Coronavirus Winter Part 4: Tactical Marketing Plan

by | Dec 1, 2020 | Business Coaching Tools

Welcome to the fourth and final post in a series designed to help your coaching clients make it through the last surge of the Coronavirus pandemic. In today’s post, we’ll explore why your clients need an aggressive, measurable tactical marketing plan.

If this is the first post you’ve stumbled upon in this series, be sure to check out each one! They’re all linked at the bottom. In our first three posts, we’ve talked about leadership in crisis, how to fix cash flow problems, and how to help your clients communicate the unique value they bring to the marketplace.

Today, we’re going to help you coach your clients into turning a strong message into revenue with systematic, strategic, results-driven marketing.

What’s a Tactical Marketing Plan?

A tactical marketing plan is an aggressive, measurable plan to achieve three basic objectives: first, to increase leads; second, to improve sales conversion rates; and third, to increase annual revenue per customer so that profits increase exponentially.

It turns out that in marketing, small improvements go a looooooong way.

Take a look at something I call The Profit Equation.

Here, you can see that if you can help your clients improve just 10% in each of the three categories I defined above—number of leads, sales conversion rate, and annual revenue per customer—your clients can increase their profits by a whopping 947%.

(By the way, do you think your clients will retain you, as their coach, longer, and pay you more in the process, if you can help them generate nearly 1,000% in additional profit? Answer: that’s a no-brainer.)

The best part is, achieving 10% improvement in each of these categories isn’t magic.

It’s math.

And you can help them do it.

Lead Generation Strategies

Let’s start with lead generation. Here’s where many business owners get intimidated—or stagnant. They have two or three tactics they’ve used in the past, and they resort to it again and again, because they feel unequipped or unclear as to what to do next.

There are basically nine core lead generation strategies; coach your clients into prioritizing them, understanding that a well-rounded marketing plan will include many, if not all, of these tactics.

  1. Agency: third parties who rep your brand
  2. Content: publishing educational materials, such as articles, podcasts, videos, whitepapers, ebooks, and reports
  3. Digital: online marketing strategies, including advertising, SEO, and email
  4. Events: live and online events of any kind, where they can present, exhibit, or even host
  5. Media: traditional media buys such as TV and radio; don’t forget to explore new media, such as YouTube, Spotify, and podcasts
  6. Network: personal relationship building
  7. Partners: joint ventures and partnerships with other businesses
  8. Print: collateral with your message on it
  9. Social media: organic or paid social media

Conversion Rate Strategies

Here’s a hard fact: Many of your clients aren’t measuring their marketing.

They don’t know which campaigns are bringing in leads…which strategies are driving sales…which salespeople are performing best and why.

In marketing, everything should be measured. When your client pays for an ad, they should track response to that particular ad. When they send an email, they should measure the exact sales figure generated from that email.

Then, armed with data, they can make incremental improvements. They can fine-tune their messaging. They can improve their offers. They can duplicate the sales techniques that seem to be effective.

Get them to track everything they do, so that they can do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.

Increased Revenue Per Customer Strategies

It’s infinitely easier, more affordable, and more efficient to get an existing customer to buy from you again than it is to generate a new customer. So be sure your clients spend as much, if not more, on customer maximization strategies as they do on lead generation.

It's infinitely easier, more affordable, and more efficient to get an existing customer to buy from you again than it is to generate a new customer.

Here are some ideas:

  • Increased prices: Encourage your clients to look at their pricing model, and to create a strong enough USP and guarantee that they don’t have to fight for scraps in a crowded market based on price. Many business owners can afford to raise their prices without losing customers, and are simply afraid to do so.
  • Upselling and add-on selling: If your clients aren’t making offers for additional, complementary, or premium products or services at the time of sale, they’re missing out.
  • Bundling: Similar to upselling and add-on selling, encourage your clients to create bundles of products and services that can be sold together to increase the average ticket.
  • Subscription: Can your clients make what they have to offer a subscription-based service?
  • Referrals: Encourage your clients to create referral rewards programs, and to ask for referrals regularly.
  • Operations: Teach your clients’ operations teams to pay attention to what the customer needs and wants. Happy customers buy more frequently, and spend more money when they do.

By putting together a comprehensive tactical marketing plan, your clients will see increased revenue, retention, and profits—which will enable them to survive and thrive through the rest of the pandemic and well into the future.

Other posts in this series:

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