In today's multi-channel, digitally-driven world, small businesses must be able to market their brand's message easily and confidently. An effective marketing strategy and plan requires strategic planning and excellent tools. Whether a client is facing a significant crisis or promoting their latest product, Entrepreneur’s Edge will help you develop the right marketing strategy to successfully market and grow your business.
What Is a Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy is a process used by a company or individual to reach their target audience through various channels. It includes your message (what is being said), the medium (where it is being communicated), and the target (to whom the message is reaching). While traditional marketing focuses on stages like Awareness, Consideration and Purchase, the Entrepreneur's Edge method focuses on seven interconnected stages. These stages are:
Our lead consultants & strategists have undergone extensive training to help smaller businesses build a cohesive marketing strategy that produces measurable results. From creating a solid brand message to implementing effective lead generation tactics, we ramp up your marketing results with a proven method.
As a small business owner, it's essential to understand how your customers want to buy and align your marketing accordingly. This includes anticipating their needs before they even realize they need your product or service and continuing to engage with them long after the sale. It's important to note that customer satisfaction plays a critical role in generating leads and referrals. By prioritizing building trust and providing an exceptional customer experience, you can create the momentum needed for a successful end-to-end customer journey.
Entrepreneur's Edge collaborates with small businesses to create a clear and consistent brand message that effectively communicates your capabilities to your customers. Together, we will build a reliable marketing system strategy that you can count on to deliver results.
What’s the Importance of a Marketing Strategy for Your Small Business?
Creating a marketing strategy is like planning a vacation. First, you identify your desired destination (your business goals) and all the things you want to accomplish on your trip (your marketing goals). That’s your strategy. It’s where you want to go, what you want to see and everything you want to accomplish along the way. You start with those things in mind and use them to map your route, plan your stops and budget for the trip.
Can you imagine what would happen if you tried to go on vacation without knowing where you were planning to go? Just start driving, taking random turns, spending a ton of money on gas, getting more and more frustrated, until…who knows?!
Is that how you’re running your business?
Maybe it could be fun as a crazy travel adventure. But it’s not a recipe for growing a business.
You simply can’t achieve your business goals on tactics alone. Full stop. Tactics without strategy quickly turn into aimless work. You’re taking arbitrary actions with no strategic objective behind them. In the short term, this can feel like busywork. In the long term, it can lead to frustration, overwhelm and burnout.
So when we hear a business owner uttering phrases like…
● “I feel stuck.”
● “I’m overwhelmed.”
● “I’m throwing things against the wall and hoping something will stick.”
We recognize those as tell-tale signs of a business without a marketing strategy. A business owner without a guidance system.
They’re hoping. You do NOT want your business to be dependent on HOPE. Hope is not a strategy.
free download
Why is an Integrated Marketing Strategy Important?
Too often, marketing and communication function as separate entities, creating a disconnect between the message and the medium. This disconnect can lead to confusion or disinterest on the part of the audience you are trying to reach.
Your messaging, branding, advertising and sales promotions should be consistent across channels, which requires your departments to work together. Aligning team members around an integrated marketing and communications plan can help you achieve this type of collaboration and lead to greater success.
An integrated marketing strategy includes developing a total online presence driven by a planned content roadmap that helps move prospects through the buyer's journey to become customers.
By identifying your ideal clients (referred to as buyer personas), we create a content roadmap that aligns with the channels that your ideal clients are most likely using.
Part of any core marketing strategy is an analysis of the competitive landscape to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks. It also allows us to right-size your marketing investment based on the competition and aligned with your business goals and objectives.
A Comprehensive Marketing Strategy for Your Small Business
Most businesses waste an enormous amount of time and money on marketing. What many fail to realize about marketing is the concept of marketing maturity. It's not social media that helps you create business growth; it's developing a marketing strategy designed specifically for your small business that generates the kind of growth most companies need to thrive.
Once Entrepreneur’s Edge Has helped you develop a mature marketing strategy that fits your business, you'll discover that:
● You'll attract clients that are ideal for you.
● You'll understand the lifetime value of a client.
● You'll have a clear message that resonates with your clients.
● You'll stand out in ways that make the competition irrelevant.
● You'll be able to identify the most profitable ways to attract new business.
The result of a marketing strategy engagement is to provide your business with an integrated set of marketing tactics to create a marketing system designed to amplify your marketing results.
Entrepreneur’s Edge can help you develop an integrated marketing and communication plan for getting press by:
● Creating a story that works for your target channel (press) and aligns with your brand image. The story should address the interests and concerns of your ideal customers.
● Finding press targets that have an interest in your product or service and the same audience as your target market.
● Building relationships with press outlets and pitching them your story ideas.
We can help you create a marketing strategy and plan that works for your small business. Creating a compelling marketing message requires a deep understanding of your products and services, target customers, and brand values. We can help you condense your marketing message into a press-ready pitch that encourages media outlets to work with you.
What Makes Entrepreneur’s Edge Different?
Debbie Oster is an expert in marketing with over twelve years of experience. She is the owner of Entrepreneur's Edge and has served as a fractional Chief Marketing Officer for multiple clients. Debbie's hands-on experience covers a wide range of marketing environments, from traditional to digital marketing, brand management and PR. Her success in marketing ranges from startups to $300 million companies, which makes her a valuable asset to any small business.
Entrepreneur’s Edge is uniquely positioned to support small business owners who want to develop an effective marketing and communications strategy. Whether you need a clear message and a sales funnel to generate leads and sales fast, or an integrated marketing strategy to build a marketing system that works, Entrepreneur’s Edge can help.
How Entrepreneur’s Edge Creates Marketing Strategies That Work
To be clear: We’re not another agency here to give you the runaround and not produce. This isn’t a situation where the ‘secret sauce’ is yet another Ideal Client worksheet and a marketing ‘expert’ calling it ‘done’. Yes, we will get to know your market, but we know the ‘templated administrative homework’ doesn’t produce on its own.
If you’ve been through that before, what they gave you isn’t a strategy. We guide you through our proven methodology to:
● Pinpoint your target market segments,
● Create powerful messaging,
● Cut through the noise, and
● Compel your prospects to take action.
But good marketing strategy doesn’t end there. There’s another very important piece that you want….
…and you might not have even realized it yet.
You know how sometimes a new initiative or idea comes along, you (and maybe your staff) get excited, you invest time, money and energy into it…and then it inexplicably goes on the shelf to collect dust for eternity? Yeah, so do we.
And we know how to fix it. We can help ensure you against that wasted time, effort and money. Our process includes giving you the tools and showing you how to organize and maintain your strategy so it stays current and continues to drive your culture, decisions, and activities as you move forward.
To use the vacation analogy, we help you set your destination, plan your itinerary, and guide you like a compass, so you continue to stay on course during your journey.
It’s a done-with-you process that we take you through to ensure that you don’t just have a marketing strategy, you have a powerful marketing strategy, one that you can take to your target market and expect to compete and win.
If your marketing doesn’t contribute directly to each of those things, then it’s not working.