7 Essential Questions: Part 5

It’s planning season for many businesses. That’s why over seven weeks we’re posing seven questions you should ask yourself and your team that will inform your marketing planning for 2020.

This week we explore our fifth vital question: "Which tactics will work – and why?" Our recent posts covered setting business goals, defining audience, marketing goal-setting and strategy development. Now that you have a handle on these, it's time to decide on your tactics – those specific activities on which you will spend actual time and money to reach your customers.

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So why go through all these steps anyway? Because when the rubber meets the road – or in this case when the bills begin to hit your wallet – you’re going to want to be confident that your marketing spend was a wise investment rather than an expensive gamble.

So how do will you know if you’re making the right choices when it comes to your specific marketing activities? Here some questions to guide you:

• Are your tactics likely to help you connect with your most important customers? Or are you undertaking more of a vanity play? “I just want to tell everyone” sounds like a noble idea, but a clear focus on "your people" will serve you better.
  
• Are your activities sensible and justifiable or just trendy? Sometimes it can feel like you’re missing out on the latest trends, but are they relevant to your customers? Will your audience respond to a fun Tik Tok video or will they prefer old-fashioned networking or a holiday price promotion? It’s good to know what’s trending, just don’t be distracted by the "shiny objects" – those glitzy-seeming ideas in those “Top 20 Must Have” posts you keep seeing that can lead you astray from your actual business priorities.
• Can you test your methods? This is important – can you create variations of a campaign to see who responds to what? In the industry we call this A/B testing – changing something like imagery or even something as simple as an email subject line to see which version gets more clicks, A or B. The same holds true for something traditional like printing. For example, we recently created 100 copies of our new flyer to see what some of our customers thought. After some helpful feedback, we're going to make a couple of quick changes and do a larger print run, more confident we're on the right track.
  

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• Finally, can you "draw a line" connecting your activities back to your quantified business goals and priorities? No matter which activities you may pursue, be they traditional or digital, you'll be best served by asking yourself a single question: “Why am I doing this?” If you can answer yourself convincingly that each tactic helps satisfy your business goals by connecting you with the right audience, you’re on the right track.
  
  However, if you hear yourself say things like “because it’s the hot new thing,” or “I’m afraid I’m going to miss out,” – or worse, “because it’s cheap” – then it’s time go back to your notes and refocus.

Believe it or not, marketing your small business can be fun. But it’s also a discipline that can sometimes feel like having to eat your vegetables. Trust us, doing your homework before committing to investing limited resources is well worth the effort; no one wants to look a stack of invoices at the end of the month and wonder, “What was I thinking?”

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Next week:

Question 6: "What will it all cost?" Developing a marketing budget you can work with.

Last week:

Check out our blog on developing your marketing strategies