Three Simple Steps To Creating A Marketing Strategy

Most people are so busy trying to drive traffic and leads to their website they do not make time to plan out a great strategy.

It's not that they don't value a great plan, it's that they do not know where to begin.

I recently asked a business owner what their goal was. He said that it's a ridiculous question. He wanted to grow unlimited.

I laughed because after training 10,000 business owners on behalf of Google, I realized that this is the default answer.

They say “Why should I limit myself and pick a number?”

When you do not set a specific number, you are actually limiting yourself more because you are not aiming for anything specific, and so you are aimlessly marketing and you will not get to the unknown destination. Why? Because it's unknown! It will keep changing depending on circumstance. Is that how you want to live your life?

Here are three simple steps to set up a marketing strategy. 1. Goals 2. Target 3. Solution!

Setting the right goals

What is the difference between revenue and profit? What is the difference between gross profit and net profit? What is the difference between leads and prospects? When you don't define your goals you end up not being on the same page. To set the right goals you need to understand your capacity for growth and your desire for top line vs bottom line growth. What risk you want to take to get to your goals and what is at stake. You need to understand your account goals. Not all accounts are created equal. Some accounts give you more revenue and less profit and some accounts generate tons of profit and very little revenue. How much MRR do you have? What are your lead in product goals for the current accounts that you want to upsell? Finally, when it comes to goals you need to set a budget to help you get to your goals. Marketing is about testing and if you have no clue about how to set your marketing budget and how much you should be spending on ads its because you don't understand your LTV (Lifetime Value) and what a proper CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) needs to be for traffic, conversions, prospects, leads, qualified leads, for sales leads for marketing leads and for closed business.

Choosing the ideal target

When you go hunting, if you try to target everything in sight, you will go home hungry. You must pick your focus. But how do you do that? Three steps. First you pick the type of companies you want to go after. Are they big or small? Local or far away? How do they operate? Once you have a clear company list or target, understand the buyers in the company. There are 4 types of buyers, including decision makers, influencers, users and the people who actually do the buying. Sometimes it can get even more complicated than that but you have to understand who will get you in the door. Is it the gatekeeper? Who will keep you in the door and make your progress and what do they care about? Picking the right target and understanding the stages you need to take them through is the key to successful marketing strategy.

Creating your unique solution

You will not be able to convert your prospects into leads and your leads into qualified leads and your qualified leads into clients if you don't have a clear USP, OVP, Positioning statements and brand promise. Sure you might get lucky; luck might make you a living when the wheel of fortune is up, but it will not make you a future. Having a great strategy will make you a fortune. Measure twice and cut once, know what your target wants and what you can deliver, and solve their problems. You are either saving money, making money or eliminating risk. Pick one or all and give massive value. Decide how to best communicate that to your clients and you will skyrocket your business and your referrals.

Want to learn more? Watch our webinar on Thursday at 1230 pm EST at www.ajaxunion.com/webinar - We will get into all the details.

Joe Apfelbaum

Ajax Union

PS: If you have not listened to our podcast, please listen here. www.ajaxunion.com/podcast I just finished interviewing 60 CEOs of the fastest growing companies in the US about how they get on the INC 5000 this year. Pretty amazing stories. They all used unique strategies!