Why Ask a Marketing Consultant to Create Your Marketing Plan?
Does your business have a clear long term route map, a practical marketing strategy and a clear marketing plan? Does this cover both your digital marketing and traditional marketing?
Unfortunately, many small and medium sized businesses don’t have a clear marketing strategy with a marketing plan that they can implement. And, it’s a fact that many small business owners and managers spend less than an hour each month on strategy. That means it’s easy to waste your marketing budget on unplanned marketing activities.
Some of the many benefits of having a practical marketing strategy and marketing plan delivered by a small business marketing consultant are that it…:
Ensures you take your business in a clear direction.
Ensures you invest your marketing budget in the right digital and internet marketing channels.
Means you don’t waste your marketing budget on ad hoc marketing and advertising ‘opportunities’.
Ensures you know exactly who your ideal customers are and really understand their needs.
Helps your business stand out from and beat key competitors.
Gives you clear priorities and ensures you spend enough time on your marketing.
Keeps your business on track through uncertainty and major challenges.
You can test how robust your approach to marketing is by taking our quick, free Real Marketing Fitness Test questionnaire. This is an easy but testing 5 minute strategic marketing review. We’ll give you feedback you can take action on, or have a follow-up chat on Zoom.
If you’re an SME based in East Lothian (with up to 250 employees), you could qualify for Free Expert Help Marketing Consultancy to pay for your marketing strategy and plan.
As the flow diagram above shows, our speeded up strategic marketing process can involve:
Conducting a thorough Marketing Review of all aspects of your marketing, including your website, social media, digital marketing, value proposition, Products, Pricing and other communication channels.
Carrying out competitor research, customer and market research (as required).
Running marketing planning workshops and brainstorming.
Profiling customers to target.
Creating the right marketing mix for acquiring new customers and retaining existing customers.
Agreeing your brand values.
Creating a Marketing Action Plan with clear actions, quick wins, owners and priorities.
Have you conducted a customer satisfaction survey within the last 2 years? Do you regularly collect feedback on your perceived strengths and weaknesses, and brand values?
Do you regularly benchmark your business against 3 to 5 key competitors? You can learn a huge amount from your most innovative competitors, their websites and digital marketing.
Knowing your customers and competitors is fundamental to marketing your business successfully.
Do you know the size of your reachable market and what the market trends are?
The good news is that market intelligence has never been easier and less expensive to collect.
Real Marketing has nearly 30 years of experience so can:
Undertake desk research, internet research and market analysis to evaluate new markets.
Design and run research programmes using online questionnaires, telephone interviews, Zoom interviews, face-to-face interviews or focus groups.
Use the research to help you refine or develop your marketing strategy and marketing plan.
Research is fundamental to all good strategic marketing. That’s why Real Marketing carries out research as part of all marketing strategy and planning projects.
How Good is Your Customer Experience?
Providing excellent customer experience means really understanding and satisfying your customers’ needs and wants, rational and emotional. It also means providing excellent customer service.
If you retain just 5% more of your existing customers each year, your profits could increase by 20%. You could start by prioritising some quick fixes which improve customer satisfaction ratings with your most profitable customers.
“Customer service is providing an excellent product at an acceptable price and solving legitimate problems (lost packages, replacements, refunds, etc.) in the fastest manner possible. That’s it….” (Tim Ferriss)
The quality and delivery of every aspect of your products and services has an impact on customer demand and therefore on your sales. This means that you must include your products and services within your marketing.
Too many businesses think that marketing is only about marketing communications or Promotion. It shouldn’t be. It should also include ‘P’ for Products (and ‘P’ for Price).
That means that the person responsible for marketing in your company, should know how your customers perceive your products and should contribute to product improvements and product launches.
Ask your customers to rate your products and share their ideas.
Check out your competitors’ products.
Do some personal and team brainstorming about improving your products, delisting products and creating new products.
If you are a service business, are your services properly packaged up, or ‘productized’, to make them much easier to market? This turns your services from intangible into more tangible products which are easy for your customers to understand quickly, significantly improving your conversion rates.
Real Marketing can work with you to:
Conduct customer research on your products.
Research and plan the development and launch of new products or services.
Work with you to develop your product marketing strategy.
Help you work through product development processes.
Develop product definitions and product road maps.
Manage the product development process and work with technical teams.
Create your product plan, develop product packaging, and implement launch campaigns.
Christopher Lamotte has launched innovative new software, telecoms, internet, drinks, designer and service products.
Most businesses should have their website as the hub of their online presence.
You need to have a planned approach to your website and all your digital marketing channels: ecommerce and digital processes; social media marketing; email marketing; content marketing; conversion rate optimisation; and search engine optimisation (SEO).
Many SMEs need someone to take on the time consuming task of website project management. Real Marketing can be your website project manager, creating your website map and brief,copy writing the website content, planning your calls to action and conversion rates, and managing your website designs.
Too often, good plans and campaigns can be spoilt by poor execution; some businesses have a good plan but don’t spend enough time implementing it; or they execute their plan badly, in a hurry, only partially, without discipline and without creative magic. Read How to execute your marketing plan for maximum ROI.
“Indeed, the problem is not that the owners of small businesses in this country don’t work; the problem is that they’re doing the wrong work. As a result, most of their businesses end up in chaos – unmanageable, unpredictable, and unrewarding.” (Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited)
As a first step, you could complete the free Real Marketing Fitness Test to see how ‘marketing fit and agile’ your business is. This is our 5-minute, online strategic marketing review which will get you analysing your marketing and give you practical results to action.
Christopher Lamotte executes marketing plans every day. He can work as your flexible Virtual Marketing Manager, doing the marketing activities you don’t have time for or don’t want to do.
"Christopher was fantastic to work with and has been instrumental in helping us put in place a much needed marketing strategy. We found him to be very easy to work with and very quickly understood our needs as a business. Moving forward, we now have the tools in place to implement our marketing strategy. The support on the Social Media side was also fantastic."Venturing Out Claire Mackenzie, Joint Founder
"We were delighted and grateful to have Christopher’s experience on call, while he was always easy to work with – often going beyond what was expected. I can thoroughly recommend him!"
Belhaven Hill School Innes Macaskill, Former Headmaster
"We felt that Christopher listened to us and took account of our understanding and capabilities when it comes to marketing… We learnt about elements of marketing which we’d previously not considered such as building a YouTube channel for videos. There was also very detailed evaluation of our website which included aspects we had never before considered… It is very valuable to see the calendar with very clear targets…"Hurly Burly Brewery Louise & Peter McNaught
"It was really useful to sit down with Christopher as a whole team and to discuss the finer elements of our marketing strategy… At times, we didn’t make things easy for Christopher as we didn’t always know what we wanted but he helped us reach our own conclusions and steered us when necessary. He is very knowledgeable about marketing and his affable and personal approach was much appreciated."Future Proof Learning David Maltman, Director
"I very much enjoyed working with Christopher on our Marketing project. The work we did was very practical and the outcome is that I have a set of very clear, actionable points. Christopher went 'over and above' what he was required to do in the project and I am grateful for that."Martin Cook Accountant Martin Cook
“Christopher provided clarity and helped educate us on how we should present and promote the business. His help has enabled our business to grow two-fold in 6 months, and we know how to grow further.”Forever Spaces Rod Williams CEO & Founder
"Real Marketing carried out a full marketing review of my business, which has been extremely valuable in helping me to focus on the priorities to help build awareness and growth. Christopher is extremely professional, knowledgeable and easy to deal with, and I am sure that there will be further collaboration moving forward. Would highly recommend.” Dianne Newman CEO , RAM UK, Advertising Measurement
"Christopher has managed to inspire marketing effort along cost effective and targeted channels to very good effect and to the envy of many competitors, often with larger budgets."Winton Castle Sir Francis Ogilvy
"Christopher has helped with several Brightwaste and Spotless projects and has managed to exceed expectations on each occasion. He has a detailed and insightful knowledge of his marketing. Strongly recommended."Brightwaste & Spotless Roger Green, CEO
"It was so useful to have a fresh pair of expert eyes look at our marketing. We got loads of great ideas from it and a clear action plan to carry them out."The Premium Bakery Mona Hashem
"Christopher Lamotte of Real Marketing has done a first class job. Christopher’s great strengths are that when he says he’s going to do something, he does it and promptly. The immediate benefit is a full order book and costs are under control."
Chippendale International School of Furniture Anselm Fraser, Founder
"We couldn’t have got this far without Christopher Lamotte from Real Marketing’s attention to detail! ...Great result. [And, our clients] were super pleased with the health check - they said it was really high quality, and to pass their thanks on to the team."Sell Beyond Amazon Marketing Consultants Founder
"Christopher at Real Marketing Specialists was instrumental in helping me develop a marketing strategy for the year ahead and take my business to the next stage. His recommendations were insightful and completely actionable. I would not hesitate to recommend this company!"The Cheese Lady Svetlana, Owner
"Christopher from Real Marketing got to know our business, Baigali Designs, very quickly and his vast experience in Marketing helped us develop an excellent marketing and communication strategy. This has made a big difference to the way we operate. Highly recommended."Baigali Designs Lesley & Gary Pugsley
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