Once you’ve established your key messages and channels and continue to develop your marketing strategy, the next and final step is to consider the resource you have available to implement your marketing strategy. If you missed my last post about deciding on your key messages and channels, check out this post first.
The next part of the marketing strategy centres around budget and resourcing. This is the part of a strategy that is very easy to leave out because you just want to jump ahead to the fun bit of planning all of the stuff you’re going to do! But actually, this part is really critical to ensuring the success of your marketing strategy and all your activities.
This is the part where you take a really long, hard look at what budget you have available, what staff resource you have available, and what time you have available. You then need to make sure that it all fits together and that you can actually achieve what you’ve outlined in your strategy. And make sure you’re honest with yourself about what’s achievable in your business!
You definitely need to do this at the end of your strategy and not before you start your marketing plan because then you will have an idea of how to build out your plan within the budget and resourcing section of your strategy. I would also recommend including some kind of timeline or Gantt chart to really specifically indicate when you’re hoping to achieve everything.
Remember right at the start of the strategy where you set those objectives that were time-bound and specific so you know when you’re planning to achieve them? Go back to those and look at what you’d hope to achieve each quarter, or every six months within the next year and then make sure that your timings fit in with that accordingly.
And that’s the final part of your marketing strategy! If you missed my earlier posts, make sure you check them out to get your marketing strategy in place and elevate your marketing activities to gain confidence, clarity and control of marketing your business.
To find out how to create the rest of your marketing strategy for your small business, you can watch my video ‘What is a marketing strategy’:
And don’t forget, if you want to see the bigger picture, focus on the things that really matter to your customers and communicate with them effectively to get the results you need, get in touch to arrange a free Discovery Call.
