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The Secret to a Successful Marketing Strategy

December 4, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

acres of farmland

The ambitious farmer, fresh out of agricultural college, wrote up a detailed plan for his farm.

He designated which crops he was going to grow, how he was going to rotate them, what equipment he would need, and how many farm hands he was going to hire.

After gathering all of his resources, he and his farm hands went out and planted acres of crops. It was laborious work, but when he looked out over his acres of fertile land, he was very proud.

Then he and his farm crew got into their shiny pickup trucks and drove away.

The young farmer took continuing education classes in pest control, irrigation, and hydroponics.

He went to some conferences.

He started writing an e-book about farming.

He and his farm hands finally returned to the fields the next year to find acres of weedy, rotting crops, half-eaten by wildlife. No corn. No potatoes. Nothing to harvest at all.

You will get no potatoes from your detailed marketing plan unless you have a system in place between January and December.

The secret to a successful marketing strategy is follow-through. Do it, measure it, adjust, and do it again.

Set Your 2015 Marketing Up For Success

Analytics and measurement – For tactics that support your key strategies, decide how you will measure success. This should be a number or a concrete result. Set up a spreadsheet and track the results from each tactic.

Did you send out a direct mail piece? Track how many people called the phone number or visited the special landing page. Did you create an infographic? How often was it shared? How many people downloaded it? Don’t include any activities in your marketing plan that can’t be measured in some way.

Decide in advance how often you will look at the numbers. Is it weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? Once you look at the numbers, be prepared to take action based on them.

After-action reports – At the end of every campaign, schedule time to review it. Not just the statistics and analytics, but also budget, resources, how the campaign resonated with customers. What could you have done better, more efficiently? Is it worth doing again? If it failed, why did it fail? Record this information and save it where you can refer back to it in the future (perhaps a Dropbox folder, shared with your team).

Budget updates – Hopefully you included budget projections with your plan. Those projections need to be tied to real-time numbers on a regular basis. The more you do this exercise, the smarter your estimates will be next year. You do have to spend money to make money, but you want to spend it intelligently. If you have your finger on the pulse of your budget routinely, you can reallocate funds if necessary. You will know whether you have the cash to invest in that sponsorship opportunity that pops up in April.

Focus your efforts – Unless you’re a Fortune 500 company, you probably can’t move forward on five big marketing campaigns at once. When you’re writing your marketing plan, don’t assume that you’re going to do it all in January. In fact, you may not want to plan out your entire year up-front. Consider going quarter by quarter. Plan your first quarter’s efforts in detail, and then have possible campaigns outlined and ready to be slotted into the next quarter.

There’s a sweet spot between completely unplanned and rigidly scheduled…you want to go there. Give yourself the gift of flexibility, but don’t wait until the last minute to prepare the next quarter’s actions.

Accountability and reporting – Even in a solo entrepreneurship, you need to have accountability to the business. It’s not a waste of time to put your marketing plan down in writing, even if you’re the only one reading it. It’s not a waste of time to do a weekly review of your numbers and prepare a written summary. When your business grows, you will be happy to have records! In a small shop, grab that extra set of eyeballs for your campaign reviews and budgeting. It doesn’t have to be an all-day event, just make sure you’re not stuck inside your own head. It’s important to relate your marketing activities with the sales person, the customer service person, and the rest of the team. You’re all working toward the same corporate strategic goals anyway, right?

So while you’re preparing your 2015 marketing plan, don’t forget the systems. And we’ll be harvesting lots of potatoes next year!

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for Social Strata — makers of the Hoop.la community platform. Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Photo Credit: Ian Sane via Compfight cc

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media Tagged With: bc, goals, marketing strategy, tactics

What is Your Customer Buying?

August 12, 2014 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

By Lisa D. Jenkins

Every brand or business is selling something.

When we create social media profiles, curate content and provide customer service, we do it hoping current and prospective customers will buy from us or tell their friends about us.

