Melanie
Welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing podcast for all decision makers and action takers. Take it away, Esther.
Esther
Good morning and welcome to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing podcast. Today we're talking winning strategy. What is it and how do you achieve it? So winning strategies, we're talking marketing strategies. Obviously, there are strategies for everything in life to succeed in life. But as this is the Monday Morning Marketing podcast, we're talking marketing strategies. Take it away, Melanie.
Melanie
Fine.
Esther
You knew that was coming.
Melanie
Yes, I did.
Esther
You knew that was coming.
Melanie
Okay, well, your strategy always starts with where you're at and where you're hoping to go, the goals and objectives, but also understanding where you're starting from as well. So if you're a completely brand new startup or it's a completely first brand new campaign, even if you're five years in business, you have to assess your situation and see where you're actually starting from and where you hope to actually get to.
Esther
Yes. So if you don't know where you're going, and there's a song running through my head right now, but I won't sing it. Then how are you going to know how to get there? So if you don't know if your objective for the next quarter is sales or whether it's just getting eyes on your brand or Whether it's awareness, brand strategy. Losing all my words today, not enough coffee. Well, tea in my case. But if you don't know what it is that you're hoping to get, whether it's leads or just sales without having to get people's email addresses and everything like that, then you're not going to know where you're going to start. And if you don't know where to start, then you're not going to know if you've reached your goal. So yes, definitely assess, like Melanie says, where you're starting from and take it from there. There's no better place to start. Then I would define your vision and mission.
Melanie
Which would be part of your goals and objectives, because you can't really have Can't really have goals and objectives without a vision statement. Would you agree?
Esther
No, absolutely. And a lot of companies have a vision statement from the day and hour that they're born, conceived the ideas in their head.
Melanie
Conceptualized, maybe.
Esther
Yeah. It's one of those Mondays where the words just aren't coming or they're coming wrong. But your vision and mission, just like other parts of your business, they can change along the path. So, Melanie, you've been in business at the time of recording, I want to say 13 years?
Melanie
Nearly 12.
Esther
Nearly, okay. And we've been in business 10. And the podcast has been around for over five. So have you changed your vision or mission statement in those 12 years?
Melanie
I've had three changes. The most recent change was January 24.
Esther
Oh, there you go. Same with us. We've had changes in our vision and mission. Our overall objective has stayed the same. Same here. But in order to get there, it has changed. But it's one of those things. It's like your goals should always be moving and adjusting with what you're doing and what you're working on at the time, and whether you hire new people in or keep going as a solopreneur, all of that will affect your overall objectives, vision, and mission statements.
Melanie
So what's next is understanding how you're going to measure. So using the KPIs, the key performance indicators. Depending on what your goals and objectives are and what matters to you, it could be video views, it could be signups, it could be ticket sales, it could be phone calls. You can measure phone calls as well. So there's all sorts of different things that you can measure. So it's understanding which key performance indicators matter to you, your shareholders, your stockholders. And that then has to become cemented into something you do either weekly, monthly, quarterly, so on and so forth.
Esther
Yeah, and it's where the smart goals come in again. So make sure that they are strategic, that they are timely, that they are attainable, that they are. And this is where I start to wonder if I can smell smart. Spell smart, smell. Somebody pass the coffee and just put it in the jar.
Melanie
You're on fire today.
Esther
I really am. I apologize. I apologize. Again, honestly, not enough caffeine. Where did I get to in my smart goal?
Melanie
Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.
Esther
Relevant, and timely. There we go. You see, I couldn't spell smart at all. I don't what I was spelling. At least I've made you laugh this Monday morning. But having the smart goals gives you a structure because a lot of People will say, oh, I want 100 phone calls. Okay, in what length of time? In a day, a week, a month, a year, 10 years? A hundred phone calls is achievable in any time frame that you set your mind to, but make it one that is, that will work for you and that you're not going to be killing yourself trying to get. Same with email signups. I mean, people go, I want 10,000 people on my email list. What for? What are you going to do with them when you get them? I have people constantly saying, Oh, I've only got 30 people on my email list, so send them an email. You have to start somewhere. You can't wait until you get a hundred or a thousand in order to do it.
Melanie
And let's face it, those 30 people don't know that you've only got 30 people.
Esther
Exactly.
Melanie
They don't have a clue.
Esther
No. And you should be marketing to them just the same way as you would to 10,000. So you've still got a message to get out. You've still got sales to make. You've still got information to deliver. It is important that you treat them with the respect that they have given you their email address and use that accordingly so as to keep them in the loop with everything that you're doing.
Melanie
So now you've done that, you now need to see, does it need any tweaking? Does it need any updating? Maybe you need to look at alternative measurements or maybe the way you're measuring, maybe you're using native analytics or you're using a third party tool. Maybe it's not, maybe it's not demonstrating the KPIs in the way that you want to use them. So maybe they'll need tweaking or even replacing, going over to a new package. Just because it worked previously doesn't mean it's going to be working going forward.
