How To Grow You Business Using Strategic Marketing Planning.

Last week’s email talked about the biggest mistake that marketers and biz owners make. The mistake was this; lack of a strategic marketing plan.

And I bet you might have had trouble understanding me from how deep my message might have been.

Don’t stress now my friend.

I care about you so… here is a simplified breakdown of a marketing plan and strategy you can apply to your business for growth.

We have already established that the biggest mistake many marketers and entrepreneurs make when it comes to marketing is the lack of a marketing plan. This single mistake then leads to problems that result in the second mistake which is random promotions on social media.

Therefore;

Lack of a marketing plan and random acts of social media promotions are the 2 biggest marketing mistakes for entrepreneurs. Let us see how to avoid these 2 mistakes and how you can apply them to your business immediately after the end of this long article. 

To begin, I want you to keep in mind the fact that the most important thing about a marketing plan is the strategies you are going to use.

So a marketing plan must include a strategy.

The two words plan and strategy when married bear a baby called strategic planning.

So strategic planning to me is the marriage of a marketing strategy with a plan.

And so strategic planning is what professional marketers do.

When you think of legends like David Ogilvy and Eugene Schwartz, you notice that they were terrific strategists. We can learn from them how to become pro marketers and business owners.

So what’s the lesson we can learn from them?

We learn that pro marketers and biz owners need a plan before starting any marketing activity.

And a plan doesn’t have to be a big document with a thousand words. It can be as simple as three sentences. A simple marketing strategic plan with only 3 sentences is what I am going to give you at the end of this article. It is so simplified that you can take it and apply it to your business immediately.

However, before I give you the 3 sentence marketing plan, let us look at the ways I have used to arrive at it.

Adam Erhart’s influence over me.

 Adam Erhat was one of my earliest digital marketing teachers.

He is the one who opened my eyes to strategic planning. I highly recommend his YouTube channel and his marketing academy. Early in my marketing career also before finding Adam, I was obsessed more with skills than strategies. I didn’t know that strategic planning is what puts you on the edge in the world of marketing. But I am happy that after months of mistakes, I have found what can work for you, me, and other biz owners.

The idea that stuck with me from Adam’s teachings was his one-page marketing plan. I studied and presented it and it was warmly appreciated and welcomed back at the agency where I work.

Anyway.

Adam taught that when making a marketing plan, follow these 6 steps.

• Mission

• Market

• Model

• Message

• Media

• Matrix/funnels

I want you to feel free to call it the 6Ms of a marketing plan. More on these 6Ms is discussed in my blog article here.

Anyway. One of the first clients I worked with was a fast-food restaurant. So I decided to look back at the work I have been doing for them and thought it was time I made and implemented this Adam-inspired marketing plan with the mission to build a funnel. When I say a funnel I mean my strategies are going to be those that nurture clients from not knowing about the restaurant to knowing it and buying from it and buying again. Think of a funnel the same way as that home funnel for sieving stuff and ending up with only the finest at the bottom. In short, I am going to build a funnel for the restaurant as a strategy.

Why have I settled on this strategy? I once took a course on the overview of marketing. That was when I understood that funnels are an important approach to marketing. However, my search for how I could make a marketing funnel for a restaurant was not fulfilled after understanding and studying the overview of marketing from that Alison College course. I learned later that building a marketing funnel is as simple as branding your business, creating content around that business, and having a way to make sales.

How then could I apply my funnel-building knowledge to a restaurant? I asked myself.

I searched on Google which led me to a blog called My Area Network.

According to this blog, there are 3 crucial steps to building a funnel specifically for a restaurant.

The first phase is the attraction phase.

The second phase is the capturing phase.

The final phase is the selling phase.

I love how Raubi Perilli came up with this and the fact that selling comes at the end. Because truly, the final stage of marketing has to do with selling.

Now.

In the attraction phase, a restaurant can use different strategies. One and the most popular of them is social media marketing where you can use targeted ads to attract new potential customers. You need to run ads targeting people close to the restaurant. Another way is to use local content by inviting local influencers to visit and talk about your business as well as listing your restaurant in local directories. Local SEO also comes in handy here.

In the capturing phase, Raubi teaches that you use this phase to form a connection with the people you have attracted. How do you do that? Use a strategy that can capture their information. One good way especially for restaurants is running a contest to get leads. For example a free lunch in exchange for contact information. Writing blogs can also be used to capture emails by including links to a form at the end of every blog. On top of that, if the restaurant has a website, we can add a section asking readers to subscribe to a newsletter to receive special offers and deals.

In the final phase, we are now interested in selling. How do we sell? Given we have captured the contact information from the previous stage, we now have the leverage to sell to them how we wish. Email marketing comes in handy. Sending regular emails with stories, promotions, and offers is a great way to do that. Text marketing can also work the same way by communicating offers and deals via phone numbers.

There is a fourth phase which involves bringing back customers after they bought. One great way is developing a customer loyalty program so that they feel appreciated to keep them coming. Here, restaurants can use something like an email newsletter to send exclusive offers.

From my knowledge of the overview of marketing, Raubi’s explanation of funnels, and how Adam has taught me how to make a marketing plan, I found a simple way to write a marketing plan. Which came to me from the teachings of another of my master teachers of internet marketing.

And now the 3 sentence marketing plan.

I learned this from my biggest marketing and writing teacher eLBenbo. He is a genius and what I am going to tell you is so stupidly simple you won’t even believe it.

If you are just starting and you don’t have a strategic marketing plan, then this is what you need. But keep in mind this is a plan so of course, you need to pair that up with a strategy that works when executing.

Now according to eLBenbo, here is what a plan should look like in just 3 sentences.

Find X market. Build a list of X market and sell them Y product. And then sell them Z product after they buy Y product.

That simple.

This plan works so well with these 3 strategies. Facebook content creation and advertising, email marketing, and text marketing. And so on that note, I declare that email marketing is an underrated marketing strategy that many are still unaware of. More marketers and biz owners need to look past Facebook ads and further into emails and text marketing for selling.

What can you do with this information?

Now that you know how you can make a marketing plan and the right strategies to apply to that plan, give your biz a chance to grow using the power of digital marketing when you contact me to help you implement all that I have talked about here. Reach me by WhatsApp text or send me an email at [email protected].

All the best in what you decide to do.

Nick Osale.