6-step Marketing Strategy for your success

I am not suggesting marketing your business...or you is easy. It helps to lay out the steps involved in order to stay loyal to a process. Marketing universally fails without a strategy and discipline to monitor the strategy. Here are my steps:

1. Start with Why. Why are you in business? Why should someone care? The work done at this stage will determine if you have an existence as a commodity (best price, quality and service), or one that attracts people who believe in what you believe. The latter will allow you to sustain. 
2. Who are the people who need to know you are in business? Another term for this is "perfect customer."
3. What is the message you want to communicate to your desired audience? Hint: It is often based on your answer to step #1. 
4. How should you communicate the message? You know your audience...and you know what you want to say to them. The answer here could range from press releases, social media, supermarket sampling, skywriting to network television advertising. Every business is different, one size does not fit all. 
5. Engage. It's the marketing buzz word of the day. You no longer talk "at" prospects, you have conversations. Conversations include hearing something you may not want to hear. 
6. Measure. A marketing strategy is useless without measurement. Some ideas and methods are brilliant, some are duds. A marketing strategy is a living, breathing concept. It needs to be tweaked consistently. There is no such thing as the perfect marketing strategy. 

Marketing is fun if you want it to be. It's from that mindset that you should build your strategy. 

Blimps, Zambonis & Jumbotrons

Marketing is about the message. What message will resonate with your prospects to get them to engage with your business?

The options to broadcast your message are endless.

The "Met Life" blimp. The "Budweiser" Zamboni clearing the ice between periods. The "Sony" Jumbotron shows replays in high definition. Sports fans are bombarded with messages, some more intrusive than others.

If you struggle to develop a message, call your best customers. Interview them and you will get the best perspective of what you deliver. Use their words and phrases. Soon you will have a message that will put a smile on someone's face.

You have accomplished the hard part. Now it's time to call the blimp owner.