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1
What are your business goals?
Once you’ve decided to start your own business, it can be easy to start trading and see what happens. The key to a successful business is to outline the goals or objectives you're looking to achieve. Once you’ve outlined them, it will be easier to focus your marketing strategy on how to achieve them.
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2
What will your marketing strategy be?
Having identified your business goals, you now need to think about how exactly your marketing activities will help you to achieve these objectives.
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3
How will you track the progress and effectiveness of your marketing strategy?
Writing down your business goals and marketing strategy will help to formalise your plan. Regularly returning to your plan and recording what has actually happened will allow you to keep track of how things are turning out, and potentially prompt some changes to get you back on track.
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4
What is your target market?
Appealing to anyone and everyone will lead to an unfocused and inefficient marketing strategy. Decide who your ideal customers are and use this to direct your marketing efforts towards them.
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5
How will you attract potential clients?
Any marketing strategy is ultimately about drawing in new business, so you need to think about what potential clients will want from you and how your marketing strategy will appeal to them.
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6
What will your brand say about you?
Your company name and logo will both send a message to your clients – carefully matching your brand identity with your target audience will result in a better marketing outcome.
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7
What is unique about your offer?
Identifying a USP will help you distinguish what it is you have that others don’t. Just saying that you are a financial adviser is unlikely to distinguish you from other similar businesses. Work out what is unique about your offering and focus your marketing on this.
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8
How much will you spend on marketing?
Obviously the amount you spend on marketing will depend on what you can afford, but the money you set aside for marketing will be paid back in the long run by driving new business your way.
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9
What marketing channels will you use?
You’ll need to think about where to focus your marketing to attract your desired audience, be it through social media, printed brochures and leaflets, telephone, etc.
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10
How will you choose your suppliers?
Once you've decided which channels to use, you need to find a way to make it happen. Whilst you can easily post on Twitter and LinkedIn yourself, you might want to get a professional to create the images you use. If you run a postal campaign or hand out brochures at a seminar, you need to get them designed and printed.
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11
Do you have a digital marketing strategy?
Marketing is now taking place increasingly online, and social media is becoming a key way of targeting potential clients. You should dedicate a section of your overall plan to digital marketing.
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12
How will you use social media?
Certain social media outlets are more effective with certain audiences, so you’ll have to think about the kind of message you want to send through your selection of channels.
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13
How will you measure your marketing success?
Using measures such as the number of website views or social media followers, or keeping a record of how many new customers you got from a postal campaign or seminar, will provide you with a tangible idea of how successful your marketing plan has been.
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14
How will you manage your cash flow?
Understanding your revenue stream and managing your cash flow will enable you to set aside your marketing budget.
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15
How can Tenet help you?
Setting up your business with Tenet means you’ll have our marketing support from the word go – we’ll help by providing you with a pre-built website, brochures and ready-made social media posts.
