Avanti offers advice on developing marketing plans

Accountants and proactive Business Advisors, Avanti share their guide to marketing your businesses and what you should be considering when you draw up your marketing plan.

The team at Avanti can help you to implement your marketing plan by keeping an eye on your financial position, providing you with proactive advice on your tax liabilities, forecasting and even management accounts. An understanding of your figures will help you to know how you can allocate funds to work for you in terms of your marketing strategies. So once you know what you can afford to do, how do you implement your ideas?

Your Business Plan means that you have clear objectives on the scalability of your business, and a time frame in which to achieve your targets. You will periodically re-assess where your situation stands in comparison to these objectives and how to achieve it.  Part of your business planning should also include your Marketing Plan.

We recommend drawing up an annual marketing plan that incorporates a variety of campaigns on different platforms. During the early stages you may be limited in terms of your budget, so may wish to consider the value in free platforms of advertising. Remember, free doesn’t always mean good!  So check out the relevance, the target market and the reach of the media you are considering before committing.

Where you are seen also determines how you are viewed, so you’ll need to consider the audiences of the platform or media that you are using – do they match your brand ethos. If you were a green energy company, it wouldn’t be in line with your credentials to advertise on the side of a taxi!

Top things to consider when drawing up your marketing plan;

• What are you selling?
• Who are you selling to – your ‘Target’ market?
• How will you get your product or service to that target market?
• Why would they buy from you?
• When will you do this?
• Investment – what resources will be needed for this campaign?
• Desired outcome of each campaign?

Your Marketing plan should be checked regularly and you should ‘test and measure’ all campaigns to make sure they are achieving the desired result.  But don’t give up after a few days, remember some marketing such as Networking takes time to build relationships and trust and you must therefore give it time to work.  If you find something does not work, consider tweaking it not necessarily giving it up altogether straightaway.

Consider using Social Media – the reach is invaluable. For it to be productive you need to ensure that your content gets your brand seen, adds value for your audience, and creates interaction:

• Time it right
• Make it fun
• Make it snappy
• Post it regularly
• Make it relevant

Videos – Video marketing is one of the most popular marketing strategies today, statistics show that video content is on the increase and it is the way forward for engaging your audiences

Video is more engaging, more memorable, and more popular among consumers than any other type of content.

• 78% of people watch online videos every week, and 55% view online videos every day. (HubSpot)
• By 2020, online videos will make up more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic (85% in the US). (Cisco)
• YouTube is the second most trafficked site, after Google.

Most importantly, stick to the plan; Once you have your plan in place, make it work for you by committing fully to it. As you grow, you’ll be able to add to it.

Once you see financial growth, you may want to invest in paid advertising using magazines and online platforms. It may also be of value to you to consider using a copywriter to help with your content or professional photos of your products and branded products for exhibitions.

Avanti Networking can provide you with all the connections from business coaches, networking opportunities, marketing in magazines, photographers and copywriting specialists to help market your business.