Why do I need a Marketing Strategy?
What is a marketing strategy? If we start with what it isn’t that will help. It isn’t a theoretical, one size fits all, plan. It is a collection of ideas and plans of how you will promote your business in order to get sales leads. Not every business, just your business.
By sitting down, brainstorming ideas, maybe bringing in a marketing strategist you can create a plan of attack for promoting your business. The beauty of a strategy is that during the thinking stage, you can make plans for several different fronts. Rather than carrying out one activity at a time, you can have multiple projects happening all at once. For instance:
When we draw up a strategy we take an overview, we look at where we want to be in 5-10 years time in terms of how our sales volumes should look and then we work backwards. How can we achieve those volumes?
So you hand make tapestry cushions that sell at £850.00 each.
You may have a niche product that you craft yourself and perhaps you’ve worked out that you only need 25 commissions per year to stay afloat. If you’re happy to just stay afloat in 10 years time, then your marketing strategy can focus on bringing you those 25 commissions per year. Not everyone wants to pay £850.00 per cushion so you need to find where your target market hangs out and then let them know what you have to offer. That might need some serious networking to reach this hard to find group. Once you’ve found them, if they love what you do, then you can encourage customer recommendations.
So you sell building supplies and you want to keep expanding and perhaps have 6 stores in 10 years time.
Your strategy is going to have to focus on increasing sales volumes. To do that you will first need to get more people through the door and then aim to increase the spend per customer. You won’t want to open another store until the first one is running at a profit.
A large proportion of the local population are potential customers for your business. How do you get them through the door? First they have to know you’re there and they need to hear that not once, not twice, but it can take up to six times before a customer will buy from you. In this case, you want people to see adverts, testimonials, special offers and product samples where ever they go. So you look for a variety of ways to promote your business simultaneously.
Thebestof give you a wide variety of promotional tools to help get your business name out there.
That is why Thebestof works so well for local businesses. Your business can be promoted through:
• door drops
• community advertising
• word of mouth
• website
• blog
• twitter
• testimonials
• networking
All these different methods let people in the local area know about your business. The more you get involved in these different methods, the more you will maximise your membership and increase the visibility of your business.
As one of thebestofs new fast tracked businesses, thebestof Carmarthen will be bringing a whole new range of tools such as a Local Business Directory, to promote your business. Targeted advertising and promotion will give your business more leads than those that don’t do any. The more your name is out there and the more people hear good things about your business from testimonials and through word of mouth, then the more leads you will get. We don’t just give you the ways and means to promote your business, we offer business presentations on a range of subjects such as internet marketing, increasing profitability and so on, at our networking events to help you maximise your business performance.
The team at thebestof HQ in Solihull, Birmingham have analysed the most successful Bestofs in the UK and designed a programme to bring 12 others up to the same level. Just as you need a strategy for promoting your business, Thebestof is providing a strategy for selected Bestof franchises including Thebestof Carmarthen.
This is designed to ensure that the best local businesses like yours are promoted as widely as possible in the Carmarthen area.
There are many business service providers on the site who can help you develop marketing strategies including Tutsan Associates, Donald Melrose Action Coach, Juliet Fay Marketing, Copywriting & Consultancy.
