Level-Up

Your Strategy to Sustainable Marketing-Driven Growth

Raine Gaisford

• Publisher: LimeHub Pty Ltd
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780645252316
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Pubblicità
• Index: Business

" While marketing is complex, it need not be complicated "

Put simply, a good marketing strategy helps organisations achieve their objectives from the right amount of effort and financial investment. Conversely, marketing without a strategy results in wasted investments and generally disappointing results.

The purpose of this book is to provide a good - nay, great! - marketing strategy to help you achieve your organisational objectives.

By following this 12-month, step-by-step strategy, you will transform your business from sales-driven to a proactive demand-driven marketing machine.

Execution Roadmap

Once you are confident of the operational requirements of your marketing team, you are ready to start delivering on your strategy. The roadmap below has been structured based upon what we at LimeHub have coined the Marketing Value Hierarchy.

Marketing Value Hierarchy

The Marketing Value Hierarchy dictates that no single marketing tactic is more valuable than another but that the maximum value of each tactic will be derived or unlocked when completed in its correct sequence.

Example: One of our clients came to us for support with the optimisation of their website for search engines (SEO). As part of the development of their SEO strategy, we ran a comprehensive audit of their website and the data from paid search activities. We found that there were significant technical performance and user experience issues with their current website as well as errors in the paid search campaign setup. Our client had invested over $30,000 in the redesign and redevelopment of their website by a creative agency not 12 months prior and had spent over $40,000 in paid advertising, which had yet to deliver a single return.

The Marketing Value Hierarchy in this instance starts with a website audit and SEO strategy, followed by the redesign and redevelopment of a high-performing, user experience optimised website which satisfies technical on-page SEO requirements and culminates in the correct set-up of a paid advertising campaign and other activities as part of the strategy.

Because the Value Hierarchy was not followed by our client originally, their investments were not only misused, but they needed additional funding to rectify the obstacles in the way to achieving their objectives.

As mentioned earlier, any organisation implementing this strategy has already been practising marketing formally or informally, so I have been careful to ensure that the sequence of activities within the roadmap not only follows the Marketing Value Hierarchy but has been based on a practical business approach rather than relying purely on theoretical approaches.

MONTH ONE

Brand and Content

In this first month we will be focusing on the brand of your organisation and the content you will be producing for your audience. The critical element that ties these two activities together and which makes them an essential starting point is their reliance on a comprehensive understanding of the business and the audience. These areas form the foundation of the Marketing Value Hierarchy because without them very few activities can reach their full value potential. For example, without a clear brand and compelling content, a website, a social media plan and paid promotions will fall short.

Brand

Having strong foundations is essential to the success of your marketing strategy, which is why it is important to start with your brand.

To be clear, I am not talking about your brand’s identity (logo, etc.) but rather the brand itself. I am talking about how your business is perceived in the market in terms of price, quality, service, what it does well, what it does not do well, and how it is differentiated within the market.

Your key differentiator often stems from your unique competitive advantage which is ideally something that cannot easily be replicated by competitors and should be protected at all costs. A strong competitive advantage is something that can be protected like an innovative process, proprietary technologies, exclusive sourcing agreements, raw materials, etc. This competitive advantage provides a trickle-down to a differentiator which cannot easily be disrupted. Not every business has a strong competitive advantage or differentiator, but it is still important to identify what it is, what level of risk it carries to the business, and what can be done to strengthen it.

If you were following a strategy template, this is where it might instruct you to complete a SWOT analysis, but the intent of this book as an alternative to a template is to offer a practical task-driven solution.

The purpose of the following two tasks is to compare the internal organisational perception and the perception of your customers of the competitive advantage, key differentiator and market positioning that make up your brand. It is a litmus test of expectation vs. reality.

Start with the internal organisational perception by completing Task One of this section.

Task One

Conduct a survey of key stakeholders within your organisation with the following questions:

1 - What does our organisation do best compared to the market? And, why?

2 - What does our organisation not do as well in within our market?

(This could be an area of improvement or a deliberate strategic decision.) And, why?

