6 Questions to Ask When You Start a Marketing Plan
When you are starting a business (or even when you are a few years in), it can feel like your marketing is a moving target. And many business owners find themselves asking, “Where do I even begin with my marketing?” Even in the last two years, marketing to customers has changed significantly. And for better or for worse, social media marketing has led the charge in diminishing people’s attention spans and left business owners dizzy with options (myself included).
So I’ve come up with six important questions to ask yourself when you sit down to develop a marketing plan. I encourage you to include multiple people that you trust within your organization (including at least one financial person and one person who works directly with your clients). Schedule it over lunch, plan on a 90-minute session, have it catered, and throw these questions up on a whiteboard.
What is our origin story?
What are our core values?
Who is our most engaged customer?
How/Where are people learning about us?
What space do we want to break into?
In 5 years, where do we hope to be?
Although some of these questions may feel more existential than business-related, the truth is, a good marketing plan is based on how you perceive your business and how others connect with your brand. This isn’t earth-shattering information. Simon Sinek gave his famous Ted Talk on this very topic back in 2014. You are marketing and selling a “why” - not a product or a service or even an idea. That part comes later.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (which you may remember from high school psychology) states that people are motivated by five basic categories of needs. The first is based on physiological: air, water, food, shelter, etc. The second on safety: employment, resources, health, etc. In the past, many companies have operated within this second tier by providing resources and helping to support all of the areas of a person’s physiological needs.
That has shifted.
Organizations are now operating in a space where building connections internally and externally drives forward a person’s desire to feel further connected with a brand and reach their own self-actualization (tiers 3 and 4). Take Apple users, for example. It’s often debated that Apple products are not necessarily better products, but what makes them popular is that they know their audience and they’ve built a community of loyal brand advocates (if I had a nickel for every time an Apple user has shamed me for not having an iPhone…).
As you plan for 2022 and beyond, start with the existential questions. Put to paper the core values of how you operate why your business exists. Do this and you’ve got the building blocks of a solid marketing plan.
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