The Simple Formula to Dominate The Market in 2018

Want to create a marketing roadmap for your business in 2018, but not sure where to get started?

In our latest installment of the Brand Authority Show, Diana Adams and I laid out a simple formula to DOMINATE your market.

Listen in and read the recap below.

D: Design an Agile and Strategic Approach to Marketing

An agile or lean approach to marketing is iterative. You create your objectives, test your hypotheses, learn from your daily initiatives, adjust and proceed.

The key is to move quickly, never get stuck or waste time on tactics that aren’t providing results. An agile approach helps facilitate conversation throughout the team based on real data and allows you to make strategic adjustments along the way.

In other words, the old school way of creating a 12-month marketing plan and sticking with it is over. It’s now about validated learnings that have a bias towards action.

3 things you need to answer in your marketing plan:

1. What’s the assumption?

2. How will you test/validate?

3. How will you measure your success?

O: Optimize Customer Experience

Identify the top 3 problems your audience is facing. For example, if we look at entrepreneurs, three of the biggest challenges are networking, attracting clients, and generating sales.

Now you need to really flesh those out and ask yourself: “If that’s my target market, what solutions are they looking to me for?”

And it can’t just be a Band-Aid solution. Your solution needs to be life-changing, market disrupting, and transformational! Because, while I do believe that in many cases, good is good enough, that’s never the case when it comes to the experience we’re providing to our customers and that all begins and ends with our product or service.

M: Manage Your Marketing Stack

Marketing can take your business from zero to success, but only if you identify the right software and tools that will allow you to work more efficiently.

Your first step is analysis. What tools are you currently using and are they still effective? Now consider what technology you need to succeed in 2018. Your marketing needs to move out of its silo and into the ecosystem of your company.

From customer success to social media, identify how the technology, tools, and data flow between each.

I: Integrate Multi-Channel Marketing

Did you know that 72% of consumers say they prefer to connect with businesses through multi-channel? That’s why it’s so crucial that the message you share across all of your channels is unified.

Also, make sure you’re sharing your message strategically — on the channels where your audience is active, and not blindly — on every possible social network. Determine, what networks matter most and put your time and effort into them.

Your focus should be to create a unified and seamless experience for your audience. However, know that you won’t be able to do that for everybody, so don’t even attempt to be everywhere and everything to everyone.

Be data-driven and see what kind of conversations your audience is having on each social channel, and use that knowledge in your strategy for each network.

N: Never Lose a Lead

Did you know that 54% of millennials, 50% of Gen Xers, and 52% of baby boomers say they’ve stopped doing business with a brand due to a poor customer experience?

Customer experience is often the main deciding factor behind whether or not a person buys or ever becomes a lead for your business. That means you must constantly listen, hear, and respond with compassion and empathy. Tools like Sprout Social, Brand 24, Mention all let you easily pay attention to what’s being said.

You also look your processes, systems, and funnels. Where’s the leak in your landing pages, what emails aren’t creating click-thru’s, what copy on your website hasn’t been updated in years?

A: Always Be Listening to Stay Ahead

By intentionally listening to your customers, you’re able to target your niche audience and attract potential leads. In fact, you’ll find that social listening is one of the most powerful ways to better understand your audience. And once you do, you can give them exactly what they need.

But be careful not to confuse social listening with monitoring. Monitoring is simply tracking your brand mentions. Social listening, on the other hand, requires analysis and lets you see the bigger picture behind the conversations.

If you want to reach your target audience and convert them into customers, you need to speak their language. Only then will you be able to position your message in a relevant way to your potential customers. For that, you need to know about the people that make up your target audience.

T: Tackle Execution, Tracking, and Monitoring

You can’t afford to make business decisions based on guesses and assumptions. 2018 is the year to make decisions based solely on data, so start tracking and monitoring all of your decisions and strategies.

Nowadays, there are lots of tools that make tracking and monitoring very easy, so take advantage of them and keep a close eye on what’s going on in your business.

Some business owners get so removed from the actual customer that they lose all sight and understanding of what their audience actually needs. Don’t let that happen to you. Always keep tabs on your customers, their needs, and on how you’re meeting them.

E: Exercise a Healthy Balance: Maintenance, Iteration, and Managing Growth

In a business, it’s very easy to spend all your time focusing on the one thing you do best, and that can be detrimental to your business. You need to find a healthy balance between maintenance, iteration, and managing growth.

Stay consistent in your actions and strategies, but never get too set in your ways. See what strategies are bringing results and which are not. If they’re not- be willing to let go without regret.

At the same time, make sure you’re always moving forward and taking action on new things. The last thing you want is for your business to get stagnant.

Find a healthy balance and you will DOMINATE the market in 2018!

* Originally Published on Medium* ______________________________________________________________________

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Rebekah Radice is the founder of RadiantLA, a training, and development firm helping growth driven leaders make radical shifts in digital marketing to blow the lid off past revenue milestones. Obsessive over emerging tech, AI, and all things geek.