Every home business entrepreneur needs marketing, since it’s the lifeblood of a business – especially a new one.
Marketing, though, isn’t effective unless you know where you’re going and how to get there. You need a marketing strategy, otherwise you could very easily waste a lot of time and money going after the wrong people in the wrong way.
But for entrepreneurs who don’t have a background in marketing (i.e. most of them), the prospect of creating a marketing strategy from scratch is daunting. What does a strategy look like? What goes in one? How can you figure out who you’re marketing to and how to best do it?
These are all questions I’ve answered for my marketing clients who knew they needed a marketing strategy but didn’t quite know how to go about creating one. Over the past decade, I’ve helped home business entrepreneurs craft their own strategies using their own words through a very simple, easy-to-use six-step process.
That’s all it takes – six simple steps and you will have your very own marketing strategy. (And it’ll be easier than you think.)
Step 1: Starting with Your (SMART) Goal in Mind
Every strategy starts with a goal in mind. After all, if you don’t know your destination, how will you ever figure out how to get there?
You can’t just create any goal, though. A goal that is imprecise and ill-defined isn’t much of a goal. It’s more of a dream, or an ambition – but it won’t help you get there. The best goals give you a structure or framework to help you figure out exactly where you want to be.
Enter SMART goals. You may have heard this term before. It originated in the November 1981 issue of Management Review in an article authored by George Doran, Arthur Miller, and James Cunningham. In the article, the authors sought to give managers and executives a better way to create actionable goals that actually work.
Over time, the specific acronym has evolved, but the most popular definition, per MIT, is:
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Relevant
T – Time-bound
A goal must be specific. “I want more customers” isn’t specific, whereas “I want to grow my customer base by 30%” is. Specificity is important because you won’t know where you’re going until you precisely define exactly where you want to be. It’s like saying, “I want to go somewhere in New England for vacation,” which doesn’t do you much good unless you say something like, “I want to go to Martha’s Vineyard.”
A goal must also be measurable. “I want to grow my customer base by 30%” is not only specific, but also measurable, since you can quantify it or put a number to it. If you can’t measure it, you won’t know if you actually arrived at your goal. Other examples could include “I want to increase my profit margin by 3%” or “I want to gross $100,000 in revenue.”
No goal is worth anything, though, if it can’t be achieved. That’s why a goal must be achievable: it must be realistic enough that it could actually be accomplished. Every home business entrepreneur would probably love to triple their profits in six months, but that probably isn’t achievable or realistic for most people (if any).
Goals that don’t have anything to do with your business probably aren’t goals you should pursue, which is why goals have to be relevant. We’re creating a marketing strategy for your business, not a personal growth strategy for your after-business hours. So, “I want to lower my 5K run time by 10%” isn’t a good business goal. And “I want 5,000 Facebook followers” may not be relevant to what ultimately works best for your business. For the purposes of a marketing strategy, all of your SMART goals should either be something about marketing or something marketing can affect. Saying, “I want to lower my vendor costs by 20%” isn’t something marketing can impact, so it’s not relevant.
Finally, a goal must be time-bound. In other words, there has to be some kind of deadline for what you’re trying to do. Here, you’re either giving yourself a timeframe or giving yourself a firm deadline. Saying, “I want to double my profits” isn’t nearly as good as saying, “I want to double my profits within three years.” Or, you could say something like, “I want to get my first paying customer within one month.” You can even have a time-bound goal for a specific task, saying, “I want to get my Facebook page up and running by Tuesday of next week.”
The big thing to keep in mind about SMART goals at this level is that these are big-picture goals for your business’s marketing as a whole. So, when creating the marketing strategy, choose goals that have something to do with marketing. Choose metrics that make sense for marketing, that marketing can achieve, and that are at a strategic, 30,000-foot view.
Don’t get too specific or precise, because then we’re getting into the world of objectives, which is the next step.
Step 2: Going from Goals to Objectives
If a goal is where you’re going, an objective is how you’re going to get there.
Objectives take a goal and outline the actionable steps to take to achieve that goal. You’re getting more precise and specific and focused with objectives. This is where you start identifying how you’re going to achieve the goal in mind.
Objectives that your marketing strategy should include at this point include:
- Defining your ideal audience
- Creating buyer personas
- Identifying your three key messages
- Choosing the channels you’ll use
- Figuring out what needs to be done in order to start those channels
From objectives you can start working out the details, the actual nuts and bolts of what, specifically, you’re going to do to achieve the objectives and, thus, the strategic goals.
So, goals flow from your business strategy; objectives flow from goals; and details flow from objectives.
But how do you figure out the objectives? There are three big steps to take, which we’ll cover now.
Step 3: Creating the Ideal Audience
Every marketing strategy needs to define who your ideal target audience is.
Targeting the right audience is everything. You can have the best strategy, and the best SMART goals, and the best messages and channels and tactics, and get nothing out of your marketing because you’re going after the wrong people.
