Meeting Topic
A Marketing Strategy Gives You Wings! – Roz Rickerby
Why is a well–crafted marketing strategy crucial for a small business?
It’s the roadmap and oomph to drive support for your business plan, brand, and ambition. When resources are limited and budgets are tight, a marketing strategy provides focus, saves time and money, and helps you perform better. It prevents the scattering of valuable resources across a range of channels and tactics, while building trust and visibility through consistent brand execution.
The foundation of a good marketing strategy is threefold:
- It digs deep into what makes your customers tick, revealing valuable insights to build stronger connections.
- It strengthens your brand by clarifying what you stand for, ensuring your story resonates with your audience.
- It focuses resources, working them harder to deliver the biggest impact and return on investment.
A marketing strategy articulates the seamless experience your audience will have with your brand—from initial awareness, through marketing funnel touchpoints, to action, loyalty, and beyond. This holistic approach aligns all the moving parts to enhance the customer experience and the value they receive. It’s what gives your brand and business the momentum to move to the next level and foster customer loyalty.
Having a clear roadmap and scope for your marketing, based on performance data and insights, supports confident decision-making. When you understand the current situation, have focus, and know what you need, you can plan and budget for the necessary improvements. Having this information is empowering and leads to better decisions.
A good marketing strategy creates breathing space. It shifts you from the day-to-day overwhelm of spinning plates and a reactive environment, to putting you in the driver’s seat. Having a clear focus and direction for your marketing, with a direct line of sight toward your vision, is hugely motivating.
One of the most exciting aspects of a marketing strategy—though often overlooked—is that its development process can help build teams. The collaborative nature of creating a marketing strategy draws on the knowledge of the wider team, provides a richer understanding of customers, and enables teams to identify areas for improvement. It’s a highly enriching and empowering experience for everyone involved.
Whether you’re updating your website, feeling the pressure to be active on social media, not getting the desired results from your advertising, wanting to grow your customer base, or to strengthen your brand – a marketing strategy can provide direction. What works for big businesses is equally beneficial for small businesses. The advantages of a marketing strategy are multifaceted, and ultimately, it drives success. Speak with a seasoned and proven marketing strategist to coach and support your business to do better.
Roz Rickerby is a marketing strategist and founder of Osinmarketing.nz
OSIN Marketing adopts an outside-in perspective to uncover insights and opportunities to strengthen connections that help shape success.
We’re here for your brand, ambition and growth and we can scale our involvement to you short and long-term needs. Chat with Roz via Osinmarketing.nz
Next Meeting Topic
Creativity in Business – Paula Kerslake
Introduction
Creativity in business is about the ability to generate new ideas, think outside the box, and find unique solutions to problems. This creative thinking can lead to the development of new products, services, streamline operations, reduce costs and enhance overall business performance.
Why is creativity vital in business? Why is creativity and innovation important to business success? By Paula Kerslake
In business, creative thinking is the ability to explore different possibilities to come up with new innovative ideas that can help you overcome challenges and achieve goals.
Creative people have the courage to express a unique idea or approach. They tend to encourage out-of-the-box thinking when working with others. Through creative thinking teams can see challenges as opportunities to problem solve and innovate.
Many workplaces had to rely on creative thinking during the previous Covid 19 lockdowns. Hospitality and Retail stores had to close for long periods of time. Creative thinking was vital and the ability to pivot from how things were always done to a new way of doing things. People had to look at things from a new & different perspective to find solutions to continue trading. Some restaurants changed to ‘takeaway only’. Business organisations staff had to work from home so with creative thinking workers connected via virtual meetings and digital collaboration platforms. There was surge in online Supermarket shopping. Online shopping has continued to evolve to include a delivery service of groceries now delivered within an hour.
Thinking creatively makes you a better problem-solver which has benefits in both your work and personal life.
There are some great strategies to encourage creative thinking in your workplace. Here are a few:
- Create a Supportive Environment:
- Encourage open communication and make it clear that all ideas are welcome.
- Celebrate creative work and recognise contributions, even if they don’t lead to immediate success.
- Diverse Teams:
- Build teams with diverse backgrounds, skills, and perspectives. Different points of view can encourage new ideas and approaches.
- Provide Space for Creativity and Brainstorming sessions
- Allocate time for brainstorming sessions and creative thinking.
- Use digital collaboration platforms where people can brainstorm, share their ideas and collaborate on projects with tools such as mind maps, flowcharts and workflows.
- Create physical spaces that inspire creativity, such as comfortable lounges or dedicated breakout rooms.
- Training and Resources:
- Provide access to workshops, courses, and resources that promote creative thinking and problem-solving skills.
- Encourage employees to attend conferences and seminars to gain new ideas, inspiration and networking.
- Be a Leader
- Demonstrate creative thinking in your own work and decision-making processes.
- Be open to new ideas and be willing to try out-of-the-box thinking
By implementing these strategies, you can create a workplace that values creativity, continuously evolves, stays relevant, and achieves lasting success. How do you currently encourage creativity in your business?
In conclusion, thinking creatively is about being open-minded, curious, and willing to take risks. It’s about challenging assumptions and exploring new possibilities. By adopting this mindset, we can unlock our full potential and make a positive impact in our personal and professional lives.
Paula is the Director at Paula Kerslake Art. Check out Paula’s website www.paulakerslake.com
