The Three Essential Elements of an Effective Marketing Strategy
If you want your marketing strategy to actually move the needle in your business – i.e. increasing your audience, booking clients and making money – then start by taking a step back to look at the big picture.
Here are the three essential elements of an effective marketing strategy for solo and creative small business owners - that have nothing to do with specific tactics or channels. Because if you’re feeling wobbly about any of these three elements, your marketing is bound to be ineffective and/or lead to burning yourself out!
#1. Business Foundations
Your business foundations are literally the foundation that your business is built on. That would include stuff like:
Revenue Goals
Vision & Values
Business Model
Products/Services & Offers
Pricing Strategy
Audience
Systems & Operations
Each one of these pieces informs the others, forming the interlocking bricks of your business foundation and in turn, your success. However because they’re often not seen as sexy or fun, they’re often overlooked in favour of the flashier, outward facing elements like a brand and website, or just jumping in to the marketing deep-end.
Yet each one has a profound effective on your marketing. Being crystal clear on your business foundations (particularly revenue, business model and audience) will point your arrow in the right direction and ensure that you are using the right strategies, tools and channels to reach your ideal customers. Then once you find them, you need the systems in place to actually deliver your products and services to turn them into raving fans.
#2. Marketing Goals & Objectives
In order to be effective, marketing needs to have a goal and/or objective behind it – that way you understand why you’re doing it and whether or not it’s actually working. Marketing should always be in service of at least one of the following:
Attracting new audiences and potential customers
Connecting with your audience so they can get to know like and trust you
Converting your audience to paying customers (i.e. selling!)
Delighting your clients to keep them coming back and drive word of mouth referrals
The most effective marketing strategies always include a mix of tactics to cover each of these goals and objectives.
How much do you need from each bucket? It depends! Your business foundations, particularly your revenue goals, business model and audience will point you in the right direction.
#3. Self Care & Nervous System Regulation
Here’s the thing – marketing feels hard, because it is hard. We live in a noisy world with a lot of information coming at us 24/7 in a media landscape that is constantly expanding and shifting the terms of engagement.
And on top of that, it’s never just marketing. You bring your whole self and all of your stuff along with it every time you try and put yourself and your business out in the world.
A few non-exhaustive things that might come up when you try to market your business:
The parts of yourself that are afraid of failure (or success!) and the parts that try to protect you from that pain
Misogyny, racism, ableism, fat phobia and any other systemic form of oppression that told you you’re not enough
Internalized narratives that you shouldn’t talk about yourself or money
The surrealness of trying to market your thing in the Era of Never Ending Grief alongside news and images of war, global pandemics, climate catastrophe and other terrors
Literally anything that comes up and blocks you from marketing your business and puts you in a freeze state.
Recognizing the truth that it’s really effing hard to market your business and put yourself out there, and holding space for the soft and tender parts that are going to come up with marketing is an essential part of a marketing strategy. And taking the time to care for and regulate your nervous system so that you can keep showing up in and for your business.
When marketing feels wobbly, ineffective or just more difficult than it needs to be I can almost always trace the issues back to one or more of these three essentials. Investing the time and energy into strategic business and marketing planning, along with radical generosity and care for ourselves, can help you reach your goals.
Interested in exploring these elements in your own business?
I offer tender support alongside business and marketing strategy for values-based solo and creative small business owners. I can help you book clients, make money and market your business, on your own terms.
