Is Your Marketing Puzzle Complete?

A company’s marketing strategy is a lot like a puzzle — with mixed up pieces to fit together over time. How do you, as a business owner, start to solve this puzzle? Do you work randomly? Do you pick a section to focus on first? Everyone will take a different tack, based on goals, strengths, resources, and challenges. Some may be overwhelmed and give up on the process — but you shouldn’t!

At Jade Marketing Solutions, our approach is to categorize the marketing puzzle pieces into four strategic building blocks so that decisions are more rational and simplified:

Brand Infrastructure: 

• Your infrastructure needs to be in place before investing in any other marketing.
• These are your brand building blocks and include foundational written and visual materials – from your logo to your website to brochures – that provide necessary information about your company to customers, prospects, employees, and potential investors.
• It also encompasses defining your customer experience lifecycle standards and some form of robust client database or CRM tool.
• A weak brand infrastructure, especially a crappy website, can result in subpar customer relationships and the erosion of a sales pipeline.

Customer Engagement & Relationship Growth: 

• These tend to be high ROI initiatives that build loyalty, encourage referrals, grow share of wallet, and enhance your understanding of customers' needs.
• Activities that can strengthen connections with customers include social media pages, relevant surveys, events, newsletters, product/services enhancements, and loyalty rewards programs.

Traditional and Targeted Marketing: 

• Want to go full Don Draper? It is still okay to do that! Mass media ads, advertorials, newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio may be appropriate for certain promotions and businesses.
•  Good old direct mail is still a successful tool for sales growth and building brand awareness for small- to medium-sized businesses.
• With daily (even hourly) updates in Google algorithms and the growth of knowledge bases, targeted digital marketing (e.g., display ads, search engines, social media advertising) is our most widely used tactic. Works for almost any budget with completely measurable results.

Grassroots Outreach: 

• This is networking – being "out there" with peers, advisors, and referral sources. You represent your brand and its values face-to-face, on Zoom, on LinkedIn, and with vendors.
• Can be cost-free for attending public events or more expensive for visible event sponsorships, industry associations, and networking groups.
• Requires your time, which we know is a scarce commodity!
• Whether you’re a natural schmoozer or not, nurturing existing relationships and seeking new connections is worthwhile on any scale, but requires ongoing commitment and follow up.

With this marketing structure (and the right team in place), you can more easily assess where you are and what you need, and then allocate resources accordingly. Plus, you and a strategic marketing partner can develop a flexible strategy, so you can pivot and adapt quickly (and without great cost) if your business changes — or say there's a pandemic or something far-fetched like that.