THE SECRET TO HITTING YOUR BUSINESS GOALS

As a business manager, you’re a master (or had to become a master of) sales, pitching, and creating an amazing team — even if it consists of just a few virtual assistants at the moment. You have an uncanny eye to see gaps in the market and ear to listen to the needs of your audience. But even with these superpowers that you’ve gained since becoming a business manager, you still might be struggling to hit your business goals.

I’m here to tell you the biggest secret to increase your chances of hitting your business goals EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. 

A marketing strategy that will directly impact your business goals.

Hear me out — winning new customers and maintaining current ones is one of the biggest objectives every business strives to make. But what’s the one thing we know about human beings? They hate to be sold to. Marketing, appearing in all shapes and forms, is a way to build recognition, respect, and trust with your audience. 

Instead of constantly chasing after your next lead, marketing encourages your target audience to come to you to solve their problems simply because you’ve become a recognized, respected, and trusted source of information, support, and a bit of entertainment.

You might be saying, “I do have a marketing strategy… kind of.”

I’ve seen too many businesses and agencies waste time, resources and money on marketing tactics that aren’t aligned fully with business goals and are without a solid, defined, implemented strategy. That’s like throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks.

Side note: I don’t like to waste spaghetti.

A Marketing strategy is built using a few different elements:

An overall company mission

Marketing goals to make that mission a reality and directly relate to business goals

Marketing strategies (the how behind the goals)

Marketing tactics (the action items behind the strategies)

As you can see, the foundation of your strategy are your business goals. Popular business goals I’ve seen from my clients are:

Increasing sales for a particular product line

Build a reputation for being an industry authority

Increase retention rates

Become a household name (even locally)

Look, goals are amazing to have. And maybe some traditional sales techniques can help achieve them. However, aligning a marketing strategy that directly relate to your business goals multiply the chances of you achieving, and exceeding them.

Now, before you start defining your marketing goals and strategies and tactics to support them, I want to discuss some things to think about first:

KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE IS ESSENTIAL

Before diving into goals and strategies for marketing, you have to define who exactly your audience is and what their behaviors are. For example, you probably wouldn’t launch an out of home campaign if your audience consists of postpartum moms. Think about the 4 Ws (and an H) that we learned about in grade school: 

Who exactly is your audience?

What are their interests and media activity?

Where do they like to hang out (physically and virtually?)

When do they have some free time to get online?

How do they like to ingest their content? 

Launch a market research initiative and define who your audience persona is. A buyer persona is something that sales and marketing teams develop based on their own research to create a tactile idea of what your target audience(s) look like. Straight-up demographics aren’t enough—teams must consider psychographics like career, interests, personality, home life, pain points, goals, fears, and magazine subscriptions as well. This way, you’ll know which solutions to offer and how to advertise these solutions directly to your potential buyer.

KEEP YOUR MISSION FIRST

People like to buy from people. So it’s your job to make your business more “human.” How? By living by a mission, doing business based on your core values, and keeping your messaging consistent. Your core messaging defines your business and builds an identity that they can recognize and trust. 

If I’ve learned anything from being a Krav Maga instructor (yes, I’m a Krav Maga Instructor) it’s that consistency is the key to building trust with your client and audience. If your audience can’t trust you to be consistent in your content and messaging, then they sure as heck can’t trust you to solve their problems. 

SOCIAL MEDIA IS POWERFUL

I know, duh. But I’m putting this in here because I’ve seen too many businesses launch social media pages and put tons of time and effort into populating it with posts that aren’t serving their audience, which means it’s not serving their business! A big part of a marketing strategy is also developing a social media strategy. Your social media platforms are owned media – meaning you don’t necessarily need a budget to promote yourself there. 

Creating and sharing content that you know your target audience wants to ingest may take some trial and error — but that’s what analytics are for! No matter what, make sure your content contains two things: 1) A theme that relates back to your core values and mission. Social media is the easiest way to promote your brand identity so make sure it’s consistent throughout your posts. 2) A call to action to define what next steps you want your reader to take. Whether you want your reader to visit your website or comment below, let them know! Even some of the more techy readers might not engage the way you want them to unless you tell them how. Make it easy for them! 

HOW TO GET STARTED

By now you understand that without a defined marketing strategy, it might be tough to consistently achieve your business goals. With your audience, messaging foundations, and platforms in mind, building a cohesive strategy can take your business to new heights. 

Ready to get started? Click below to learn how to create marketing goals based on your business goals.