Session 10: Executing your marketing strategy

In session 10 of A Marketing Podcast I discuss how to write your executive summary as well as how to execute your strategy now that we’ve put in all the work to develop it! The execution includes the setup, the monitoring and adjusting, and the measurement of success. I also release my new strategy development crash course.

Session 10: Show Notes

Recap of Previous Sessions (related to strategy development):

* Session 2: What is a marketing strategy and why do I need one?

* Session 3: Establishing goals and objectives

* Session 4: Understanding and developing your target audiences

* Session 5: Performing a marketing SWOT analysis

* Session 6: Creating your selling proposition

* Session 7: Developing a marketing mix

* Session 8: Tactical and Campaign Planning

* Session 9: What Should I budget for marketing

* [FREE DOWNLOAD] Small Business Marketing Strategy Template

Writing an Executive Summary

The summary is exactly that, a summary! So all you need to do is summarize your strategy for yourself and anyone who will be involved in your marketing. This will allow others to get an idea of what you’ve developed and what you plan to do with your marketing.

There’s no need to spend hours on your executive summary either. Write one or two sentences for each section of your strategy and you’ll be just fine.

Keep the same order as your strategy in your summary, so it makes sense as someone flips through your strategy document.

Apart from being the way for others to get an idea of what you’re doing with your marketing, the summary serves as the first place to reviewing your success measurement and throughout your marketing (more on executing in a minute)

Executing your marketing strategy

Online presence setup

First off, make sure your business’s online presence is setup. I’ll link to a checklist I created to walk you through setting up your business online.

This is important to ensure that your marketing provides somewhere for potential customers to find out more, but more importantly that you can track your marketing results.

Tactical/Campaign setup

Setup ongoing tactics first

Setup the tactics or campaigns that are ongoing for the period of your strategy. For example, Social media channels or Search engine marketing.

Get to work on the complex tactics next

This is just a personal preference, but I like to get the complex tactics setup and ready to go first while I’m still pumped about getting started.

Then setup the remaining tactics according to your tactical/campaign planning schedules. Pretty straight forward stuff.

Marketing In Motion

Now that your marketing is in motion it’s time to monitor and adjust throughout the strategies period. Depending on the tactics, the time span between monitoring and adjusting will differ.

For example, if you’re advertising through Search Engine Marketing – I like to review the results daily for the first week or so, then back off to weekly. Making adjustments each time I review if I’m missing obvious opportunities or there are any issues.

But for things like direct mail, obviously you would review how the tactic went a couple weeks after the mail out.