Welcome to the Ultimate Marketing Strategy Plan for Small Business

You must develop a strategy before you even think about the tactics. This is the key element to make marketing effective. You must have an approach that is focused on a very specific type of client, with a very specific need or problem, and a promise to solve that problem in a very specific way.

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Small business marketing strategy table of contents

Understanding and choosing your Ideal client

In marketing today it’s common to hear that you must know who your target audience is in order to be effective. This implies that you determine the makeup of a market your business is most likely to attract. What if you began to think about who you like to attract - your ideal client.

Solving problems vs providing solutions

Nobody wants what you sell. They want their problems solved. Keep that in mind. Very few people want the things, the services, and the solutions that we sell.

Crafting the visual elements of your brand

The color, the fonts, the way your office looks - all of those things go into either supporting the brand promise or taking away from it. I’m not saying that you have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on getting designs to make everything look perfect, but the elements should support what your message is. They should support who you’re trying to talk to.

Using content as the voice of strategy

Content has grown beyond just being a tactic. Content really is air. It’s the thing that powers the entire customer journey. It’s the way for us to actually create the voice of our strategy.

Guiding the Customer Journey – The Marketing Hourglass

Part of your marketing strategy has to be an understanding of how you are going to guide the customer journey.

The way people buy today has changed so dramatically that we have to understand that it’s our job not to corral or create demand but to be around and organize the behavior that the buyer actually wants to participate in.

People in professional services need to be good at what they do, but their audience hopes that’s a given. Sometimes even the best of the best have a hard time growing their business because they are so focused on the services they provide, they just don’t dedicate time to the growth of their company (or simply don’t know where to start to do that).

Full table of contents

Solving Problems

People don’t want what you sell – they want what they believe they will get, dodge, or acquire based on buying what you sell. Your job as a marketer is to understand the problems your audience is trying to solve and match your solutions to them.

Must-have website elements

As a professional services provider, your website should be your most valuable marketing asset and the hub of all of your marketing efforts. It needs to act as an actual tool for your business and work as a lead generating machine.

Content for lead generation

Instead of focusing on building an endless supply of leads, you should only be focusing on the amounts you actually need as well as how to balance bringing new customers in, and keeping new customers around.

Perfecting your follow-up

A customer generating system doesn’t have to be that complex, it simply needs to be based on your overall growth needs and goals.

Creating a remarkable customer experience

Everyone talks about creating a great customer experience, but few people really deliver on.. Creating an exceptional customer experience is pretty simple really, as long as you pay attention.