Why you need a marketing strategy (a plan) BEFORE you make your marketing campaign.

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Many years ago — before I became a marketer — I was a Chef. I know, big difference from cooking to marketing but hey, life’s full of surprises.

And one of the sayings we used to have in the kitchen was ‘’There’s no substitute for a genuine lack of preparation’’.

This was a Chef’s way of saying that if you weren’t really well organised before the customers arrived that night you were going to be totally f****d later on.

So, that night, when the orders poured in, your world would transform into your own personal version of Hell closely resembling Dante’s Inferno on a bad day.

This was the world I lived in for over 12 years — and where I learned the importance of planning and preparation.

Then later when I started my marketing career I soon discovered that the amount of time I spent planning directly related to the amount of success I had (for me and my clients).

The formula works like this:

Good planning and preparation = BIG SUCCESS AND LOTS OF $$$$$ 😊😊🥳🥳🥳🏆🏆🏆

Minimal or no planning and preparation = TOTAL DISASTER + lots of money lost 😭😭😭😭😭😭👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼

I’m sure you get the idea by now.

Now the planning part in marketing falls under the banner of ‘Strategy’. This is not to be confused with the banner of ‘Campaign’.

The difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing campaign.

These two labels, marketing strategy and marketing campaign, often get confused and most people think they’re the same thing. But they’re not.

A marketing strategy is the process of working out what goals you want your marketing to achieve.

A marketing campaign is the step-by-step process of how you will achieve these goals.

For example:

Strategy: Use social media to promote a new V.I.P. gym membership and get 10 people to sign up in the next 6 weeks.

Campaign: Use Facebook to post daily videos of the gym including testimonials of happy customers and videos of people using the gym to attract new customers within a 20 km radius. Includes 60 Day Free Access for first 20 enquiries.

Get the idea? Strategy comes first, Campaign second.

Unfortunately what most businesses do is start some sort of campaign first and then wait to see what happens. This is called ‘random acts of marketing’.

It’s like jumping in your car and driving for 10 hours to see where you end up.

Instead of deciding where you want to travel to and then working out the best way to get there.

The 3 Universal Strategies.

If all this seems a bit confusing that’s O.K. It was confusing for me when I first learn’t it.

But here’s a simple hack that should help make things clearer.

All marketing strategies fall under 1 of 3 headings. Thats right, there are only 3 strategies. They are:

Strategy 1 — Get more customers for your business. This is a lead generation strategy and is usually the most common strategy for any business. It is also the most expensive, frustrating and time consuming of all the strategies.

Strategy 2 — Get your existing customers to buy more. This is a strategy to persuade your customers to buy more from you.

For example if you own a cafe and you sell coffee can you persuade your customers to buy a cake as well?

So, instead of your customers spending $4.50 on a coffee you offer them a cake for an extra $3.50. This means your customers spend $8.00 each time they visit instead of $4.50.

You won’t do it with all your customers but if you can do it with just 10% of them your profits will soar.

Strategy 3 — Get your existing customers to buy more often. This is where you persuade your customers to return to your business and spend money more often than usual.

Think about the amount of times you go to the hairdresser. You visit the hairdresser 6 times a year and spend $100 each time. The hairdresser then persuades you to visit 7 times a year with their marketing. This results in an extra $100 for the business.

It’s not a lot, but if they do it with 100 customers that’s an extra $10,000 a year — just with their existing customers.

So, plan your strategy first. Remember it’s only going to be one of the 3 you’ve just learnt about.

From there you can plan your campaign.

And now you know why.