5 Keys for Growing a Successful Business

You had a bright idea, created a product or service people want and hired an enthusiastic sales team. Now your business is off and running, right? Not yet. Without a smart, strategic marketing plan, you could find yourself unable to gain traction in your target markets. 

A strategic marketing plan includes five key areas. Each area supports all the other areas, so you can’t neglect any of them. They represent all the behind-the-scenes work to be done before you introduce your company and your product to potential consumers.  We’ll go into detail about each key area in future blogs, but here’s a high-level overview of a strategic marketing plan. 

1. Branding

You’ll want to control how potential customers will identify and perceive your company and product. It’s not only the look you decide on (logo, colors, fonts, etc.); it’s also about how you talk about who you are, it’s your tone, the values you represent, what drives your team and how you frame your product or service. Building your brand begins with a thoughtful examination of who you are and what you have to offer.

2. Digital Marketing

Sure, traditional marketing (newspaper ads, TV/radio ads, direct mail) is still around and still relevant in certain situations. However, digital marketing is unparalleled in terms of target-audience reach, cost effectiveness, interactivity and its ability to move people through the “funnel.” 

In the digital marketing funnel, people start as leads, moving through the stages of Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Evaluation, Decision, Purchase, Repeat, Loyalty and Advocacy. What prompts them to move down the funnel is the way you engage with them at each point. Digital marketing vehicles include email, websites and social media. By its nature, digital marketing is easy to track so you can continually monitor the effectiveness of your efforts and make adjustments as needed.

3. Advertising

There are three primary types of marketing advertising: 

• Owned media marketing: You advertise on media that is owned and controlled by you.

• Organic marketing: Also known as earned media. It’s free. Its goal is to achieve top Google placement for your content through search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM).

• Paid media marketing: Requires you to buy ad space on social media, websites, blogs or publications. It offers two different payment models. In the Cost Per Click (CPC) model, you pay for each time a user clicks on your ad. Its performance-based metric allows you to set a budget and a maximum amount for each click. In the Cost Per Mille (CPM) model, you pay for every thousand ad views.

4. Public Relations

PR is about keeping a finger on the pulse of public opinion and anticipating, analyzing and interpreting trends and factors that could impact your business. It’s also about forming and nurturing mutually beneficial relationships. PR amplifies your messaging, and includes press/media relations, event planning and volunteering.

5. Sales

Is there a difference between sales and marketing? The short answer is yes. Although they share a common goal of attracting leads and converting customers, they employ different tactics.

• Marketing: The function of marketing is to capture leads by offering information to target audiences, thus drawing them into the funnel and inspiring them to move through it. Marketing requires a more “big picture” view and goals are evaluated over a longer term. The goal is to convert leads into loyal customers.

• Sales: Salespeople work directly with leads and manage those relationships until they close a sale, then nurturing those relationships to capture repeat business. Sales tends to focus on smaller audiences and shorter-term goals.

Stay Tuned!

We’ll bring you new blogs twice a month. Not only will we take a deeper dive into each of the five keys to growing a successful business, we’ll also post lots of other relevant and exciting topics to inform, enlighten and entertain you.

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