I’ve been a marketing agency owner (twice), chief marketing officer (CMO), and marketing consultant for over 20 years. These are the most critical marketing decisions a business owner/leader will make.

1. Why are you marketing in the first place? If the answer is to make money, it will be a long road. Seek to help first.
2. Who is your customer? Write out, in painful detail, who your ideal customer is and why. This decision will guide every other one, so don’t take it lightly or aim too low.
3. What are your goals? Only start marketing with clear goals in mind.
4. What is your foundation? You need a solid foundation to draw in customers. Usually, it involves a content strategy and a website.
5. How will you price your product or service? The best business advice I ever got was, “Raise your prices!”
6. What is your value proposition? How will you bring the customer value and solve their problem?
7. What kind of offer can you make? Create an offer so good someone will feel crazy for saying no.
8. What marketing channels will you use? Social media? YouTube? Trade shows? Go where your customers are.
9. What will your marketing team look like? Be careful about hiring too low or too high. Full-time? Contractors? Or agencies?
10. How will your team execute? Who will be responsible for each part?

I’ll write more on each of these in later posts. Stay tuned!

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