All right, well thank you for joining our webinar today.

We’ll be covering developing a successful marketing plan. As we move into the end of the year, get ready for 2023 This is a timely topic. And I hope that this is going to give some good insight to you. Now, there are plenty of things that you can go into lots that goes into a marketing plan. So today what we’re going to focus on is beginning strategy, building the assets, advertising and placement, and then the follow-up from that. So as you begin your strategy, you’re really looking for doing good diagnostic planning and really laying out your roadmap for your marketing for this coming year. So we’ll take a look at one of the steps positioning your brand, developing a brand compass, what your desired outcomes are and what you should be considering for a budget for this stage of your marketing planning. So what are the steps to discover your current assets, it’s really important, just make sure that you have a good grasp of what you have in place.

Now, what’s usable, what you might need to shore up going into the year, and a good understanding of your vision and mission. It’s really critical to align your marketing strategy with your company vision. And if there’s too much of a disconnect that becomes a really unnecessary challenge for your customers and your potential customers. That you’re trying to reach. So positioning your brand, how interchangeable are you with your competition? You know, when we look at the landscape, particularly in your market, it’s really often we see that you can look at a website for a number of competitors change a few words in a logo, and it’s really the same. And that’s really problematic if you’re trying to create distinction. You don’t want to be interchangeable with your competition. So take a look at your positioning, and make sure that you’re offering differentiation to your audience to the customers that you’re trying to bring in. And are you trying to be everything to everyone?

You know, if you don’t have that distinction, and if you’re not working on your positioning to truly articulate what you do and for whom you do it, then you become lost in the sea of generalists in your market. And if you can’t create that distinction and really let your prospects know if they’re a good fit for you and what you do, then you really lose the flavor and it just ends up negatively impacting your overall marketing plan.

So developing a brand compass so a brand compass is something that is language that helps you articulate your differentiation. When we talk about positioning. It’s the language that you’d use to be applied to all aspects of your marketing and a brand compass you may not have heard of that before. That’s something that we use internally. It’s part of our process, but that brand compass really becomes that part of that roadmap. It’s the language that articulates your differentiation and allows you when we talk about applying that to all aspects of your marketing. It’s really important because that’s what drives the impact. That’s what drives the emotion and the connection that we’re trying to make with the customers. It helps really drive your articulation of expertise. And it’s a very important aspect. This is not the easiest part, but it’s very worthwhile to put in the work and map out the language that you’ll use for the rest of your marketing and all the tactical work of your marketing plan. And understanding the desired outcomes is the result of your approach convincing an audience isn’t going to motivate them to become a customer. So making sure that as you’re planning this out, you’ve got a really good understanding of what you want your viewer and your audience to do. They have a problem and you want them to be able to identify with what you’re presenting to them. They have a problem that needs a solution. Are you that solution, which is very important when we come back to articulating your differentiation can you be seen as a solution to the problem that your audience your potential customer has.

So when we talk about budget in this stage of your marketing plan, it’s important just to take a look and see do you have sufficient in-house resources. To help you with this first strategy step? If you don’t, then then you need to look to see what you can allocate to get some outside help. You know, it’s an author that I follow David C. Baker says, it’s frequently hard to read the label from inside the bottle. And at this step when you’re looking at budget, if you don’t have that sufficient in-house resources and personnel, then it’s very helpful to get some help to get outside perspective and it can be a wonderful investment if you need that help.

So the next step is building assets, what’s the purpose, your content budget allocation, and getting help in this stage. So what’s the purpose when we set out to build the assets that are the blueprint for your marketing? So as you’re building out your assets, it really is going to be rooted in the planning and the brand compass that you’ve you’ve done in the strategy phase. It’s critical that these assets for your marketing campaign are cohesive and have a clear purpose. And all of that really does come from the work in that brand compass and the language that you you produce by yourself or with help the contents for the media that you use for your advertising is going to really dictate the contents of your assets.

You know, for example, a TV commercial. Most people are actually not very many people at all, they just don’t take notes watching TV. So it’s important that when you are building out your content, you understand where you’re going to place that message and what your viewer actually can do with it. So when the H vac system goes out in the heat of the summer, nobody sits down and waits for the commercial to come on to find a phone number. So that was when you were building out your content and understanding what the viewer can do with the media that they’re interacting with. budget allocation for this is a bigger consideration when you’re building out your advertising assets. producing a video social graphics website work. You really want to have these things done very well. To make that impact. You’re really trying to create that distinction. So you need to look at your budget allocation in this step of your marketing planning for your content and make sure that you’re putting forward your best foot presenting yourself in the best way.

So when you are planning out your budget, don’t forget this side of things. Most people just immediately sit down and they’re looking at their budget for placing advertising but the creating of content that goes on that advertising is very important to have a sufficient budget to create the highest quality assets that you’re going to end up placing in your media. And again, getting help in this stage is probably one of the biggest places that you need to have help. If you’re not a very skilled graphic designer. If you can somewhat produce video, this is probably where you need to have the biggest sales. So when you’re when you are looking for outside help in creating your content, the going back to the brand compass and the language that you use to articulate your expertise. That becomes really important in this step. It can also help save some money because when you engage some outside help the clearer how you are to be able to share with them what you need, the less time that they’re going to have to spend really just trying to figure it out. So that brand compass becomes even more valuable in this stage of getting help and creating your content. Because when you sit down with that third party, they’re going to have a much clearer understanding much faster to what and how they’re going to create content with your help.

