Take Control of your marketing strategy
Every busy CEO and MD we meet wants to spend less time on marketing and more on running their organisation. This can only be achieved once they provide their team with clear, specific, consistent direction. The issue is always how to balance your time and available resource and get the right results.
We have developed a methodology designed to update or create your unique marketing strategy more quickly and easily than doing it on your own (or solely within your in-house team). This process (the six step marketing plan) results in a written, bespoke, marketing plan with guidance on how to break it into 90-day action plans.
We then support you and your team through the agreed implementation until you no longer need our support.
Our approach gives you the focus you need now and the foundations to underpin all your marketing in the future.
The steps to take control of your marketing are:
- Create, document and communicate a clear marketing strategy.
- Assign roles, implement tactics and measure.
- Create robust systems and processes to for continual improvement and to add value to the bottom- line.
How we work with clients
Step One
Create the marketing strategy
All our clients begin by working directly with our CEO, Su Copeland, to review or create their marketing strategy. There are 1-2-1 and group programmes available.
Delivered through a short series of online sessions, Su will guide, challenge and share templates, blueprints and examples. She will work with you to tailor the plan to your specific organisation.
Sessions are between 60-90 minutes long, typically one per week, 4 to 6 sessions in total. For 1-2-1 clients, these sessions are tailored to suit your schedule.
At the end of this process, you will have a tailored strategic marketing plan. The marketing plan is a working document from which clear actions will evolve and that can be communicated to your team.
At this stage you may feel you have enough to move forward. However most clients want a little more support to implement (see below) or oversee activities until they are confidently on track.
Step Two
Assign, implement, measure
Knowing your marketing strategy and creating a plan is a waste of your time and effort if not implemented.
The first step towards implementation is supporting you with communicating your plan to your stakeholders and customer-facing team; to get their thoughts, feedback and engagement. Typically Su will attend the board meeting to present the plan and/or facilitate the presentation to the customer-facing team.
We then help you create a tailored implementation schedule based on all feedback. Activities are allocated into 90-day tactical plans with clear deliverables and review dates.
Implementation varies by client, and it is at this stage that we start bringing together your existing support and bringing in specialist associates, if required. Su will continue to provide you and your senior team regular marketing strategic guidance.
People/Internal Communications
- Mentor existing marketing person/team
- Liaise with existing freelancers/interns/outsourced agencies to ensure alignment with the plan
- Help create the job description and hiring of marketing or lead generation employee
- Help create the brief and support the engagement of outsourced marketing
- Marketing workshop facilitation
- Chair and facilitation at marketing at team meetings
Marketing outputs
- Creation of sales and marketing collateral
- Brand – review and improve consistency across all media
- Set-up of campaigns with your marketing team – e.g. product launch, lead generation, referral programme
- Content/PR – create topic/ thought-leadership schedule, engage/instruct copywriter, write ad hoc content, proof reading
- Events – help maximise exhibitions, networking and industry conferences,
- Website – liaise with designer and technicians (around SEO, AdWords etc), write content where gaps
- Digital – website improvement, digital marketing campaigns, LinkedIn lead generation, webinars
- Lead generation – integrated social marketing, telemarketing, events, sales training
- Multimedia – video, animation, explainer videos, podcasts
- Print – sourcing of materials at reduced rates
- Research – conducing of internal, competitor or market research
- Presentations – investor pitches, sales pitches, internal presentations
Systems/Processes
- Creation of templates – Word, email,
- Review and support set-up of your chosen CRM (e.g. Pipedrive, Zoho, Salesforce, HubSpot, CapsuleCRM)
- Support with set-up of marketing automations and how to get the most out of them (e.g. Eventbrite, MailChimp, LeadPages, Linked Helper, YouTube, TEAMS, Zoom)