Plan To Make A Plan
Everyone wants to be the man with a plan. He’s the go-to guy or girl with the confidence and the wits to get things done. That’s the way it should be with your marketing strategy too. It should be a plan that gives you the confidence you’re putting your marketing dollars to good use and getting the most value out of your marketing efforts. If you don’t have a solid plan, a sound marketing strategy you can be confident about, it’s time to get one.
Many businesses are too busy doing what they do best (which is rarely marketing) to develop the best marketing plan for their business. Perhaps you’re a doctor or a dentist. Obviously, there’s so much for you to do while serving your patients, meeting with vendors, keeping up with new procedures and regulations, and much more. That leaves little time to formulate a truly effective marketing strategy. Time-pressed medical services practices are often at the mercy of the next advertising sales rep entering their office to produce the next ad hoc marketing plan.
Marketing Strategy Outline
A real marketing strategy consists of targeted goals, performance analysis, brand consistency, and a metered distribution through a variety of media channels.
- Targeted goals— Don’t simply sign up for a scheduled ad spend in hopes that it pays off with an increase in patient traffic. A marketing strategist will help you identify how many patients you need to increase per month or quarter, or a similar value metric you agree upon.
- Performance analysis— A good marketing strategy doesn’t just blast out ads and see what happens. There are tools to record response rates, and you can measure success along the way. The strategy can be tweaked as you go to maximize overall effectiveness based on real response figures.
- Brand consistency— Your brand identity is made up of more than a logo and a jingle. Medical professionals must portray their practice as a trusted authority in the field. That takes a well-crafted mission statement, an appealing public face, and a consistent message across all marketing platforms. A marketing strategist can coordinate all of this so you can build client relationships with a consistent image.
- Distributed media channels— Marketing goes well beyond radio, TV, and newspaper ads. It involves your website, social media, sponsorship supporting local activities, donating time and services to charitable causes, and many other trust-building marketing activities. A good marketing strategy will keep your plan on target in every venue. With the right strategy in place, you’ll also be able to cross-market one platform within another to boost the effectiveness of each.
What Else?
Within this marketing strategy, we didn’t even mention the value of great creativity. The four components previously discussed is the foundation a good marketing strategy is built upon, but there’s more to it than just that. It’s a good idea to develop a target customer profile with your marketing strategist. That way, you can develop a direct message and tone your desired clientele will identify with.
Once that target profile is defined, the demographics of that market will direct the creative content, which will become the public face of your marketing strategy. Imagery, color selections, copywriting styles, website structure, and all other creative deliverables can maintain that brand consistency to attract and retain a growing client base.
Using a solid marketing strategy like this will ensure your budget stays under control. A business without an effective plan with measurable metrics often falsely assumes they need to spend more to achieve more audience reach. Unfortunately, this rarely helps since the additional ad spend typically lands on deaf ears outside the target market.
Don’t panic if you think you’ve been doing it all wrong. You most likely have some of it in place already. It just needs to be better defined within a solid marketing plan. Contact GoEdison for a free marketing strategy audit; then, we’ll work with you to develop a plan you can have confidence in.