So implementation and advertising this is the next step. Once we have our content, we’ll take a look at advertising placement examples and the audience outcomes. So deciding where to place your advertisement there are two main factors that you’re targeting based on your brand compass and what funds you have available to place your advertising there’s no there is not a lack of plate of media to place advertising in. So understanding how much you have in your budget allocation is really going to determine significantly where you can place that advertising. So for example, I mean, you’ve got anywhere from billboards to high school sponsorships radio to digital TV. So as you’re being mindful of where you spend your money, place your ads in a very thoughtful way. Again, this is guided by your brand compass and your target, customer target profile. If these are disconnected, you’re gonna have poor results. And it’s important to understand that placing advertising you can go in and say okay, we’re searching for adults 25 to 54 but within that group, if you’re trying to be everything to everyone, you’re going to just miss the mark and you’re going to get very frustrated with your advertising. So making sure that your brand compass is really guiding where you’re placing the content that you’ve created. Understanding the customer target profile is very important. It’ll save you a lot of money and make sure again if it’s disconnected, you’re going to have poor results and it’s going to become very frustrating wondering why your advertising isn’t working. So the audience outcome again, we want to be thinking of what your audience wants your audience to do, once they’ve received their message and more importantly, what they’re capable of doing. So if you’re placing if you’ve got a billboard and you’re again, you’re putting your phone number on your billboard, you’re wasting the valuable real estate because no one’s going to pull over on the side of the road. Or if they do that becomes the exception and we don’t make decisions based on the exception. We make decisions based on the rule. So again, so the action they can take after a radio spot is very different than the action they can take seeing a video ad on Facebook.

And so as we are considering what we want the outcomes to be what we want our audience to do, we have to keep in mind what they’re capable of doing in relationship to the placement of the advertising that we’re putting out there. So follow up customer engagement and analytics so why follow up supporting information and again, look at outcomes? So an often overlooked element of a successful marketing plan is the follow up both internal and external. So internal is obviously your staff and yourself is how you follow up with three leads, reading the data. Depending on where you’re placing things, you’re gonna be able to get data and information from the advertising that you’re placing. So internally, how are you and your staff following up are you training your staff? One of the worst things that you can do is place advertising and make a promise to a customer. They come into your business and your employees have no clue what they’re talking about. So you’ve made this promise and then there’s a massive disconnect when they come in. And so this internal follow-up and training are very important so that way once you’ve made that promise, your employees and your staff can actually deliver on that and the first step is they need to be aware of what’s going on and your marketing plan. External is following up and staying in touch with your new customer.

Obviously, you want to have that repeat business and referrals. But if you don’t have a plan to follow up, and this is not just done, you get an email, I think lots of businesses will just get an email but then what are you doing with that email? Are you putting that into an automation email campaign? Are you actually reaching back out to them? Are you reaching back out with something of value? Or are you reaching back out selfishly just trying to get a Google review, so externally following up with those customers how you do that and being thoughtful and strategic and that is what’s going to really drive your repeat business and your referrals. And that’s going to be where you make the most money anyways, your margins are going to be higher because your repeat business and referrals cost less to come in. So supporting information for your internal review tracking what works and what doesn’t work. Obviously, in the digital space, you can track the number of things click-through rates, and conversions. And the nondigital space be careful of the questions that you asked Where did you hear about us? That’s an that’s one of the most common questions. It’s kind of shocking if you don’t get that question. But if the response is I got your number off your website, that’s not answering the question that was asked. So be careful of that. Make sure that you’re getting the question that you asked an actual answer to that question. So be careful of that because you can start reviewing data and actually be looking at the wrong data set and make decisions that can really hurt you.

So as we’re looking at outcomes, again, you know, too many businesses hit go on their advertising and then they take too long to review their feedback and data or they don’t look at it at all. This is one of the most important ways to protect your investment. Because if you’re starting to see patterns and things that either do work or don’t work, don’t continue to obviously push things that are not being effective, double down on the ones that are showing results, and just abandon the ones that are not planning out. So in that follow-up looking at the data, you have to be able to do it. You can’t do it too long, too far out. But you can’t do it too early. There’s a balance that you need to be reviewing your analytics and your data. But make sure that you’re not making assumptions about that and that you’re looking for patterns as they emerge. So in summary of this, each step of the successful marketing plan does require thoughtfulness and intentionality. If you want great outcomes, don’t cut corners. Make sure that you’re starting with a good roadmap and that brand compass is very important.

Understanding your customer target profile is incredibly important when you’re building out content, that’s gonna resonate with them. When you engage outside help. Let them be the experts through the process, be engaged with them, but Let them guide you through the process and use their expertise. There’s plenty of opportunity, and obviously, we want that growth available. To us. But if you do the work, if you are engaged and you get the right help, then you’ll reap plenty of rewards. So I wish you all the best of luck and 2023 If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We’d be happy to have a conversation with you. But grateful that you are with us here today. And best of luck for 2023 in your marketing endeavors.