Marketing-Blueprint-WP.Pdf

Of Home Building and Marketing Brand building and home building are more similar than you might think. More than just assembling the right tools and materials, you need to have a blueprint before you get started—one that reflects what you want your finished home to look like. Similarly, you’re going to need a marketing blueprint if you want to build the right brand on a sturdy foundation.

But what does a marketing blueprint look like? And how can your business create one and follow it to success?

Like a builder’s blueprint, a marketing plan needs to include all of the vital infor- mation that’s used in building a bigger concept. In marketing, that means exam- ining your audience, understanding your marketing channels, creating a brand concept, defining your value propositions, creating collateral and executing in tandem with a plan. If you take the time to sketch up a marketing blueprint, establishing a strong, identifiable brand that’s unique and appealing will be simpler. Your brand is your dream home: make sure it’s built right.

Homes come in all shapes and sizes—from single-story ranches to multi-story colonials. A style that’s appealing to one person might not be to someone else, however. The same is true for branding. If you think about your brand as a house, you’ll quickly come to realize that attracting everyone is impossible.

The first step in building a marketing blueprint is determining your audience: the people you want to directly appeal to. This is essential because it will define your brand: its messaging, appeals, concepts, marketing mediums and more.

Put together a profile of your key demographics before you start creating any marketing plans. Are you appealing to Cindy, a mother of 2 with limited income who values coupons, or Doug, a CEO with lots of disposable income and a love of his community? Knowing who’s interested in your brand will go a long way towards making sure you shape it correctly.

Not everyone is going to fit nicely into your box of key demographics, and that’s okay! The goal isn’t to paint a picture of every customer, it’s to paint a picture of the ideal customer. Targeting the perfect customer casts a net that’s wide enough to appeal to people with similarities to your intended audience. Cindy might not always have 2 kids and Doug might not be a CEO—their underlying traits are what matter, such as an emphasis on family or access to discretionary income.

Trying to build a brand without understanding the audience is like building a home without determining what style you like at the outset.

What’s unique about your home? There’s always something that makes a house special, and often, it’s this unique aspect that drives a sale. Your brand might not have a bay window or a finished basement, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its own value proposition. In fact, it likely has more than just one or two!

Val·ue Prop·o·si·tion n. 1. an innovation, service, or feature intended to make a company or product attractive to customers.

Your brand’s blueprint needs to be focused around its value propositions. Do you have a lower price than competitors? A superior product? Are you an eco-friend- ly business? Do you employ veterans? Donate to local community organizations? Whatever it may be, your value proposition(s) need to set you apart in a unique and identifiable way. Without them your brand is just another one on the block. Once you figure out what makes you special, see how that value proposition jives with your target audience. If Cindy has limited income and you offer the lowest price possible, it’s an appeal that’s going to click! Similarly, if you support local organizations, Doug might feel good about paying a little more for a product he can afford.

When you know your audience and can pair the right value proposition, your brand suddenly becomes irresistibly appealing.

You can’t start building a home until you secure a site. The right piece of prop- erty can be the perfect backdrop for you to build your home on. In the world of marketing, the perfect backdrop for your value proposition is the right intent. Simply put: what’s the purpose behind your marketing push?

Too many brands rush into marketing because they feel like they need to, without actually considering why they’re marketing. This can result in opposition from your intended audience, since there’s no real core call to action or clear value proposition. Before you start compiling strategies for your blueprint, make sure you truly understand the purpose behind your marketing.

Some valid reasons include:

1. To Drive Sales 2. Customer Engagement 3. Attracting New Customers 4. Product/Service Awareness 5. Increase Store Foot Traffic

Marketing campaigns can have multiple purposes, but need at least one clear motive to be successful. Without motive you have no way of benchmarking success and will lack a meaningful call to action.

For example, if the goal of your Facebook campaign is for people to check in at your business’ storefront, you can measure active check-ins against foot traffic during a specified time. If there’s a reward for check-ins, you can also tally claims of that reward. Even beyond the immediate, this will allow you to track larger metrics, like average customer spend during this type of marketing campaign. It’s a smart way to measure success in your individual campaigns.

You wouldn’t build your dream home on just any plot of land, so don’t make the mistake of marketing without a clear purpose in mind. In both cases, lack of planning will result in bigger failures.

Would you pick any Regular Joe to build your home? Or, would you trust a team of contractors with proven experience? Probably the latter. It should be no sur- prise that this is a question any marketing and branding expert will also have to ask themselves. Instead of choosing contractors, however, it’s about figuring out the right marketing mediums.

Once you know your audience, you need to reach them. If you’re building a brand targeted towards Cindy, you might find that email outreach, Facebook ads and direct mail are all effective ways in appealing to her. Likewise, if Doug is your valued customer, you might be better off investing in quality promotional materials, LinkedIn ads and booklets.

Areas to consider allocating your time and resources include:

Direct Mail Banners & Signage Email Marketing DIgital/PPC Ads

Social Media Ads Local Periodicals Television & Radio

Factoring marketing channels into your brand blueprint allows you to see where you’re going to be concentrating your efforts, marketing budget and messaging, and allows you to determine things like ad spend, competitors in the space and how your value proposition will be portrayed.

You wouldn’t waste precious time and budget on hiring a sub-par flooring con- tractor for your new home, so why would you throw money away on a marketing medium that’s ineffective or unsuited to your audience?

Before building your home, it’s always a good idea to have an architect sketch up a rendering. Your brand may be an imagined concept, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be put down on paper. Taking the time to map out your brand’s identity is the physical start of the blueprinting process and something every business should familiarize itself with.

