The 5 Step Heart-Centered Marketing Strategy
As you're creating a marketing strategy, do you feel like all the advice out there feels like its catered to business men and women wearing stuffy, restrictive suits?
We're entrepreneurs who create with passion and purpose. Our marketing should be no different!
I've outlined five steps that you can use to create or makeover your marketing strategy so that it feels like your business - near and dear to your heart.
1. Start with where you’re at.
“The fastest path to where you want to be is to be where you are.”
I don't think it's said enough - there is nothing wrong with where you're at. Embrace it, enjoy the journey.
If you don’t start with where you’re at, then you’re starting all over again every time you create a strategy or plan. Plus you might be throwing something out that just needs a little tweaking.
Take a good look at your current marketing efforts and ask yourself these things:
What’s working
What isn’t working
What do I enjoy the most
Put your current strategies and efforts into these three categories and start your marketing strategy with the “what’s working” and “what do I enjoy the most” categories as your foundation.
2. Define who it is that you want to serve.
Your product or service should solve a problem, and your marketing needs to reflect how it is you help your customers overcome that problem.
It’s easy to get caught up in “what’s in it for me” in your business and marketing. Flip that thinking around and focus on “what’s in it for my customer”.
As you’re creating your customer profile, think about who would really benefit from your product or service.
3. Where do you want to be?
Now that you’ve defined your foundation and who you serve, where do you want to go next?
What goals do you want your marketing efforts to support?
Try something different. It’s easy and obvious to make monetary goals for our businesses. Try making a goal that isn’t related to making sales, new clients or gross revenues.
What do you find in your business that’s fulfilling and impactful?
Here are a few examples:
Asking for and receiving raving fan reviews
Meeting new business connections for possible biz besties of joint venture partners
Creating a piece of content that is better than anything else out there
Do you see how these things don’t necessarily equate to money, but 100% make for stronger marketing and growing your business?
4. Decide how you’ll communicate.
What marketing channels do you love to use?
What social media are you using?
Going back to step one, analyze which marketing channels are working and which you like to use the most. If you are enjoying the marketing process, that’s going to come across in your messaging and make it ohhh so much more impactful.
Don’t overwhelm yourself with this one. You may want to stick to one social media channel for the time being - that’s completely fine! There is this misconception that you need to be on every channel, posting every day to make an impact with your business. But if you’re spread thin, you’re not going to foster the relationships that you and your business need. Do one channel at a time and do it really well. Once you’ve mastered it, then think about adding another.
5. Create a budget.
How much should you spend on marketing?
What feels right to you?
If you’re just starting out, you don’t need to spend hundreds of dollar. Start with what’s free. Learn the channels you like the best and naturally connect with your audience. When you are ready to start spending money, start there.
I often see people making the mistake of “throwing money” at their marketing, because they don’t love that part of their business or just don’t know what to do. This doesn’t work well, because the time hasn't been taken to experiment with messaging or learn the idiosyncrasies of the platform and your audience.
Marketing isn't a race. It takes real, genuine time to build relationships with your audience and customers. So take the time to create a marketing strategy that aligns with your business.
