Considerations for your Marketing Strategy
There’s only a few weeks until the end of the year and there’s no doubt many businesses are already putting plans in motion and gearing up to make 2022 their best year ever. With 2022 right fast approaching, there’s never been a better time to make considerations for next year’s marketing strategy.
No one could have predicted how this year would play out for Australian businesses. So, whether you found yourself pivoting to new marketing options or scraping your plans altogether, it’s safe to say you may be in need of a refresher for 2022.
At Excelerate Marketing, our mission is to help businesses just like yours to grow by implementing efficient and effective marketing solutions. There are five core principles that we run our clients through to establish impactful and transformative marketing strategy:
Objectives
Budget
Values
Culture
Capability
When we work with clients, we target these five areas to deep dive into what makes their business stand out, what drives them to reach their goals and how they can tangibly meet their targets.
So, let’s deep dive into these principles and explore what key considerations you may want to adapt for your 2022 marketing strategy.
The objectives of your business
When it comes to your marketing strategy for 2022, you firstly need to nail down exactly what your objectives are, and how you quantify success.
Take time to write a list of your objectives for the next year, including what you believe would signify a “win” for your business, such as a certain percentage growth in new clients, a greater number of audience members to a webinar or selling a specific number of products each quarter etc.
It’s important to have a balance of big picture objectives and more granular details as well. This may include an ideal goal for gross revenue and ROI, or a specific target for a number of webinar registrations or form downloads.
By incorporating both styles of objectives, you can better track your achievements but also translate these goals to third parties, like Excelerate Marketing, who can help you tick them off. This includes who will sign off on particular projects, and the timelines of these goals.
We often find that these objectives tend to differ depending on how young your business is. If you've not dabbled in marketing before, you may want to look at just boosting website traffic and increasing social media followers. If you have good processes in place to track and report on the success of your marketing campaigns, you may want to look more closely at the ROI for different channels.
Creating an objective is only one slice of the marketing pie, as you must factor in how you can measure your success. It is important to establish a good business architecture, which may mean incorporating new software or a CRM in the new year.
Budgeting for your goals
Your marketing budget may just be an isolated factor in your P&L to you, but what it really shows is who you are targeting, as well as your objectives.
A common question we often hear from clients is “I don’t know how much budget I need” or “I’ll spend where I get a ROI”. However, a significant consideration we encourage you make for your marketing tactics is that you don’t always get more back by spending more. Instead, it’s about spending with careful consideration.
This is why Excelerate Marketing works side by side with you to ensure you are targeting the right potential customers with the right channels at the right time, so that you see the results you want for your budget. In fact, businesses generally spend between 15-20% of their gross revenue on marketing alone if they are looking for aggressive growth.
You should anticipate a level of testing throughout your strategy for optimization, as you may find that what you need to spend to achieve a certain outcome, such as converting a certain percentage of your leads, changes seasonally and with each campaign.
This is one of the greatest advantages of approaching Excelerate Marketing to help you kick these goals. We use a consortium approach to deliver an individualised strategy and provide bespoke packages that can be flexible with your budget. Unlike traditional agencies that charge exorbitant prices for cookie-cutter marketing strategy, we work in step with you to help you unlock your key business objectives and implement a tailored strategy.
What does your business stand for?
All businesses face the same struggles when it comes to marketing: working out how to best target customers and narrowing down how their product or service is different in a crowded market.
We believe this means understanding three fundamental elements of your business: people, process and product, often referred to as the three p’s to business success. By focusing on these elements in particular, you will be able to identify roadblocks in your business, and highlight where you need to focus to see improvements that enhance your business framework.
But nowadays, your customers also care about your beliefs. Have you sat down and established your brand values? And, most importantly, are you operating authentically so that customers can trust you? As we enter the new year, ask yourself whether your business aligns with your own morals.
Simon Sinek once said: “People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe.”
Your brand values demonstrate a higher level of business identity and must be a part of your 2022 marketing strategy because customers look for an alignment of values when they shop or use your service.
Cultivating culture
One of the most underrated aspects to consider for your 2022 marketing strategy is your existing business culture.
At Excelerate Marketing, we believe that the only way to reach your objectives is to have a culture that facilitates change and growth, whether you have an internal CMO or use an external agency.
If you try to push employees to achieve an objective that is above their target or not aligned with their expectations, it is unfortunately destined to fail. Or, it will require commitment from senior management to over-manage employees, which can lead to crunch and employee burn-out.
Business owners would be wise to work internally to cultivate a growth culture within the business, so that employees are better supported and motivated to work to achieve your 2022 goals and objectives.
Ultimately, you may need to lead from the front. As a business owner, take time to show initiative with your staff, listen to what they need to be able to perform at a higher level and have clear communication about your goals for the business. If you are transparent about your expectations, a good employee will want to rise to the occasion.
Capability to succeed
You’ve identified what your objectives are, how much to spend, and everyone is on board. Now your final consideration to make for 2022 your marketing strategy is figuring out who is driving this.
Who is pushing you and your business forward and who is providing structure and support to do so? What resources do you have available to you to achieve this goal (monetary or staff), and what external resources are you considering activating?
For Excelerate Marketing clients, trying to achieve all of their objectives can be difficult if they rely on only internal resources. We’ve previously discussed the benefits of outsourcing your marketing, so when it comes to achieving your goals, looking externally for your marketing strategy can offer cost saving benefits, as well as more diverse skills, greater efficiency and the benefit of a third-party perspective.
Every client that Excelerate Marketing works with is driven towards achieving growth, from the top to the bottom of the business. This may mean growth of the brand, growth of staff or increase in reach of services.
To create a clear and concise marketing strategy and, most importantly, execute it well, you need a team of professionals on your side that are not just an extension of your business, but are embedded within your operations.
And it's a testament to the perseverance, foresight and innovative thinking of these business owners to refuse to settle for complacency. Our clients have been able to not only “survive” the impacts of the pandemic but thrive, and our continued commitment to their marketing strategy no doubt played a part in this.
Excelerate Marketing provides you with what you need to accelerate forward, whether your objectives are brand awareness, customer retention and nurturing or strategic marketing positioning. We're excited to have high-quality and bespoke marketing strategies planned and in motion for clients to achieve their goals in 2022. We're in your corner and ready for any challenges that may come our way.
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If you’re looking for more information on how to transform your business and implement an effective marketing strategy for 2022, please reach out to our Excelerate Marketing team for a free consultation today.