if not more important that your content plan and calendar.  Most small business owners feel like once they hit “publish”, it’s time to start working on the next piece.  Not true!  Once you hit publish, it’s time to go to work promoting that piece.

You spent time writing or recording it, editing it, finding an amazing photo and placing a relevant call to action.  Now, it’s time to zero in on our ideal customer and share that content with them. This is how we’ll drive people back to our content, they’ll click on our e-books, receive our emails and ultimately sign up for that demo!

Creating your distribution plan will be much easier now that you’ve got a master list of where your ideal customer lives. You’ll be able to share your blog articles as discussions in exactly the right LinkedIn Groups.

You’ll be able to comment on other websites and blogs and reference your content in a super relevant fashion because you know exactly what your ideal customer challenges and pains are. You’ll be able to craft blog titles that are irresistible to your ideal customer because you studied their problems and pains.

Your distribution plan should basically be the time you spend promoting your article to all the places on your master list. It might look something like this:

Blog Title: 5 Website Struggles Roofers Face…and How to Solve Them

Distribution:

So, your distribution plan will have some activity that you’ll do every time you create a blog post.  Then, for specific topics, you may have additional activities you’ll want to add that make sense based on the topic.

Phew!  There’s a lot of work there, but you can do it… and you can do it in less than 24 hours!  The total time spent in this process totals 11 hours.  Obviously, it would be a long work day to push through these activities, but you’ll be setting yourself up for success over the next several months, if not years. If you can’t block off an entire day to do this, spend a couple hours each day for a week and you’ll be all set.

Your goals and strategy will change over time, but I wanted to break down a very simplistic way to create a strategy quickly and start moving forward.

Just to re-cap what you need to do: