Six mantras to keep focus

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If you don’t focus your resources on just a handful of marketing activities, you set yourself up to fail.

The most critical success factor that drives marketing success is focus.

Most businesses lack focus, and spend their limited marketing dollars trying to be everything to everyone. At CMS we have helped our clients focus their marketing efforts on activities that generate new customers for their businesses.

What we have seen with our clients: if they do not focus their resources on just a handful of marketing activities, they set themselves up to fail. The key is to stop worrying about competing in every possible channel to get every possible customer. You will waste money, time and energy that you cannot spare.

You don’t need every customer. You need enough customers to run a profitable, growing business.

Your marketing must be simple, too. Focused plans succeed where grand plans fail. Here are a few steps that we use with our clients to measure how controlled and focused their marketing plan is.

  1. Think before doing

It’s an obvious step before jumping in, but many businesses tend to be people of action and planning always gets put in the good intentions basket – and never leaves. What we have found, without advisors who are experienced in marketing, much of the ‘advice’ comes from vendors. The problem with this is they are biased to their solution, and always will put themselves on the list of critical activities. We suggest you send the vendors way, sit down with all your possible marketing options and construct a marketing mix that makes the most sense for your product, service and more importantly your budget.

  1. Start with one & hone your craft

The best advice we have is ‘start with just one client, and add one at a time’.

The same applies to marketing planning. Learn to use one channel at a time. Don’t rush into each new channel before you have got your rhythm going in previous ones. This takes patience, which can be frustrating, but will pay off in better results.

  1. Never fall in love

Marketing must be a focused results-driven activity, free from passion.

Fire any marketing channel that is not generating a return for you. If you must be passionate about something, pour your energy into tracking results. Do this relentlessly or you will be guaranteed to waste your money.

  1. Stick with what works

Your first marketing initiative will generate a measurable return. That becomes your ‘champion’.

Subsequent marketing must beat the champion, or be put aside. If a $10,000 direct-mail campaign generates $20,000 in business (net or gross), that result becomes the champion until a different initiatives beats that result. If a second channel beats it – local TV, say, a Facebook page, or even a different creative for direct mail – that becomes the focus of most of your resources.

Don’t get bored with repetition if it is working. This is something we work at with our clients to ensure that their brand and product is being communicated with the right audience every time.

  1. Test, test, test

Never rest on your laurels, or accept a champion as your final plan. Keep dedicating 10% to 15% of your budget (time and/or money) to trying new channels or creative executions.

Never stop learning, but do not view that as an invitation to spread yourself thinly across more than three or four marketing initiatives at a time! Keep it simple and focused.

  1. Never worry about the customer who got away!

You cannot do business with everyone, so stop obsessing about it. Focus on your core target market, figure out how to effectively communicate with them, and if other business comes in consider that icing on the cake!

Do not, however, take that as an automatic invitation to add that type of customer to your core marketing plan. Accept it as a gift, and get back to your focused initiatives. Distractions are the false friends that lead small-business people astray.

At Civic Managed Services we can take the pain away from growing your business. Our qualified and experienced advice and guidance helps our clients focus on growing the business while we take care of the day-to-day running of your activities.

Brought to you by Liz Power, Digital Marketing Executive, Civic Managed Services, 

D: +61 2 9206 8806 , E: [email protected]