A brand marketing concept isn’t necessarily a picture—it’s more of a timeline or a flow chart. How do you connect your product or service with your customer? The process is never as simple as drawing a line between the two, so it’s up to you to map out the steps in the interim.

Say, for example, you know you want to run a 10% off sale in June. Using everything you’ve built so far, it’s time to put it down on paper.

It’ll look a little something like a builder’s to-do list:

• Determine terms, conditions and restrictions for the sale. • Create value proposition messaging for the sale. • Determine target audience for the sale. • Determine proper marketing medium for reaching target audience. • Determine timeline for marketing message dissemination. • Determine redemption and data collection processes for campaign

This simple list determines the concept for a single campaign within your greater marketing scheme. As you create a concept sketch for each marketing campaign throughout the year, a grander picture of your business’ marketing efforts becomes clearer.

When you put everything on a timeline, it’s akin to rendering a visual of what your final product will look like. It’s the beginnings of a blueprint!

With the core concept drawn up and the details nailed down, you should be beginning to get an idea of your brand’s overall marketing plan and the concepts driving it. But before you can start building, you’re going to need to acquire the right materials.

Marketing collateral is diverse and needs to be selected with care, so that it works properly for communicating the right message in the right medium. If you’re sending a physical coupon to Cindy via direct mail, make sure the collateral is designed around the core call to action: bringing the coupon into the store. If you’re sending Doug an email to advertise a sale, make sure it’s clear, concise and enticing enough to stay out of the trash.

Assembling quality marketing collateral may be the lengthiest of the entire blueprinting process, for the simple fact that it’s the most crucial. Marketing collateral sells your message and communicates your brand’s value—if it’s dismissed or unseen, your efforts are for nothing.

Make sure to put due diligence into vetting your collateral, to make sure it holds up against all of the following criteria:

• Brand logo, colors and messaging are clearly identifiable • Collateral looks professionally-designed • Physical collateral is printed on high-quality material • Value proposition is clear and present • Call to action is clear and enticing • Messaging is clear and unambiguous, easy to interpret • Collateral is personalized wherever possible

No matter what type of marketing collateral you deem right for your toolbox, it needs to be applicable to the overall concept you’re striving to build.

Also, in a “measure twice, cut once” approach to marketing, make certain that you’re taking time to prep marketing collateral ahead of time! Trying to rush mailers through the printer a day before they’re supposed to go out, for example, is the simplest way to set yourself up for failure. Plan according to the blueprint, execute with timeliness and always look ahead when it comes to readying your collateral.

In any construction project, the planning phase is followed by the execution phase: it’s when the building begins. After you’ve put the effort forward in iden- tifying details, collecting materials, planning and preparing, it’s time to put everything together in a cohesive, organized way. And, the great thing about your marketing blueprint is that everything will be laid out step-by-step, one campaign at a time.

A builder will check the blueprint for a home at every phase of construction. It’s the benchmark for how things should be! Your business needs to do the same when it comes to marketing. Use your blueprint as a guide for launching your next marketing campaign, then check the execution of that campaign against the blueprint itself. This double-check will make sure you’re putting forth the right efforts, and that your efforts are properly timed and handled for maximum effectiveness.

For example, by looking at your blueprint in May, you’ll be able to see June’s marketing campaigns—including the mode of advertising, the collateral you’ll need and the key messaging. This will enable you to prep ahead of time and, as soon as June rolls around, roll out your campaign without delay. As you do, you can make sure the step-by-step execution plan is being followed. You can even lay out data collection strategies and benchmark goals to measure the success of that campaign in anticipation of your next one.

Precision is key in all of this. No good builder will accept a measurement that’s a couple of inches off or move on to another phase of building while one remains half finished. It’s all about doing things right to ensure a quality finished product.

With so much emphasis on having a marketing blueprint for your brand, it’s im- portant to take a moment to realize that having one doesn’t make you infallible. Your blueprint needs to be a living document, because things rarely go exactly as they’re planned. If a home builder forgets to wire an outlet, they don’t have to tear down the whole home; they just have to revisit that task and adjust their execution.

Let’s say that halfway through the year, you discover that your flyer campaign isn’t working as well as you thought it would. You’re seeing a high cost per con- version and the execution just isn’t reaching your target audience. It’s okay to re- vise the blueprint! Convert your upcoming flyer campaign into a direct mail drop, or find a way to repurpose the material you’ve already bought. There’s nothing wrong with adjusting and many times, it’s the key to continued success.

“All failure is failure to adapt. All success is successful adaptation.” - Max McKeown, Innovation Strategist and Brand Consultant

Take heed, however, adjusting for the sake of adjusting can derail your carefully laid plans! If you decide to change the floorplan of your home after the fram- ing has already been erected, it’ll mean more work and potential setbacks. Your marketing blueprint can suffer similarly. Know the difference between a small tweak—like changing your messaging—and an outright adjustment—like changing the entire focus of a campaign.

© Copyright 2018 AlphaGraphics, Inc. v.1.0 X.X.XXXX Always Follow the Plan No experienced builder is going to approach something so monumental as home construction without a plan to follow. When you consider brand building as an equally monumental task, it only makes sense to invest the time in creating a marketing blueprint.

Your marketing blueprint is the key to shaping your brand and its continued advertising efforts. Whether you’re trying to reach a new demographic of customers or working to boost sales in a particular quarter, being able to rely on a well- thought-out plan is vital to success.

Remember, every brand is the sum of its parts, just like every home is the cul- mination of many smaller details. Creating a marketing blueprint for your brand helps everyone know whose house it is and just exactly what makes it unique.

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