Strategic Marketing Increases Your Profits (Click here for the PDF Version)
Do you have a plan to grow your business? Many of the companies are expecting their business to grow, but they don’t have a PLAN for it to grow. Planning helps you maximize profits and reduce your risks. There are two areas of the business you must focus on: Marketing and Business Development.
Strategic marketing is a long-term investment and must be consistently implemented. Whether you hire a full time strategic marketer or engage with an outside, industry expert consultant, you need to have a strategic marketing and business development plan. It needs to be a working plan that is consistently implemented and evaluated. Your profit and company depend on it. It gives the company and its employees direction on where to marketing and business development dollars and time. A targeted approach to your strategic marketing and business development plan allows you to see the return on your investment. A haphazard approach takes much, much longer and is less effective. Business development is also an important component to increasing your profits, and it too is a long-term investment. It must be consistently executed by a full-time business development person or divided among those employees who have client and prospect interaction. Accountability is critical to seeing results. A business development plan must be written and implemented in order to accomplish company goals.
I like to think of business growth as a funnel. At the top of the funnel is marketing that funnels to business development then to sales of projects. A cohesive marketing and business development plan will shorten your sales cycle and get results more quickly than if you “wait for things to happen” or “let it happen naturally.” Having a targeted approach and 3-5 goals set allows you to focus on your marketing and business development efforts. You will see the return on your investment when you are more focused and have a plan.
A contractor I worked with was able to triple their gross profit in just eighteen short months. Not only was a strategic marketing plan implemented but a strategic business plan was implemented. (Both of these are important to increasing profit!) As the strategic marketer for them, I planned, wrote, and implemented a strategic marketing and business development plan, so all the employees were aligned with the goals. Initially, no one knew where the marketing dollars were being spent or what they were being spent on. We evaluated what marketing dollars were producing results and which ones weren’t, and eliminated those that didn’t have a return on investment.
Many times people associate marketing and business development with spending money. They associate the old adage of “You have to spend money to make money” directly with marketing and business development. However, a strategic marketing and business plan is more about how you spend your time. While working with the company that tripled their gross profits, not only did I contribute to their growth in gross profit, but in strengthened the sales team was as well. I worked closely with the sales team to help shorten the sales cycle, providing the support they needed to close the sale more quickly than in the past. Communication and trust among the team and with the customer is vital to the success of a plan, too.
Having a strategic marketer at the table is vital to your business. They will write and implement the plan, keeping you focused on your target audience. Marketing leadership is important to a growing construction firm to maintain the image and culture as they grow. It can be a stabilizing factor that contributes to profitablility
Strategic marketing and business development must be a component to your business just like safety, accounting, human resources, etc. to increase profits. Implementing the marketing and business development plan is where you will results and increased profits. Who doesn’t want that?
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