3 - Compared to our competitors, our price is lower/similar/higher.

4 - Compared to our competitors, our goods/services quality is lower/similar/higher.

5 - Compared to our competitors, our customer support is lower/similar/higher.

If the answers you receive back from internal key stakeholders are not similar or the same, then consider running a workshop internally to determine how to achieve internal alignment.

Once you are clear about what your competitive advantage, key differentiator and market positioning should be from a strategic internal perspective, turn your attention to how your best customers perceive your organisation. Your best customers are the ones you want to replicate, so their perspective should be your focus (for now anyway).

Task Two

Conduct a survey of your best customers with the following questions:

1 - Before you became our customer, what were you using/doing?

2 - Why wasn’t that working for you anymore?

3- What other products/services/solutions did you explore before choosing us?

4 - Why did you choose us over those other products/services/solutions?

5 - How can we improve even further?

6 - How would you rate us in terms of price?

7 - How would you rate us in terms of quality?

8 - How would you rate us in terms of service?

The answers to these questions will uncover your key differentiator which turns prospects into customers, your main position compared to competitors and the priority for your product/solution roadmap. If the answers to these questions are not what you hoped they would be, then this is indicative of a business-wide strategic issue that needs to be addressed as a priority, before advancing with this strategy.

The topic of Brand is a rabbit warren of complexity from literal to emotive interpretations. Once your business is on the path to enterprise status and organisational ‘self-actualisation’, it will be time to invest in a team of experts committed to the businesses brand and all the complexity that comes with it. For now, however, understanding the practical elements of your brand is sufficient and will deliver great value.

Brand Identity

A brand’s identity includes the sensory cues associated with a brand.

The most common primary cue is a logo, but other examples could also include a colour, a sound or even a smell for example. The most important part of developing a brand identity is ensuring it aligns with the brand itself and sends the right message. Psychology plays a big part in this process from colours, fonts and even shapes.

Having a clear brand and an identity that accurately communicates its positioning and strengths, and which is easy to recall, is an essential element of a successful marketing program, so the third task for this month is comparing the current brand identity with the answers provided above.

Task Three

Based on the answers from Tasks One and Two, consider the following questions relating to your brand’s identity:

1 - Do the colours used to represent the brand align with the strengths of the brand? For example, if the brand is strong in service and low on price then suitable colours would include softer palettes, including pink or yellow. A bold red hue would not be a suitable core colour in this example.

2 - Do the fonts used to represent the brand align with the strength of the brand? For example, a technology brand aimed at coders might be better suited to the serif family of fonts rather than sans serif.

3 - Does the shape of the logo (if one exists) align with the strength of the brand? For example, a circular logo is representative of positive and supportive emotions like family and relationships whereas a square logo with sharp edges is better suited to professionalism and efficiency.

4 - Do the images used within your marketing collateral align with your brand? For example, if people and service are a core part of your brand, then suitable imagery would include people rather than landscapes or vector graphics.

5 - Is there an easily recognisable and memorable element to your brand identity such as a logo, colour, font or sound?

6 - Does the key messaging accurately and succinctly communicate the benefits delivered to the audience and the differentiator of the business?

A quick Google search will provide a sufficient understanding of the meaning behind colours, fonts and shapes from which you can make a determination. If there is any misalignment of your brand and its identity, then your final task for this section will be a rebranding project. Ensure you enlist an experienced brand development team as there is a lot more to branding than design.

Following these exercises will put your business well ahead of the pack as many SSSMBs fail to recognise the importance of developing a strong brand and therefore do not invest the necessary resources into it. This is despite the impact a strong brand will make on every facet of a business, including diminishing the potential value of all other marketing activities. Only once you are confident with the current and/or future state of the brand of the organisation should you move forward with your strategy.

Content

Content comes in many forms but the substance of it is what really matters.

Regardless of your objectives regarding content development, whether it is lead generation, brand awareness or even ranking in search engines, the key to effective content lies in having a thorough understanding of your audience, their goals and how your business adds unique...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• Strategic Objectives
• Strategic Operating Model
• Execution Roadmap