Marketing: What to know before you spend your dough

Minimize the grind: Begin with the end in mind.

By Roy Harryman

I begin marketing consultations with these questions:

  • What problems do you want marketing to solve for you?

  • What results do you want marketing to achieve?

  • When it comes to marketing, what does success look like to you?

Often these questions are met with silence and shrugged shoulders. It’s understandable. Sometimes small-business people are so busy working they haven’t contemplated the answer. They just know they need to do something.

Whether you’re an army of one or leading dozens of employees, this question must be squarely faced before you spend a dime on marketing.

Otherwise, you’re shooting at an unseen, unidentified target in the dark. You might hit it, but you’ll certainly waste a lot of ammo in the process.

Don’t get me wrong. Marketing involves testing, trial and error. But we can shrink the margin of error by at least knowing what we want.

Depending on the business or organization, your goal may be:

  • More retail foot traffic

  • Finding new employees

  • More sales appointments

  • Becoming known to customers in a new geographic territory

  • More online sales

Once we know what success looks like, we can step back and develop a plan. This plan takes precedence over tactical considerations such as:

  • Should we use Facebook or LinkedIn (or other social media)?

  • Should I do text or email marketing?

  • What about direct mail?

  • What about the thing my competitor is doing?

  • Should I redesign my website?

These are all important questions. But they are secondary to knowing exactly what you want and need marketing to do for you.

Take a moment now and reflect on these questions:

  • What do I want marketing to do for me? Specifically?

  • If I want more customers in the door, how many more do I want or need?

  • If I want more appointments, how many?

  • If I want to increase sales, how much?

You get the point.

The clearer you can be, the more likely it is you can create a cost-effective plan to accomplish your goal.

As good tailor says, “Measure twice, cut once.”

Roy Harryman is the principal of Roy Harryman Marketing Communications.
Helping small businesses, entrepreneurs and nonprofits make a BIG impact.