• Swindon & Wiltshire Experts
• Wednesday March 20 2024
• Author Name: Richard Jaggs

Five simple steps that will transform your marketing – Resolution Design

Adopting a particular, simple approach to transform your marketing works – but the order in which you do things matters, says Richard Jaggs, managing director of creative marketing agency Resolution Design.

Many businesses don’t get the marketing essentials in place before moving on, which often negatively impacts the success of their marketing efforts. Follow these steps for more rewarding marketing.

First things first

This approach relates to marketing rather than to those activities that you would associate with new business development or sales, which are of course much more effective with great marketing to back them up.

It’s not a completely rigid approach, but it applies to most businesses, and remember, don’t move on to the next stage until you are happy.

Step 1 – Establish your business proposition
Before you start marketing, ensure your market proposition is as compelling as possible. Take time to clarify your overall proposition, including your offering, target audiences, USPs and value proposition. Doing this is especially important for start-ups, but a worthwhile exercise for existing firms to check they are employing the most effective strategy.

Step 2 – Brand
The foundation for excellent marketing is a captivating brand. You will need to be sure you have a logo and brand identity. Ideally, it’s good to have some guidelines to help keep your marketing consistently on brand. If you are a micro business, being sure about your logo, colours, fonts and overall style is a good start.

Step 3 – Website
It’s an obvious point, but you need an excellent website to be the hub for your marketing activity. It’s worth investing time, effort and money to ensure you have the best website possible and to keep investing in it to keep it running well. If you already have a website, take a good look at it. Does it hold up? Do you need a refresh or a new site? Most businesses look to create a new website every four or five years.

Step 4 – Essential marketing
You’ll be aware that most new clients take time to investigate your business before they even get in touch. You need to make sure your business looks good in the more obvious places so that you can establish credibility early on in the sales process.

For example:
Keep your website up to date with blogs, case studies, and other helpful information
Post and engage regularly on your dedicated social media channels
Ensure your website is in good condition for search engines
Send email newsletters

Step 5 – Advanced marketing
Once you have your brand and marketing essentials in place, you can start to think about all the other areas of marketing that could benefit your business, for example, advertising, events, PR, and pay-per-click advertising. A good marketing strategy is essential at this point and you will also need to keep testing and fine-tuning your chosen activities as you learn how effectively they deliver.

So there you go, a five-step roadmap to transform the marketing for your business. It makes sense, it works, so go for it.

Richard Jaggs is managing director of Resolution Design, a design & marketing agency based in Devizes, Wiltshire, providing integrated marketing for small businesses and SMEs.

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