Marketing Plan

February might not seem like the most festive month, especially since we just experienced the whirlwind of holidays that come at the end of November and last through to the new year. But actually, when you look at the calendar, you can see that February is filled with meaningful reasons to celebrate.

First of all, February is Black History Month, an opportunity to reflect on and celebrate the contributions of the Black community in the U.S. You could use this as an opportunity to give back to meaningful causes, or if your business is Black-owned, to tell your own story and share what being a Black-owned business means to you.

Apart from that, February is also packed with other cultural celebrations and holidays.

February 2021 holidays

Just a few of the major holidays that will be celebrated in February 2021 are:

• February 12 — Lunar New Year, this year

What can small businesses do to stand out in a crowd? The market has become extremely noisy. Getting your ideal client to notice you is difficult. But correctly positioning your brand and communicating it to your target audience can get you noticed. And having an effective brand positioning statement can make your marketing much easier.

What is a brand positioning statement?

A brand positioning statement describes what your business does and what makes you different to those you serve. It should highlight the way we want customers to think and feel about our business through their experience with us. It is an internal statement that guides your business decisions based on how you want to be perceived within the market.

Your brand positioning is the underlying strategic statement that is central to every marketing campaign. It will help you to create messages that establish value in the minds of your … Read more

Image courtesy of toward data science

It’s no secret that data is an incredibly valuable resource for businesses, however, using the data to make more accurate decisions and improving ROI isn’t easy. Using information correctly makes it possible to predict the future, improve your revenue, and even give you the chance to avoid wasting money on ideas that might not work out based on prior results. Hence, the reason we continue to struggle with our data and improve our understanding of how to best analyze our data so that data drives marketing decisions.

How to gather and use data

Market Research

Market research involves collecting primary data to directly address questions facing your business. Unfortunately, market research is fraught with problems and, if you don’t know what you’re doing, market research can easily lead you astray. The classic example of this comes from Coke, which changed its entire formula based … Read more

It might seem weird, but marketing teams used to measure their success on lead generation. They would analyze where leads came from, how qualified they were, and whether or not they became customers as a part of some weird calculation of bringing in more leads as cheap as possible. Crazy, right?

Now let’s skip ahead to the present (and future) with an account-based strategy. If leads are now not the main goal for your marketing and sales team, what should you focus on instead to measure success? And how can you optimize your program to create more qualified sales opportunities, faster? We’re so glad you asked.

First let’s look at what a basic funnel looks like for account-based teams (a more in-depth overview can be found here). This funnel might be a little more complicated or nuanced for your particular business, but this should be foundationally similar to most … Read more

Moving Past the Jargon: Why Thought Leadership is an Essential Marketing Tool for Your Business For a while there, the term “thought leadership” seemed destined for the dustbin of marketing history. Part jargon, part cliche, the term became synonymous with personal brand builders who plied their trade in breathless LinkedIn posts or at TEDx talks held in hotel conference rooms. Fortunately, savvy marketers rescued the thought leader from this ignominious fate by refocusing the concept into a powerful business growth strategy.

Today, thought leadership is a content marketing approach that positions a company, executive or other subject matter expert as the go-to resource in their field. Influential thought leaders produce content that answers their customers’ questions, provides solutions to pressing problems or offers the audience a new point-of-view to consider.

When executed correctly, these campaigns include their own strategies, tactics, goals and measures to judge effectiveness. As those … Read more