The most fascinating thing about marketing is how closely tied it is to your overall business strategy. A company can be in business for years before they really begin to identify or understand how they attract business. Often, in the beginning years, a business will take any work that comes its way without refining who it is they want to work with. Through a well thought out marketing strategy, you can identify who you want to work with and attract that specific type of client to you.
There are three things to consider when streamlining your business strategy:
- Audience
- Process
- Goals
Audience
It’s important to consider who your audience is right when you get started trying to market your business. It’s important to look at the audience you want—not necessarily the audience you currently have. Marketing your business and your services means putting yourself out there to attract more business, so you’ve got to have a firm understanding of the business you want—as well as the business you don’t want.
- Who do you want to work with?
- Who makes you the most money?
- Can you characterize your target audience with a single fictional individual (buyer persona)?
- What does their life look like?
- What are their challenges?
- How do they search for help?
- Does your business offer the best solution to their problem?
Process
Developing process usually comes from having experienced pain in some way or another. Whether that’s a past client that was hard to deal with or a time that you made a mistake, setting up processes can help you guide your clients more efficiently and with better results. Having well defined internal process makes your overall company stronger, more organized, and more effective.
- Do you follow a process that you’ve never defined?
- Are there one or two common end goals that each of your clients has?
- Can you identify the path of least resistance to those common client goals?
- Can you match common goals to specific buyer personas?
- What do you do differently than your competition?
- Can you expand on your differences to help prove your value?
Goals
Goal setting for your business and marketing go hand in hand because marketing revolves around how you run your business. It’s important to set goals for 3 or 5 years down the road in order to contemplate where your business will be without any of your current constraints that may not exist in the future. For example: if you rent your building but you plan to buy, your goals may be different. If you plan to sell your business in 6 years, you may need to attract clients more aggressively than in the past.
- What is your company’s main goal? (Why are you in business?)
- What are your company’s goals for next year? In the next 3 years? 5 years?
- What are your company’s monetary or sales goals?
- What is the value of a client?
- How can you increase the value of the client?
- What are your hiring goals?
- Do you want to sell your business eventually?
- Do you plan to expand your business or locale?
If you don’t have the time to work toward the answers for these questions, let Blue Frog Marketing help! Our HubSpot-certified strategists can help you take a look at your business through a different lens and see if there are ways to streamline your marketing to attract the business you desire.
