“Build your house on a rock. Make a good foundation on a solid spot.” You have to admit, it’s hard not to translate this timeless expression into how conduct business, and benefit from it. Today, more than ever, we’ve learned the painful lessons of managing quarter to quarter, and short-term thinking. Now businesses must to build ever strategically, for the long-term. Building a solid foundation, in any endeavor, is hard. It takes time, foresight, and work.
So when you’re planning for growth, launching a new product and service, or developing a joint venture, consider yourself an architect and promote your business by developing solid strategies to drive growth. Of course, your marketing strategy should be married to your business strategies.
Marketing strategy matters any business climate, and especially in this one.
Look, this isn’t the first time we’ve been through tough times, and it won’t be the last. Remember, businesses do thrive in distressed economies. After all, the recession of the 1970s saw Bill Gates and Paul Allen come together to start Microsoft (1975), and Google was founded one year prior the devastating internet bubble, 1998, and came through to now become the center of our web universe. So what can we learn from the experiences of these business titans? What can we apply to our own enterprises?
Here are six simple strategies to help you develop a solid foundation for business growth:
1. Business-driven marketing – Your marketing communications plan should be married to your business plans and objectives. Worry more about your overall strategy, and less about your logos and brochures. Include every possible communications touch point, such as: web, advertising, PR, sales, networking, and so on. Use your marketing communications strategy as a step-by-step guide for how you will promote your business. Typically done in 12-month increments, your strategy delineates your marketing communications tactics.
2. Integrate What, How and When – An integrated marketing communications plan is an effective one. Relying on one tactic or media is sure to be met with lousy results. You integrated strategy should include what you will do, how you will do it, and when. For example, will you be using the web? If so, will you using offline advertising, or search engine optimization to drive the web? If you’ll be using PR, are you providing enough lead-time for media relations? And will your online assets be ready so when the articles run, people can go to your site?
3. Set your priorities – No more shooting from the hip when it comes to marketing. Your strategy allows you to set priorities, budgets, and execute against them. These priorities should also reflect market segments. For example if you’re a bank and are promoting two different products to the same market, consider which one of the products is more important to your business, build an incremental roll-out plan to roll out the most important product first, followed by the second.
4. Show me the money – budgeting is an integral part of your strategic marketing plan. And since your budget is pre-planned for every activity, you’ll have time to shop around for the best price and service, rather than react in the middle of a campaign and overpay. Or worse, overpay for an ineffective last minute activity.
5. Staying in the game – In uncertain times, conventional wisdom tells you to lay low. History tells us that the opposite is true. Your marketing plan allows your business to engage the market, which keeps you ahead of your competitors – most of whom adhere to conventional wisdom.
6. Execute, Execute – The great UCLA coach, John Wooden, once said, “nothing works unless you do.” Same concept here, your marketing strategy won’t work, unless you work it. What good is it to develop strategies and not use them? Also, once your plan is executed, you can measure against it. If you don’t execute your plans, or execute half, you won’t have the meaningful data you need to build on, or adjust future strategies.
Abe Kasbo is CEO of Verasoni Worldwide, a marketing and public relations firm and author of the upcoming book “Hey Marketing Genius.” He blogs at www.verasoni.com/vblog.
