In the last blog that I wrote, which you can read here, we looked at the importance of having goals for your marketing and your business. Have you decided what you want to achieve this year and set some goals or targets? If you have, the next thing to do is to work out how you’re going to get there. You need to think about the different marketing strategies that you can use to help you to reach your goals and grow your business.

It’s just like being on a journey – you need to work out the best way of getting to your destination. Will you drive or take the train? How will you get to the station, and if you drive there, where will you leave your car? There are lots of options to consider and you need to select the most appropriate, which will be based on your starting point and your destination.

With marketing, there are four main strategies you can consider when deciding how to get to your destination. Unlike with an actual journey, you can use more than one of the strategies. In fact, you could use all four of them in combination, if appropriate, to help you reach your goals.

Why do you need a strategy? For the very same reason that you set goals for your marketing and your business. You could just set off and try lots of different marketing activities, in the hope that they will take you to your goals – a bit like just turning up at a bus stop and hoping that one of the buses that stops there is going your way. Or you could plan the best approach and only spend your valuable time and money on what you know will work. Having a strategy and following it is much cheaper in the long run than the scatter-gun approach to marketing.

The four strategies are based on your clients – current ones and potential ones – and your products and services – existing ones and new ones you can develop.  There are four ways in which you can combine these elements, giving you four different strategies. Many business owners think that they have to find new clients in order to make more sales and grow their business. This is not always the best way to go about doing it. You can read more about avoiding the mistake of chasing new clients in this blog.

If you need help working out which strategies are best for your business, you can listen to the webinar that we recorded recently, which talks about them. Click here to listen to the webinar.