START YOUR MARKETING OUTREACH WITH A PLAN—THEN WORK IT!
By Suz Trusty
No goal is achieved if it is not clearly defined. Many people start the New Year with a set of resolutions they intend to implement to improve their lives. Unfortunately, only eight percent of people keep them, according to a commonly cited statistic. While a business would never survive with such a small percentage of success, too often a company’s marketing is the least planned and goal-guided segment of their business operations.
Peter Osborne, founder of Friction-Free Communications, makes this point in his article, “13 Questions Tat Will Help Align Communications and Marketing” as posted on PR News Online. “Communicators and marketers are at their best when they can crystallize messages and share them consistently across platforms. Communicators play a critical role in attracting customers and keeping them, in building a loyal and trusting customer.” Yet he notes if communicators fail to align their goals with those of the company and its sales team and lose focus of the customer experience, they’ll miss the mark. For Osborne’s full article, see:
https://www.prnewsonline.com/13-questions- that-will-help-align-communication-and-marketing/
So, the obvious first step is determining and defining your company’s goals for 2019. Eric Heuver and his Eagle Lake Professional Landscape Supply management team review their strategic plan annually and have adopted the Smart Goals strategy to implement it. (See the article, “TPI President Eric Heuver—Strategically Evolving Yet Always True to Core Values,” starting on page 22 of this issue for details on how the process works.)
Develop Your Marketing Plan Whatever your methods or processes, once you have clear company goals, meet with your team to develop what Osborne calls, “an integrated communications plan that results in great content creation deployed on the right platforms for your target audiences and measurable outcome and performance metrics.”
While Osborne posts 13 questions to help guide the planning session, the most important for any business is his point seven, “What is our shared objective? Seek the one thing you’re holding onto to get to the future.” Reaching that objective prompts his point two, “How can we help improve the customer (or prospective customer) experience?” Which leads to an interesting topic that might help provide that answer in his point four, “What are the 10 most common questions that customers ask us?”
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All this should help you better define the strategy of your marketing outreach for 2019 and perhaps beyond.
No matter what market segments your company focuses on, referrals from satisfied customers are important to your business growth. Often, for golf course superintendents, landscape contractors and sports field managers, these referrals come from direct communication between your customers and potential customers through a phone call or text message. Or they may take place during a conversation at turfgrass association meetings, conferences and trade shows. Participation in industry events like these, whether they are at the local, regional, or national level, should be an important segment of your marketing plan.
In this age of technology, your website and social media also are prime platforms to deliver your message to your target audience. Tey give you the opportunity to tell your story your way. For Tips on how to do this effectively, see the article, “Put Social Media to Work for Your Business,” on page 10 of the November/December 2018 issue of Turf News.
Online reviews and referrals are becoming more important, especially in the homeowner market. According to a joint study with Landscape Management magazine, conducted by Jeff Korhan, founder of the Landscape Digital Institute, ninety seven percent of consumers check a company’s online reviews and 85 percent trust them as much as personal referrals. His article on the survey focused on the Goggle Search Tool and can be found at
https://www.landscapemanagement. net/communication-coach-the-google-tool-that-will-help-you- dominate-local-searches/.
TPI Turf News January/February 2019
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