Developing a 5 Step Marketing Plan
DIYdigi.com is an organization that is dedicated to helping businesses and those with entrepreneurial ventures to develop their ability to create profitable marketing. In other words, being empowered to put together a solid marketing plan. The dirty secret of businesses today is that they never took the time to think through their marketing. What’s the point of putting much effort into building your business if you have no customers? If you are new to owning a business or have been around for a while but are running short on customers, one type of marketing plan might look something like this:
- Strategy Building
- Targeting Your Ideal Customer
- Competitor Research
- Sales Funnel Creation
- Setting Marketing Goals
Strategy Building
This is the “How” of your marketing equation. How are you going to get new customers. If you are a web-only business, this means being able to implement online marketing in a manner that is well though through and targets your ideal customer. The thing to be aware of here is that marketing stragies continually evolve just as technology continues to evolve, so it is important to continually check websites that keep their finger on the pulse of evolving marketing technology such as DIYdigi.com. The very name of DIYdigi.com makes clear what it does which is to assist you to bring forth Do It Yourself Digital to answer the question of where your customers are located online and how to get them coming to your website.
Targeting Your Ideal Customer
A lot is said about the idea of targeting your ideal customer but you’d be surprised by the amount of people who don’t know who their ideal customer is. Although it would seem to be a no brainer to know who your perfect client is, more often than not do businesses really don’t understand the the answer to this question. Chances are that your business is providing a solution to a problem. This would mean that your best customer would be a demographic of people who have the problem you solve and are actively trying to discover a solution, in other words YOU!
Competitor Research
Again, it would seem to be obvious what someone should engage in competitor research but not everyone does. This undertaking has to do with focusing on other businesses who go after the same customers that you do. You want to be clear HOW they are doing what they are doing, and the specific strategies they are using to gain patronage. Once you figure out the answers to how your competitors are acquiring prospects you can potentially integrate some of their strategies but also should be coming up with approaches that go beyond the marketing design they are using.
Sales Funnel Creation
What is the journey that your customers will undergo to find you and how can you facilitate this process so clients find you on a regular basis. This means putting yourself in the place of your customer. If you have done the research to understand who your customer is, look at the pathway she or he might take to find your business and buy from you. What are the channels this individual would take to get to you. Do you have a clear sales funnel in mind of how those who you are selling to can go from point A to point C and so on.
Setting Marketing Goals
This means scheduling the times that you will implement your decided upon method of acquiring your clients. Ask yourself how often will you need to be actively developing new customers so you have a steady stream of them. This involves looking at areas of promotion that we have elaborated on thus far including strategy building, targeting your ideal customer, competitor research and sales funnel creation. How long will you need to accomplish your marketing goals? What is the schedule you will make for yourself in order to realize your promotional process?
Final Thoughts
To succeed with your marketing you might consider unique organizations such as DIYdigi that is a collective of freelancers with the expertise needed to help you through these steps. But because of the DIY in their name that stands for Do It Yourself, ultimately you will be the person to make it happen based on the input that your freelancer will give to you. In the beginning of this post we asked the question:
What’s the point of putting much effort into building your business if you have no customers?
You need to carefully go through the steps given to develop your own personal methodology to hook and draw in the people that you want to, so that they can purchase your products and/or services.