Is your marketing strategy guided or is it just guesswork?

As any small business owner will agree, growth is the most significant thing. But too often, these fledgling corporations find themselves in the “Great Tactical Race.” Over the years of working with and advising entrepreneurs and marketers, I’ve often heard them talk about “awesome” ways to advertise their business, resembling paid search promoting, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and more. Tactics are often viewed as shiny latest objects that generate buzz and promise impressive results.

However, when well-meaning people are willing to make use of this tactic, they have an inclination to leap in with each feet. Many of them spend large sums of cash on building a fancy website, hiring a social media consultant, and creating numerous Google ads. While these tactics actually have the potential to revitalize your business and raise brand awareness, it’s critical to reply a few essential questions first:

• Is this really the best tactic to realize my company’s goals?
• Are your potential customers really using that “old” social media site that has thousands and thousands of users and has been around for years, or is that one other one that just launched but is getting a lot of buzz?
• Or is social media marketing even the right tactic for you?

It’s like setting out on a long ocean voyage without a destination or navigation tools. How will you know when you get there or if you ever will?

Real mistake: asking “how” before “what”

Adopting tactics before finalizing the strategy is a real mistake. That’s comprehensible, in fact. Business owners and leaders are naturally excited about the opportunity to begin a business and make money, and they consider – with good reason – that the latest tactics will get them there. Marketing consultants are often asked basic introductory questions, resembling “How do I get started with Google Ads?” or “How can we grow our TikTok account?”

These aren’t bad questions per se. These are just not the questions you ought to start with.

The first query needs to be: “What strategy should we adopt to achieve our goals?” Another option to get the same information is to find out what the company needs to realize and what conditions or actions will allow you to achieve those goals and support your growth. If a company’s goal is to extend sales by 25%, for example, this effort must include a deeper understanding of its goal market – where they live and shop, what education and training they have, where they spend time on the Internet, what sources of data influence them, and so on.

Then, with this information, the company can make intelligent selections about the tactics that best support its goal. Starting with “what” helps make clear purpose and context. If you focus on the “how” first, it’s possible you’ll find yourself allocating limited funds and resources to channels that are unlikely to allow you to achieve your goal.

Real world example

To illustrate this more clearly, let’s start with a hypothetical company seeking to grow. Let’s say he decides to take a position heavily in Google Ads, forking out $5,000 a month in the hopes that the ads will quickly drive a regular stream of ready-to-buy customers straight to the door.

There’s just one problem: no one at the company knows for sure whether the audience actually uses Google to look for the products the company sells.

So if that company’s product is quite area of interest, it may not generate enough search volume to justify such a high budget. The company can be wasting money and missing the opportunity to make use of more appropriate and possibly effective tactics. With a little research ahead of time, the company was capable of discover that their audience had an promoting budget of around $2,000, which suggests they were essentially wasting $3,000 a month because their ads only reached individuals who weren’t converting.

The problem is not tactics. It’s a lack of basic strategy. The company didn’t provide a broader picture by examining where customers look for information about its products. This would mean you can determine whether a Google ad campaign is the right platform to realize your goals.

A greater approach

A more productive approach to small business marketing is to begin by exploring goal-based strategies. Starting with a strategy will allow you to create a winning plan of motion for all your future marketing selections.

The key is to have specific, measurable goals. For example, if your goal is to extend sales by 15% in the next quarter, it’s best to start by researching the best ways to achieve that focus on group and convert them into paying customers. Identify the kinds of content that help motivate and persuade prospects and the platforms they use most frequently.

Once you discover the right channels, you possibly can build effective tactical plans around them. In this order, tactics serve your strategy quite than a scattershot approach which will or may not hit the mark.

How to repair this common mistake with a strong marketing strategy

Let’s go through it step by step to allow you to avoid the pitfalls of tactical considering. Here’s how you possibly can make sure your company is building the right foundations with your marketing efforts: :

Step 1: Define clear growth goals

Set specific growth goals that make sense for your business model and company values. Make sure your goals are specific and measurable – for example, increase revenue by 25% in the next two quarters.

Step 2: Identify channels where growth is possible

Once you have identified your company’s goals, focus on finding the channels that best fit those goals. If your goal is to expand your customer base and your potential customers are young, you will have more success on TikTok than on Facebook or paid search ads.

Step 3: Test strategic assumptions before implementation

Don’t rush into making TikTok videos just yet. Instead, test your assumptions first by exploring different potential channels on a smaller scale and at lower rates. Perhaps you ought to try adding a video to your social media rotation to measure engagement or conduct a quick survey to verify that your audience is where you think it is.

Step 4: Finally, optimize your tactics and measure the results

Now you possibly can commit your resources to tactics and optimize their use in your marketing plan. You can improve your ad copy, conduct more benchmarking, expand your social media posts, or improve an outdated web site design to enhance conversions. You will, in fact, proceed to measure and document your results to make sure you are consistently moving towards your goals.