Time to review your MARKETING PLANS??

Monday, 4th January 2021

Guest blog by Paul Clarke, UK Business Mentoring

As a business owner in the North of England, whatever stage you are at in your business growth, how you market your product or service is usually top of your priority list.

Now, usually your market is changing and it’s like swimming against the tide or shooting moving plastic yellow ducks at the fairground.

Sometimes your competition changes their offering, technology advances affect your plans and always customer buying behaviours evolve which always affect your marketing.

Think about the 2 Premier League teams in Manchester- it doesn’t matter if you are a fan of one or not or do not even like football.

The red half had success after success whilst the blue half, pain and hardship. When the blue half were taken over in 2008 with significant investment, there was a detailed and specific marketing plan adopted to attract not only the top players but the external investment partners to make the club sustainable. The marketing has developed at the red side as whilst fortunes on the pitch have not been as good, off the pitch continues to thrive.

So, where do business owners start?

Well it always starts with a plan!

When we work with business owners in the North of England we always talk about 7 ways you can market your products/services and have a simple 1 page tool detailed below.

Business Mentors 7 ways to market your business

Once we have at least 7 methods to use (at UK Business Mentoring we always recommend at least seven channels) which could be social media/website/online channels/flyers/emails/direct calls/retail shop layout/referrals…and many many more options- we then agree the actions.

Actions consideration:-

Mystery shop the competition
Learnings from past experiences
Ease of tracking
External advice given/other companies success and recommended
Target market-who are they and why do they buy?
YOUR USP-we call it your compelling competitive advantage-can you define it and then market it?

Once you have the plan or have updated your existing one you are only a fraction of the way there to success-the key part is to come.

Track your activity and progress—review and track some more and repeat the process. The above 1 pager we have helps and we have a number of other tools to support both the plans and tracking.

How do you know where your customers/prospects noticed you?

Whenever you get an enquiry please ask this question- where did you hear about us?

You will be surprised how few do this and the ones that do then do not have a system for recording the feedback and reviewing later to ensure each marketing method is reviewed for its return on investment (time and money).

Article written by Manchester Business Mentor Paul Clarke

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