I am a huge Princess Bride fan. If you’ve never seen the movie or read the book, put it on your list. As the grandpa in the opening scene teases, it’s got fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…something for everyone.
At one point towards the middle of the story, the main character Wesley leads his love by the hand into the “fire swamp”. He explains that the key to surviving is to understand the three terrors of the “fire swamp”: random flame spurts, lightning sand, and rodents of unusual size (or ROUS). SPOILER ALERT: They face all three and come out the otherside ragged, but alive.
Do you think of marketing your small business as a terror you have to face and survive or something fun to experiment with?
Marketing for business owners can seem like a terror. You have so many other things on your plate. You aren’t a marketing expert and don’t want to wing it (and do it poorly). You don’t feel you can afford to do showstopping marketing with the budget you have.
I work with small business owners every day and can confidently say that marketing doesn’t have to be a terror! Learn more about marketing strategies for small business and the many options available to create exceptional marketing, without the shivers.
What are the 5 key elements of marketing strategy?
So what are your tools to survive the marketing fire swamp? While there is not a single marketing strategy that works for every business, there are a few foundational elements that must be present as the foundational before beginning any marketing work.
These are the 5 key elements of a marketing strategy:
- Customer Personas
- Brand Voice Guidelines
- Competitor analysis and target audience research
- Customer Journey Maps
- Editorial Calendar
Implementing these five marketing strategies will set your marketing plan up for success to support your business goals – without getting singed from the fire spurts of the marketing fire swamp.
What are the 5 basic concepts of marketing?
Aside from the foundational elements above, there are also marketing concepts that can serve as tools to help you avoid marketing ROUSs. Here’s a breakdown of five basic marketing concepts you should know about for your small business:
The Production Concept: This concept focuses on the idea that customers prefer easily available and affordable products. Your job as a small business then, is to maximize production efficiency and lower costs to meet demand.
The Product Concept: Creating high-quality products or services that meet or exceed customer expectations is the focus here. You should prioritize understanding your customers’ needs and preferences to develop offerings that stand out.
The Selling Concept: Convincing the customer they need to buy what you are selling is the name of the game with this concept. For you, this may involve proactive sales tactics, such as advertising, promotions, and personal selling. This concept focuses more on the business than the customer.
The Marketing Concept: “The customer is always right” leads the way here. This concept shifts the focus from products or sales to fulfilling customer needs and wants while achieving business goals. Small business owners should understand their target audience deeply, and develop tailored marketing strategies to create value, build relationships, and meet customer needs better than their competitors.
The Society Concept: When I think of this concept, I think of the saying “think of others before yourself.” Utilizing this mindset, consider not only customer needs but also the long-term welfare of society in your marketing decisions. Integrate social responsibility into your business practices, such as environmentally friendly initiatives, ethical sourcing, or community involvement. In doing so, you’ll demonstrate a commitment to social and environmental values that resonate with customers and society at large.
Which of these concepts align with your goals and will help you survive the fire swamp? In this day and age, customer satisfaction, building strong relationships, and contributing positively to society are a high priority for both businesses and consumers, but every journey is different. Choose your marketing direction carefully, or you might unexpectedly fall into a sand trap.
Which of the 5 Ps is most important?
One go-to marketing strategy focuses on the 5 Ps: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, and People. While each is incredibly important, the last P – people – is arguably the most important.
You have to appeal to people to take action and buy whatever it is you want them to do. Great marketing generates an emotional response that drives action, even if the “action” doesn’t seem to have an emotional tie.
Let’s get back to The Princess Bride. After surviving the fire swamp, we’ll fast forward to a scene where Westley is “mostly dead.” Two companions have to convince Miracle Max – a “retired” miracle worker – to revive him. He won’t do it until he finds out that reviving Westley will help him exact revenge on Princess Humperdinck, “the king’s stinking son [who] fired me.” Westley is then revived by a chocolate-coated miracle pill, all because his companions found the motivation needed for Miracle Max to take action.
If you’d like, watch the scene below. You won’t regret it!
People make decisions to buy…or not to buy. Without finding the motivation that drives your customers, you aren’t in business.
What are the features of strategic marketing?
Main marketing strategies today feature key benefits that directly impact your business’ overall success.
A great marketing strategy:
- guides all decision making by providing you with a north star: your customer persona.
- provides deep and valuable research on your competitors to identify gaps in the market that you can fill.
- anchors your internal and external messaging in a consistent and authentic brand voice.
- provides a framework to track, measure, and analyze data along a predefined customer journey.
Avoid The Marketing Fire Swamp
The importance of marketing strategy for small businesses cannot be overstated, but it doesn’t have to feel like you are walking into the “fire swamp” every time you tackle marketing activities. If you’d like to unload the “terrors” of marketing onto someone else, the team at Crafted Voice is standing ready to serve.