Creating a Successful Marketing Blueprint of Your Business
By Stephanie Beck
Every accomplishment, action, or success in life has a blueprint. For instance you may have a Brand Blueprint to determine what makes up your company's Brand identity or a financial blueprint of how you can retire by age 45 or even a Personal Development Blueprint to overcome your fear of success. Make sure your Marketing Blueprint for your business meets 4 important criteria:
- Design a vision for your future
- Remove your biggest challenges
- Create a map to get there
- Inspire yourself to want to take action on your biggest opportunity
Once you have the idea determine the steps of the process to achieve the desired result. The steps are necessary because you do not want to waste any of your building materials like your time, money or energy.
A blueprint is a design or formula that has steps in a process and should contain the following points:
- Summary of goal
- Name and define steps in the process
- Who is involved and what are their roles
- Implementation and completion
Examine each portion of the outline be sure you have specifics deadlines in each step as part of your measurements. A common answer I get when I ask a client what is their vision for the future is:
"I want to double my client base."
When you add deadlines you get a specific result.
"I will increase client base from 20 to 40 in October 2012. "
Check if this goal meets the 4 criteria. Would this inspire you to want to take action, does this vision clearly identify your end result, can you create a plan to accomplish it and by achieving it would it solve a challenge you are having within your business? If you answered yes to these questions continue constructing your blueprint. If no, adjust the goal to fit the criteria.
Define your steps in your process using these five points:
- Name the step
- Describe problem
- Find solution
- Present the benefits
- Determine tools/resources
In our example, describe the biggest problem that keeps you from increasing your client base from 20 to 40. Specifically define the problem to achieving this goal. Inevitably the description of the problem also contains the solution. The solution will generally present a clear benefit and determine your tools /resources needed to implement that step. Continue listing your biggest challenges until you have all the steps formulated. Most processes have 5-7 steps others have as many as 15, keep the process to 15 steps to keep it achievable.
Next assign who is involved in each step of the process and their role. Consider contracting other businesses to achieve the outcome. Evaluate what benefits you hope to achieve. For instance what is the best use of your time, money and energy towards the project? Does completing the task yourself make the best sense or could you find another person that would achieve it quicker and easier? One of your tools/ resources may be utilizing an industry expert to assist you.
For instance one of your biggest problems may be that you do not have an automated place where people can learn more about your products & services. Or you struggle creating the right content that captures new customer's attention to want to learn more about you. You have access to Industry experts at communicating the right message and offer unique automated systems that find, capture and deliver your potential new customers to you ready to take action.
Next determine when you would like to start and more importantly complete it. This includes having measurable check points along the way to know that you are achieving your results. In our example, you will need to significantly increase your potential leads weekly to reach that goal of increasing your customer base from 20 to 40 in 1 month. Also having defined tools/resources in the process to convert those potential leads to customers is crucial to the measurement process. If 1 out of every 4 potential leads becomes a customer, you will need to add 20 new leads every week to reach 5 new customers per week to achieve the goal. If you aren't achieving your desired number of new customers weekly determine which tool/resource needs to be adjusted for ultimate success.
Creating a success marketing blueprint is a key component to building your business. You are the expert in knowing what is right for your business, utilizing the right combination of tools to achieve the success is within your grasp.
All my best,
Stephanie Beck
Owner, SRB Solutions
About the Author:
Stephanie Beck, Owner of SRB Solutions, an online and Social Media Marketing Business, has been working for over 10 years in Sales and Marketing as a Massage and Spa Industry Professional for many top name companies including Biotone, Scrip Companies and Bon Vital, Inc. Stephanie has written in-depth protocols and taught several classes for massage and spa products throughout the US. She has served as a published guest columnist for Massage Today and Marketing Matters. She and her husband live in San Diego, CA. If you have any questions about branding or marketing, she can be reached at sbeck@srbsolutions.net.
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