What are you selling?

Answering is marginally (but not entirely) easier for those of us who sell concrete products. At the most basic level, Nordstrom sells things to wear. Whole Foods sells things to eat. FAO Schwarz sells things to play with.

For those of us who sell intangibles, it’s harder to define because what we sell is less about the product or service and more about the experience.

The question then becomes not “What are you selling?” but “What is your customer buying?” Once you understand things from your customer’s side of the table, it’s easier to market to them.

What might that look like?

The local mechanic sells oil changes. The customer isn’t buying an oil change, they’re buying the peace of mind that comes with knowing their transportation will continue to get them where they need to be. Market the peace of mind.

Consultants sell their reputation. The customer isn’t buying reputation, they’re buying knowledge they don’t possess so they can be more successful. Market the knowledge.

Banks and credit unions sell mobile check deposit. The customer isn’t buying mobile check deposit, they’re buying the time they would’ve spent waiting in line and using it for business meetings or kindergarten graduations. Market the time.

Visitor bureaus sell destinations. The customer isn’t buying a destination, they’re buying memories that will bind them to others for the rest of their lives. Market the memories.

What you’re selling isn’t necessarily what your customer is buying, but the two aren’t and shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

It’s time to sit on the other side of the table. Consider things from your customer’s perspective.

What is your customer really buying?

Author’s Bio: Lisa D. Jenkins is a Public Relations professional specializing in Social and Digital Communications for businesses. She has over a decade of experience and work most often with destination organizations or businesses in the travel and tourism industry in the Pacific Northwest. Connect with her on Google+

Filed Under: Marketing, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, marketing strategy, Selling

Book Review: Insightful Knowledge, by Stephen Monaco

June 27, 2013 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

Book review: Insightful Knowledge: An Enlightened View of Social Media Strategy & Marketing By Stephen Monaco

“When it comes to creating a social media marketing strategy companies must get their head around a simple concept. The objective is not to excel at social media per se. The objective is to effectively utilize social media to help your business excel.” Stephen Monaco, Insightful Knowledge

Let me start this book review by stating that this is not a how-to book.

Insightful knowledge offers a foundation for anyone who aspires to be a “champion” for integrating social media with their marketing mix.

Valuable lessons, statistics, and examples abound in this high level look at social media strategy. Stephen Monaco’s roots in traditional marketing run deep, as he was one of the early pioneers in the tech industry.

The first third of the book is groundwork, carefully laying out how we arrived at this crazy point in time where the power has shifted from the big brands to the consumers. It’s necessary to absorb this history if you want any chance of leveraging the forces at work.

Who should read this book? I’d recommend it for anyone who needs to convince colleagues that social media will support their business strategy, for anyone who wants a coherent explanation of why social media is not a fad but a major shift, or for those who have just started putting together a social media strategy for their organization.

My only criticism is that the “voice” of the book is pretty dry and statistical, but it’s exactly the type of unemotional, hard-core information that will appeal if you’re trying to convince the C-suite to do something, so perhaps that’s a necessary evil.

Key Lessons for Aspiring Social Media Champions

  • Obsess about your customers’ needs, and shift your thinking from sales to marketing
  • Look for ways that social media can enhance all areas of your business, not just marketing
  • Be methodical about creating a social media strategy, but leave room for tactical adjustments
  • Put listening at the top of your list, and use what you learn to serve customers better
  • Pay attention to which tactics are resulting in conversions, however you define conversion
  • Don’t be afraid to experiment, iterate on your plan continually
  • Don’t ever lose sight of your business goals, and make sure your social media efforts always tie back to your Key Performance Indicators.

If you’re looking for a compelling case for including social media in your business strategy, pick up this insightful book and start taking notes.

Disclosure: I received a free digital copy of the book for review purposes, however, this did not in any way impact the content of my review, which represents my own honest opinion.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Filed Under: Business Book, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, book review, marketing strategy, social-media

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