So, you need the right group of people. But, it’s important to recognize that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. You’re also going to have to get more granular with your targeting. What does that mean? Here are a couple of examples.
Bad audience definition: “I’m going after accountants in the United States.” This is entirely too imprecise.
Good audience definition: “I’m going after accountants aged 30 to 50 in these three metropolitan areas: X, Y, and Z.”
Note that the above may just be one segment of your audience. You may have multiple groups of people, or segments, in your business’s overall market.
To define each segment of your audience, take a good look at your ideal customer. It’s always better to go after the ideal customer because they’re going to deliver the bulk of your revenue. You may get customers outside of the ideal group, which is great, but you can’t depend on them, thus you shouldn’t spend the majority of your time going after them.
To define your ideal audience segments, picture your ideal customer and ask yourself these questions:
- How old are they? What’s the age range?
- What’s their gender?
- Where are they located? (Don’t say ‘The United States’, even if you’re national, because it’s better to break your audience up into specific markets.)
- What do they like to do for fun?
- How much money do they make?
- What websites do they visit frequently?
- How do they get their information?
- Do they own their own home, or rent?
- Do they have children?
- What’s their highest education level?
You may wind up with several ideal customers. That’s okay, as long as each ideal customer segment is someone who is most likely to do business with you. That’s the key.
Once you have a target audience, then you can figure out what to say to them.
Step 4: Crafting Your Three Key Messages
A key message is basically a snippet of information that you want your customers to know about you. They’re called key messages because they’re the most important to your brand – the very essential things customers need to associate with you.
A brand needs to have consistent key messages that are reinforced with every touchpoint. In other words, consumers need to see these messages over and over again. We choose three key messages because people can’t really form associations with more than three things about a brand at a time. (Usually it’s only one or two.)
A key message could be something like:
- YourCPA, Inc. offers professional bookkeeping services at an affordable price. (The key message here is ‘affordable price.’)
- YourCPA, Inc. understands small businesses because we’re a small business. (The key message is, “We’re made for small businesses.”)
- YourCPA, Inc. is led by an accomplished CPA with 25 years of experience. (The key message here is ‘experience.’)
You’ll use these three key messages in just about everything you communicate to your audience, so choose wisely.
Your key messages, coupled with your target audience, will inform your objectives. They will help you say who you’re going to reach and what you’re to say to these people in order to achieve your goals.
Step 5: Choosing Your Channels and Methods
At this stage, you’re going from what you want to do to how you’re going to do it.
A channel is any way to reach your audience. Broadly, there are three main outreach channels: broadcast (TV and radio); print (magazines, billboards, direct mail, etc.); and digital (blogs, digital ads, social media, etc.).
Digital marketing offers the best bang for your buck, especially for a home-based business. Broadcast and print can both be more expensive, and it’s very difficult to do precise targeting and analytics like you can with digital marketing.
Digital marketing also offers you ways to reach your customer that include:
- Social media
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Blogging
- Content marketing (articles, white papers, videos, etc.)
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
- Email marketing
- Retargeting (or remarketing)
Each of these methods can be done on a budget, and all work very well with website analytics so you can see who you’re targeting and what they’re doing when they arrive at your website.
In general, you’ll want to create a website, which serves as the hub of your online presence, then decide how to feed traffic into the website. Some channels are better than others are at generating traffic (i.e. SEO and PPC advertising), while others are better at turning attention into leads and customers (i.e. email marketing, retargeting, and blogging).
You can also choose by timeline. Some take longer to deliver results, such as SEO and blogging, while others can generate quick returns, such as PPC advertising and social media advertising.
At this stage, your audience will help dictate which channels you ultimately choose. If you know where they get their information, that’ll tell you where to focus your efforts first.
Step 6: Hammering Out Details Where the Rubber Meets the Road
Finally, your strategy should contain the details you need to take the strategy and start executing it.
Answer these questions as a good place to start:
- What topics will I cover?
- How many times will I blog per week?
- How many times will I post on social media per week?
- Which social media platforms will I use?
- What online advertising methods will I use? (I.e. Google AdWords, display ads, etc.)
- What promotions, offers, discounts, or special programs will I offer my customers, if any?
- How will I track metrics? (I.e. Google Analytics, specialized social media platforms, etc.)
- What is my marketing budget?
You don’t have to include everything in your strategy. It’s supposed to be flexible, after all. You’ll need to change things as you go through your marketing journey, and that’s okay. This is just the section where you start putting a little meat on the bones. You’ll figure out the best way forward as you go.
Putting It All Together
A marketing strategy is essential for any business, especially a home business. It’s a part of a serious business venture, just as breathing is a part of living. You don’t want to squander your resources, and you want to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward.
Use the above process to create your marketing strategy, but keep in mind the importance of being flexible. Be open to feedback and change things that need changing. Don’t get too attached to anything at this point; instead, constantly evaluate and reevaluate.
Marketing is the lifeblood of business. A marketing strategy helps pump the blood and keep it going – which makes your business thrive.