Esther
Exactly. Exactly. Times change. People move on. Your audience will move to different platforms. And yes, even though you much prefer to use one platform, you have to go where your audience is.
Melanie
Exactly.
Esther
That's just the way it works. So sorry. I don't like doing videos, but here we are. Times have to change. We have to move with them. Otherwise, we get left behind and other people reap all the glory. So make sure that when you choose your strategy, whether that be a video strategy, an audio strategy, blogging, or a mixture of all of them and the right channels to put them on, that you communicate your strategy. So that could be internally with your team, if you have one, or put it on a post-it note in front of you if you're a solopreneur, so you stick to the strategy because it's all well and good spending all this time making a strategy and coming up with a great plan of action to then not implement it would be a tragedy. So have it somewhere that you can see it visibly. And if you have a team, communicate it to them so they know what's going on and they can keep the business on track. Because if you've said you're sending out a video every Friday or in our case, a podcast every Monday, you have to be held accountable to doing that. So the name of our podcast holds us accountable to sending out a podcast every Monday. If you have a Friday biz chat or something, then every Friday, go on and have that chat with other businesses.
Melanie
Although if you're lucky and you've got a Twitter chat called USA Biz Party. It doesn't matter when it is.
Esther
No, but it has been established as a certain day and a certain time. I know. People, after a while, will expect to see you on that channel at that time because that's what you've programmed them to do.
Melanie
Oh, I know. I know. I just think it's great that you've got this outlet that you could literally do any day.
Esther
I know. I know. But, yeah, it's Tuesdays at noon central for those that are interested. But yeah, when you have your strategy, having it written down and somewhere visible will hold you to it, or at least should hold you to it.
Melanie
And it's part of your media strategy, which again is a small segment of your whole overall strategy. And so if you know that as part of your awareness funnels, you're going to be doing Reels and YouTube Shorts, part of your consideration funnel, you're going to be doing LinkedIn posts, and then part of your conversion funnel is going to be emails. That's really important because then there's got to be consistency. And decision making shouldn't be made very quickly. You need to allow a time for your audience to feel the role of the marketing arc, the whole funnel, basically. So you need to give them at least a quarter If you can, if you can afford to, do two. So you got half a year. And that gives you a really good start of, is this going to be working or not?
Esther
Yes. And when you do put it into action, because I know a lot of people who have a fabulous strategy sitting on the shelves, but they fail to implement it. So you must implement your winning strategy and monitor it. Is it working? Is it not working? What's working best? What's working worst? What is hitting all the right notes and what is just plummeting and bombing? Monitor and do more of what's working, because in three months time, that might not work either.
Melanie
And remember that you've got to think external and external issues. There may be a new platform is coming out and that's impacting what's going on your current platforms. So that's an external issue. An internal issue could be that the person that was previously managing this element for you has gone on leave or left. So there's all sorts of things that you need to think about whilst you're implementing and monitoring.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
So that's part and parcel, isn't it?
Esther
Yeah, absolutely. And you also need to monitor the time of year that it's going out. We have a friend who recently launched a product and forgot it was Easter holidays. And her main audience is mothers with children. So they weren't online a lot during the Easter holidays. They were rather busy with their children. Didn't fail, but she learned a lesson. Yes. To look at the calendar because it can be very easy for businesses to just assume that everyone's always going to be online and just assume that people are going to be in the country. I know for our business, July is a completely dead month. Nobody seems to answer even emails or anything. So that's the best time for us to take a holiday. So there's no point in me sending out sales emails or posts on social media going, contact us, contact us during the month of July, because one, they're not going to, and two, there's going to be nobody there to answer them anyway. Whether it helps, yeah. It is one of those things that, again, this could be different in your culture, in your industry. We were just talking about before coming on about the wedding industry. June, July, August are probably the busiest months for weddings, especially in Ireland and the UK, because it's when we're supposed to get the best weather. But that could be different in your country. So wherever you're listening to us from, make sure that your strategies are culturally aware as well. And we did a podcast about cultural differences a few months ago, I want to say. Maybe it was a year ago at this point.
Melanie
Yeah, it feels like a year.
Esther
Go check it out because we've talked about lots of stuff. But yeah, you should definitely monitor your strategy. And if it doesn't work, it's not the end of the world.
Melanie
No.
Esther
Modify it, tweak it, try again.
Melanie
Well, we hope we've given you a good starting point today. Obviously, we can't go into massive detail in 15 minutes or less. If you want to ask us any questions directly, though, you're welcome to contact myself at stompsocialmedietraining, stomp.ie, or you can speak to Esther at ipagroup. co. And we help with marketing and email marketing for Esther, do social media training, social media management. So don't forget that we're not just podcast hosts. We have our own businesses as well that we can help you directly with. Well, that's all the time we have for, for now, but we'll be back next week with another podcast. Bye for now.
Esther
Bye-bye.
