style=”color: #888888;”>This post is one in a series of five guest posts authored by the super star bloggers pictured below. As part of a celebration of National Small Business Week we are asking readers to match all five guests posts up with the contributing blogger to be entered for a chance to win an iPad2. Read all five posts in today’s series and come back each day this week for five new posts in this great educational series and another chance to win.
Chris Brogan
Chris Brogan consults and speaks professionally with Fortune 100 and 500 companies like PepsiCo, General Motors, Microsoft, and more, on the future of business communications, and social software technologies. He is a New York Times bestselling co-author of Trust Agents, and a featured monthly columnist at Entrepreneur Magazine. Chris’s blog, [chrisbrogan.com], is in the Top 5 of the Advertising Age Power150.
What is a Marketing Strategy and How Do I Get One 3
Marketing for small business is about satisfying wants. Most of us are lucky enough to be in the want business, not the need business. Marketing is connecting a buyer to a want. And strategy? Strategy is your approach. It’s how you get from where you are to where you’re going.
You have to answer six questions to write a simple marketing strategy:
WHO IS YOUR BUYER?
Write out the persona of your buyer: who she is, what her other challenges are besides the ones your product solves, what else she might need. Think like that all the time.
DO YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THAT BUYER?
How do you get to them? You can try to buy your way in with ads, you can set up your web presence to grow your way in, and you can use social media to communicate your way in. You need to get to your buyer, and you need to get to the plural, not the one.
WHAT DOES SHE WANT?
This is harder to answer than not. And no, your product isn’t the answer.
HOW DO YOU HELP YOUR BUYERS BUY?
Do they need more proof? Do they need special payment methods? Do they need guarantees? This is an oft-overlooked part of a marketing strategy.
HOW DO I REACH OUT?
Where and how will you connect with these buyers? Online? Social sites? It’s up to you.
HOW DO YOU GET REFERRALS?
Referrals are gold in most businesses. People don’t buy all the time, but they can refer every week. Make this part of every plan.
From here, you’ve got the bare bones to write a simple strategy. Test variations and grow from it. It’s how I do it.
