5 keys to a great marketing strategy By David Cohen The Boomer Business Coach

The 5 Keys of Marketing Strategy Who is your narrowly defined target customer? In which category does your business exist? What is your unique benefit? Who is your real competition? How are you clearly different from your competitors?

Before you begin to develop your marketing strategy…  Have a plan  Know what you’re goals are  Focus your message and target customer  Focus is almost always the difference between a business that grows profitably and one that never seems to gain any momentum. You can continue to hope that “next time that is going to work better,” or you can develop a clear focus and a realistic strategy.  Do quality stuff  Be consistent  Don’t be a one trick pony –when it comes to your marketing tactics

Who is Your Target Customer?  The first decision in any marketing strategy is to define your target customer. “Who do you serve?” always needs to be answered clearly before you can execute any tactic effectively. This means you have to say “no” to other potential customers who might buy from you but who are clearly bad fits for your narrow focus. This takes time to develop the discipline, but you can’t do effective marketing without it.

Target your exact best customer  If you are spending time and money on marketing but your efforts are not driving enough sales, the problem is almost always that you haven’t narrowed your target market definition enough to be effective. The narrower you define your market so you can focus on those that you can best serve and those that can best service you, the more effective your entire business will be.

Who are they?

What is Your Category?  Your category is simply the short description of what business you are in. What few words would someone say to describe your business? Starbucks is “high-quality coffee” Chipotle is “fresh Mexican burritos.” My friend’s tax business is simply “tax accounting for physicians in Phoenix.”  Most business owners can’t resist over-complicating their company descriptions. This leaves people unsure of what you actually do, which weakens your marketing effectiveness. Here’s a simple rule: If someone can’t clearly remember your category description a month after you meet them, they were never clear about what you do in the first place.

What is Your Unique Benefit?  Your unique benefit should highlight the one (or two) main things your product or service actually delivers (benefits) that your target customer really wants, not a long list of all the things your product does (features).  For example… “At Infusionsoft, we know our customers don’t just want our software: They want to grow sales and save time. We don’t describe everything our software does or the hundreds of benefits, we keep our focus on those three key benefits in everything we do. And the simpler we describe it, the better our marketing works.”

Who is Your Competition?  When someone is looking to buy a solution to a problem, they will quickly make sense of the alternatives to compare against – your competition. However, most entrepreneurs haven’t specifically defined who their real competition is and don’t focus their messages to create clear differentiation for their buyers. This frustrates the buying decision process and makes your marketing efforts weaker.

Can you tell me the difference?  What is the difference?

Why Are You Different and Better for Your Target Customer?  Once you have defined your competition, make a list of all the things you do differently and better. Then rank each of them by how important these factors are to your target customer. Pick the top one or two and put them on your homepage and include them in your elevator pitch.  Don’t overcomplicate this. People just want to know one or two things to move their decision along. Is it cheaper? Do you have faster delivery? Best personalized service?

What is your value proposition?  What Does Your Value Proposition or Marketing Strategy Statement Look Like?  When you put the five key decisions of marketing strategy in a sentence form, it looks like this fill-In-the-blank statement:  Who do you provide services and products for? _______________________________________________________  Who struggle with __________________________________________________ (insert their need or problems)  We have developed __________________________________ (Insert what it is you do to help your clients  That helps them achieve what goal or positive outcome__________________________ (insert the value the end results

Marketing assignment  Working with one of your groups members…  You own a lawn care business…it’s March and it’s time to get customers for the spring (April) You are going to target 100 of the coolest homes and your most ideal prospects in the area.  You are going to launch a 2 part direct mailing campaign followed up by a knock on the door to introduce yourself.  You have $1500 to play with and must do the following to help your colleague:

The work Develop a catchy theme that you can use to promote your lawn care business Identify some mailing ideas and products you might use to help “break the ice” What would you write in the campaign letter? You need to include a sales letter or brochure…what will you say or write? What is your goal and objective for a campaign like this?  What results do you want to achieve?

Present your ideas  __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________  Q and A

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