On Thursday, July 30th, Evolve Systems hosted the webinar, “Evolve Your Business Marketing: How to Build a Strategy,” where Marnie Ochs-Raleigh, CEO and Client Champion, discussed why having a marketing plan is essential for sustained business growth, how to identify and approach developing a marketing strategy, and how to execute and measure a marketing strategy.
Below is a recap of the webinar, including additional resources for more information. To watch the full webinar, please click the following link!
Why a Marketing Plan is Critical?
Marnie began by summarizing why a marketing plan is critical for your business on different forefronts.
Businesses are always at risk of facing unexpected and adverse situations, in fact, 50% of companies will deal with the infamous 5 D’s which if not properly prepared, can cause serious setbacks in your business. The 5 D’s commonly faced by businesses include:
- Divorce
- Disagreement
- Disability
- Death
- Disaster
Yet having a predetermined marketing plan offsets these situations to ensure the business can continue selling products or services while allocating additional attention to these situations.
Furthermore, marketing promotes focus and loyalty to the brand as whole, rather than key stakeholders, such as the CEO or rockstar salesperson. This is especially important for small or medium-sized companies because it ensures that clients and customers are dedicated to the brand regardless of shifting team members.
Marketing enforces the vision of the company in order to maintain consistent messaging throughout each business platform or activity. A business that is recognized from multiple touchpoints increases its ability to connect with their targeted audience through emphasized repetition.
Learn more about why your business needs to develop and use a data-informed and business-specific marketing strategy.
What’s the Value of Marketing?
As outlined above, a marketing plan provides countless opportunities for your business. The value of marketing is unparalleled in the business world because it positively impacts various aspects of a business.
For example, marketing enables your business to be proactive rather than reactive. The decision-making process behind the marketing plan is built through the aligned efforts of the sales and marketing departments. This provides cohesiveness within the business to build a foundation of success and strength in the market.
As a business, your focus on marketing is ultimately an investment for your clients or customers because as you have a clear path or vision you can provide heightened services or products for your clients. As a dependable partner, they are able to rely on your business to increase their bottom line.
Evolve Systems’ Approach
The winning approach starts by building a solid foundation, specifically building your branding and website, in order to support your marketing efforts. A marketing strategy must fully be supported by your complete digital presence in order to successfully promote your brand.
Evolve Systems follows our unique five-step process to guide and execute each project through a comprehensive approach. Evolve Systems’ five-step process includes:
- Strategy
- Design
- Build
- Market
- Support
Learn more about our five-step process, what each phase incorporates, and how it advances the value of each business.
Evolve Systems’ Process
Discover/Strategy Session
The first step of Evolve Systems’ five-step process is a strategy that begins with hosting a discovery session between the prospect’s team and Evolve Systems. The discovery sessions identify the critical components of your business necessary for building a business-specific digital strategy recommendation.
Some of the pieces covered during the discovery session are business goals, targeted audience, key differentiators in the industry, current sales and marketing process, and much more. The discussion during the discovery session revolves around the background Evolve Systems needs to understand and study to make informed recommendations.
Recommendations
When Evolve Systems focuses on developing the recommendations we first analyze the design and build phases in coordination with the marketing recommendation. The marketing recommendations pull in numerous considerations in order to guide an actionable plan that aligns with the means and goals of the business. Each layer of the marketing plan is carefully planned by Evolve Systems before delivering our recommendations.
Marketing Considerations
Some of the marketing considerations and layers include:
- Effective branding
- Website updates
- Content calendar
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Pay-per-click (PPC)
- Measurement and reporting
Case Studies
Marnie highlighted a few of the clients that we continue to do marketing with, including Minnesota Construction Law Services (MNCLS) and Orchards of Minnetonka.
Minnesota Construction Law Services (MNCLS)
Our digital services with MNCLS followed our five-step process which began with a rebrand and website development and then moved into ongoing marketing.
A few of our recommendations and steps included:
- Brand refresh that would effectively connect with their growing idea audience
- Outlining and understanding each audience through persona development to guide messaging
- Rebuilding the website to align with necessary functionality while upholding a modern design and brand voice copy
- Initiating marketing through printed and digital ad and content creation
- Revisiting business goals to guide on-going and data-informed marketing, including further website enhancements, diverse content implementation, and more
Orchards of Minnetonka
Evolve Systems started working with Orchards of Minnetonka while their business was still building their facility in order to jumpstart their position in the industry and grow through supporting marketing.
- Creating the website as a foundation for their business during the building of their facility
- Attracting new residents by capturing online leads through SEO and content improvements
- Supported by proven analytics improvements year over year
- 31% decrease in bounce rate
- 41% increase time on page
- 29% increase in pages viewed per session
- The perfect example of proactive vs reactive marketing by initiating website and marketing development in preparation for the business opening
Key Action Items
So, what can you do with this information? Marnie discussed a number of next steps for your business including:
- Create a marketing budget
- Determine if your website communicates to your ideal audience
- Analyze your monthly digital performance
Watch the video to learn more about key action items your business can follow for developing a marketing strategy.
Three Main Topics
Marnie concluded the webinar by outlining the three main topics discussed during the webinar:
- Insights on why having a marketing plan is essential for sustained business growth
- Insights on how to identify an approach to develop a marketing strategy including tips and tricks from our five-step proven process and how it starts with our strategy and discovery session
- How to execute and measure a marketing strategy by reviewing your numbers for a data-informed plan
