How To Maximize Your Marketing: Why Strategy and Systems Matter More Than Tactics
Maybe you’re drowning in marketing advice. Someone’s telling you to be on TikTok, another expert swears by email marketing, and meanwhile you’re just trying to figure out how to stay consistent with… anything.
Here’s what I’ve learned after working with businesses at every stage: the problem isn’t that you don’t know what to do. The problem is that you don’t have a plan for how to do it.
What Is a Marketing Strategy (And Why It Doesn’t Have to Be Overwhelming)
Your marketing strategy is your plan. That’s it. It outlines where you are right now (point A), where you want to be (point B), and exactly how you’re going to bridge that gap. What are you gonna do? How are you gonna do it? When are you gonna do it?
This applies whether you just started your business yesterday or you’ve been running it for 20 years. Everybody needs a strategy.
Now, if that’s feeling overwhelming, take a step back. The word “strategy” might feel big and complex, but it doesn’t have to be. You get to control what your marketing looks like. You are in control of how big you make it, how complex you make it.
Let’s make it sustainable for where you’re at. We don’t need to make this so overwhelming that you’re immediately burned out. You get to build it in stages based on your budget, your capacity, your interest.
If you hate being on social media? Can’t stand the idea of opening up Instagram or TikTok? Let’s not make that the forefront of your business. Let’s come up with a different way to make this sustainable for you.
The Four Things You Need Crystal Clarity On
Before you can build an effective marketing strategy, you need to know exactly where you stand in four key areas:
1. Where You Are Right Now
You need to know the results you’re currently getting, the metrics you’re currently tracking. It’s really hard to measure growth and progress if you don’t have a baseline.
2. Where You Want to Be
What’s your long-term vision? Where do you want to be in one year, three years, five years? What you want to achieve in the next six to 12 months is probably going to be different than what you want your business to look like in five years.
3. Who You’re Speaking To
You need to know who your target market is because that’s going to give you a good idea of how you can reach them. That’s gonna indicate the channels, the different methods of communicating with them, staying in contact with them, how they’re finding you.
4. What Your Offers Are
What are your products? What are your services? What are they going to be buying from you? And before you’re like, “okay, that’s really obvious”. It’s not always very clear cut.
I’ve worked with clients who have a general idea of the services they offer, but when it comes to packages, exactly what their services are, how they’re carried out, what the funnel looks like from low-ticket offers to main services—that’s not always clear. It can be very muddy.
If I were to ask you right now, “How are you making money? What are the income streams for your business?” you should be able to say exactly what those products or services are, the price point, how they’re carried out, how they’re offered, how people buy them from you.
Why Your Marketing Strategy Cannot Live in Your Brain
Here’s where most business owners mess up: they have all this stuff in their mind. They have general ideas of what they want things to look like, but when it comes to explaining it to people, being able to articulate it, that’s where things get really tricky.
Every single time I work with a client who doesn’t have systems or processes in place to track and manage their strategy, things fall apart. Fast.
If it’s living in your brain, that’s the very first step we need to work on. Whether you’re doing all the content creation and marketing implementation on your own, or you’re trying to hire a team member to do it for you—it cannot live in your brain. I promise you that’s not something that works long term.
Building Your Marketing Management System
You need a system for tracking what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, what stage of creation it’s in. I use ClickUp as my project management tool, but the specific tool doesn’t matter as much as having one.
Even for my podcast, I track episodes I’m going to record, what I’ve already recorded, what stage of editing they’re in, what stage of repurposing they’re in. There are a lot of pieces, and with everything else going on in the business- client work, admin, bookkeeping- it just cannot all live in my brain.
Your strategy outlines everything that needs to be done. It identifies the one-off projects, the recurring tasks, the bigger long-term launches and builds. Then you build the system and process customized to what exactly you’re going to be doing for your marketing.
The Real Reason People Think They Hate Marketing
This morning I was reading through someone’s post about what to do if you just hate marketing. My answer? If you hate marketing, it’s likely a strategy, systems, and process issue.
Every single time I get on a call with a client about their marketing, their services, their offers, they have so much to say. They don’t have a shortage of content. It really is an issue of: what are we doing, how are we doing it, and how can we implement this marketing in a way that’s sustainable for them?
It’s not that they don’t know what to say. It’s not that they don’t have anything to say. They usually have a lot to say. They just don’t think they’re good at sharing that information.
But when you have those foundations in place, when you have the systems and processes to generate ideas, pull the information out, and share it with the world, you can totally do this. I have not met one person who is incapable of marketing their business. We just need to come up with a way to do it that works for you.
Making It Work for Your Business
The goal isn’t to do more marketing. My job is to get you better results while being cost efficient, saving you time and energy. I want to make sure we’re being as efficient as possible, maximizing the ROI on your time, money, and energy.
Because here’s the thing: everybody needs a marketing strategy. Not everybody needs a marketing manager. It depends on the stage of your business, what you already have going on, what income level your business is at.
I’m working with a client right now where we did a full marketing audit, and we’re not even done with the service yet. Already, the changes being made with their marketing will save them money off their marketing budget and have already covered the cost of what they invested for this audit.
Your Next Steps
If you don’t have anything in place and you’re feeling lost, start with clarity on your goals, who you’re talking to, and how you’re going to implement your marketing. Get it out of your brain and onto paper (or digital document). Build a system to track and manage it all.
You don’t hate marketing, you just need a better way to do it that works for you, your capacity, and your business goals.
The strategy comes first. The systems support it. Everything else builds from there.
Want me to support you through this? Fill out this form and we’ll be in touch!
