Why You Need a Written Marketing Strategy
Memorizing all the details of your marketing strategy can be a challenge. By writing it down, you give your marketing strategy an official touch and create a checklist for yourself.
As a small business owner, you naturally have a gazillion things on your mind. Between proposals, contracts, vendor payments, project deliverables, and customer payment collections, you still have to come up with an idea for your next Facebook post or newsletter or make time to record a new Reel or TikTok video.
I know how overwhelming everything can be because I am a small business owner myself.
So, why should you take the time to write down your marketing strategy?
The reason is surprisingly simple: it will help you stay on brand and on message.
Your Marketing Strategy Builds on Your Brand Guidelines
You have done everything right. You developed your brand compass, brand personality, and brand promise and defined your verbal and visual brand design elements. If you haven't already, here are a few links to catch up.
Your brand guidelines are a framework, an instruction manual, that defines how you want to communicate your brand. It serves as the foundation for your marketing strategy.
A marketing strategy is a long-term plan that outlines how a brand will achieve its goals in 7 specific areas: product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and packaging.
Since they all start with a p, they are sometimes called the 7 Ps of Marketing. Depending on your industry, you can create variations of these 7 Ps.
What is crucial, however, is that these seven strategies agree with one another and your brand guidelines.
Without brand guidelines, your marketing strategy can quickly fall apart and confuse outsiders, potentially weakening your brand.
The same can happen if you unintentionally forget key elements of your marketing strategy, for example, in a flyer, brochure, or advertisement. To avoid these sometimes costly mistakes, I recommend writing down your marketing strategy.
A Written Marketing Strategy Is Both a Checklist and a Promise
Writing down your marketing strategy is not busy work - and no, you won't be able to memorize every detail of your plan.
I haven't met a small business owner who could remember those details over a long period unless they looked at a cheat sheet.
Going back to such a cheat sheet and comparing, for example, your Facebook ad to your written social media strategy ensures that you don't forget anything in your ad, such as mentioning your brand promise or using your color scheme. Think of your written marketing strategy as a checklist.
However, a written marketing strategy is much more. It is also a promise to follow it at all times and abide by its guidance. And promising yourself to do it is often all it takes.
