The ultimate aim of all marketing is to attract quality leads and drive sales for your business. To do this, you need a strategy that cuts through all the other marketing ‘noise’, makes you stand out from your competitors, and ensures that your target market think of you first when making purchasing decisions.

While a single, brilliant campaign may get the phone ringing for a short while, as soon as the campaign ends, you’ll be forgotten and sales will fall again. When it comes to marketing, there’s no quick ‘magic bullet’. There is, however, a way to ‘bulletproof’ your strategy for great results: create a campaign that builds and maintains momentum. Over time, this provides more stability in your marketing funnel with less ups and downs, generating consistent results and keeping that phone ringing.

Marketing is a long-term activity

If you’re spending money on a single, ad-hoc, marketing activity, chances are you’ll be wasting your money. A successful marketing strategy builds, grows and compounds on itself over time, gathering momentum for greater impact and a healthy return on investment. When people see your name and message once, they’re likely to forget about it. But if they see it many times, across a variety of channels, they’ll start to recognise your brand. Repeated exposure eventually leads them to understand what you do, and the benefits you’re going to bring them.

I always advise my clients to plan their marketing in six to twelve month blocks. Start by laying solid foundations: invest quality time and money in creating the basic materials and tools, such as a great-looking website, social media accounts, customer databases etc. While you won’t see instant results, this initial phase provides a springboard for your future systems and activities to launch from.

Now your carefully-planned, multi-pronged marketing strategy comes into play: kick off with one or two activities then build on them, month on month. After a while, as your interconnecting activities bounce off each other, the campaign gains its own momentum, generating a high level of awareness within your target market.

Monitor your results regularly, so you can revise your strategies and activities as required to maintain maximum effectiveness. And remember: sometimes it takes a while to get some traction, but stick with your strategy and give it a chance. Results will build with persistence and with time.

Take a multi-pronged approach

Repetition is key with marketing: you want your target market to see your message many times, in many places. So don’t rely on one channel, spread your activities across a variety of media for maximum impact. This doesn’t necessarily require a bigger expenditure: just be creative with your content and present it in different ways. For example, if one e-book is written, it can be part of an email campaign, a social media campaign, PR campaign, a content marketing funnel and an advertising promotion. It’s about making your content work harder and wringing every last drop out of your materials.
Running multiple marketing activities simultaneously across a variety of channels not only creates the desired compounding effect, but also means that when one activity closes, another can still be pushing leads, maintaining consistency in your results and minimising times of ‘drought’.
A multi-pronged approach will also help to keep your message fresh and interesting – it will prevent you from fading into the background. Allow your marketing activities to evolve as the momentum builds over time.

Marketing momentum makes your dollar work harder

So before you invest in any marketing activities, make sure your investment is going to generate some big returns. A marketing strategy that builds momentum over time makes your budget work twice as hard, because each activity bounces ever higher off the previous one, generating better and better results for the same outlay.

Marketing for small to medium business is a commitment that requires careful planning and persistence. Remember: do multiple pieces of marketing across multiple channels, and keep doing it, month on month on month. Where one activity leaves off, the next will pick up, gathering more impact and leads along the way. Your message will compound on itself and gather momentum, driving awareness, recognition, and action from your target market.

For more information on how to build momentum into your next marketing strategy, give us a shout.