Get your marketing off to a good start

Simply put, your marketing will be more effective if it’s part of a plan. Without cost-effective marketing, it can be difficult to grow your business.

The trick to developing your marketing strategy is to:

1. Review what you’re already doing
2. See what’s working and what isn’t
3. Improve on what’s working
4. Try something new, that you believe should or could be very cost-effective

But whatever you do, at first, keep it simple.
 

Do some valuable analysis

• Do a SWOT analysis on your business to identify areas of strength and opportunity.
• Sit down with your team and discuss what’s happening in the market. How should you be reacting? What's your competition doing and why?
• Talk to your existing customers. Find out what they like about your service and what they would change.
• Talk to previous customers, if possible, to understand why they no longer use you.
   

Specify your target audience

• Understand exactly who your most profitable customers are. Your strategy should be to find more customers like them.
• Agree which are the most important customer segments to your business (e.g. local, SME, HNW clients). Talk through where the opportunities are.
• Think about the media they use, trust and respond to (e.g. email, social, website content, direct mail).
• Discuss what your competitive advantage is, or could be, for each of your chosen segments.

Agree your goals and objectives

• Agree your marketing objectives/targets for the year.
• How do you plan to evaluate if, how and when they have been achieved?

Implement your plan

• Agree the responsibilities of key people/agencies/third party suppliers
• Agree the budget
• Agree all deadlines/the timing plan
• Agree how you plan to evaluate your strategy

To help get you started, we’ve some useful Broker Mentor resources for you:

• Give your marketing a quick health check
• Start writing your own marketing plan

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