Drawing up your marketing mix
Do the marketing mix brainstorming for each of your customer profiles and you will have a list of ways that you can get your message in front of each. Going back to what we’ve learnt about the stages that people go through when becoming a customer, this is very much ‘top of the funnel’ awareness activity. So, also think about whether you will need separate activities to convert people from awareness into a purchase – for example, running online product demonstrations. Once you have this list, decide which are likely to get the best results and which you have the resources to do well. Looking back to my list above for Yana, it might be that you only have the budget (whether that is money or time) to do Instagram and leaflets in the post, and that’s a fine place to start. You are looking for a mix of channels which is manageable, and if you can work those channels into your day to day work, even better.
For example, you might have identified that your target customer loves video but you don’t have a studio or a good camera – or any time to make and edit videos! But remember that we’re going to test and check if something works first before spending money and time on it. If you are making a vegan food product then get a tripod for £15 for your phone. Make some short videos showing how you make your product in your kitchen at the same time as you are cooking up your latest batch. If you deliver a service, ask a customer if you can record the Zoom consultation that you are going to do with them, then pick out highlights of the session to upload to YouTube to show people how you work. Share these videos and if they start getting a good response then look at buying a better camera and some studio lights.
If you’ve already proven that something that you’re doing is working then (if you have the budget available) you should spend some money to make it work even better.
And you might identify that one channel is likely to give you brilliant results for all types of customers, but it means you wouldn’t have time to do any other marketing. And that’s fine too. If you think that putting all your available marketing resources into producing a weekly podcast will build a real following then make that your focus; but again, always test it first. Don’t commit to researching and recording 6 episodes of a podcast before you release it; just record one interview and upload it to your Facebook page and website and see what feedback you get from doing it. Do people like the idea, how many listened to it, do they want more, did it generate interest?
Start out messy with your ideas. Scribble all over your notebook or have flip-chart arguments amongst your team, adding ideas and striking them off. Keep going back to your customer profile sheets and question what they would think of each idea: “Stressed Erica wouldn’t have time for any of these so we need something just for her!”; “Retired Ruby might watch videos when they appear in her timeline, but she’s not actively looking for content on YouTube. We’re going to need an email newsletter going out so that she knows when we post a new video!”
Use sticky notes or scraps of paper; find the way that helps your mind think. Start to think about what you could do with each channel as you are considering them. Once you’re satisfied with what activities you’ve decided you’re going to do, and you know that you have the resources to do them (be that money or time), you now have what we call a ‘marketing mix’. Keeping to our example of a vegan company marketing to yoga instructors, the marketing mix might look a little like this:
- You are going to produce a fortnightly video blog and send leaflets in the post to create awareness.
- You will run Facebook Live demonstrations of your product, which is aimed at people who are at the evaluation stage of the funnel.
- These will all direct people to a website.
- On the website, people can download a PDF with more information about your product in return for their email address.
- These email addresses will be added to your mailing list to receive weekly emails.
- Your weekly emails will nurture the potential customer (remembering they are unlikely to buy straight away) and also highlight your video blog and Facebook Live demos.
- You will send a personal follow-on to anyone who looks like a particularly great potential customer.
Write this plan out in a visual way so that anyone you show it to understands straight away what activities you are doing. Show the relationship between each activity. Your email newsletter is going to send people to your video blog, so show that flow of direction on your marketing mix diagram. Add in explanatory notes such as how often the leaflets are going to get delivered, and get all the information you can onto a single page instead of needing people you share your plan with to read pages of follow-on notes. You don’t need to produce this on a computer – write it up on a whiteboard and then take a photo on your phone, or draw it on paper and then scan it.
This is all quite simple isn’t it? And probably not what you thought a marketing plan would look like. But this is how I’ve mapped out marketing plans for pretty much every company I’ve either set up or worked with, and that’s probably amounted up to over 100 plans over the last 20+ years. For some I’ve spent months on research and had professional illustrators draw out the plan to show to potential partners and investors; others I’ve mapped out on a flip-chart in a single 45 minute session, and that flip-chart page has spent the next six months taped to the wall next to my desk.
