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. 

5 Key Words in (Social Media) Marketing

Enhance...Protect...Build...Facilitate...Drive!

These words pop up in most discussions about marketing strategy. It relates to your brand awareness, reputation, PR, customer service and research and development.

The words imply action that will generate a desired result.

When you review your marketing plan what action words do you use? Are you committed to take action? Is your focus on enhancing awareness for your brand, or is building a community of advocates more important?

I love marketing because I see it as an equation. The equation begins using these five words that take the form of action steps (strategy) that will generate a result. When the result isn't good you go back and tweak the equation. When the result is good...you look for ways to make it better and more efficient.

Is your equation ending with a positive result?

What did you learn in 2011?

Most of us are ending the year working on 2012 budgets, marketing strategies, hirings and firings, scheduling new product launches and so on.

Spend time on these questions:

• What did we do well in 2011? 
• What can we do better? 
• What did we learn from our best customer? 
• What seems to be a recurring concern about our offerings? 
• Do we ask good questions? 
• Do we listen well? 
• Are we anticipating changes in our industry? 
• What needs to change to make 2012 the best year ever? 

Step back, slow down and take time to reflect. It's a great way to launch into the new year.