Your marketing strategy becomes more complicated every year you’re in business. More clients, more teammates, and more responsibilities raise the stakes for your success. Fortunately, utilizing a marketing framework helps streamline your advertising plans—leaving less room for failure.
What Is a Marketing Framework?
Most business owners are guilty of “submitting the right answers without showing their work” at some point or another (flashbacks to high school, right?!). But as your business expands, skipping over the planning stages becomes challenging at best.
A marketing framework is a set of directions for (or a portrayal of) your marketing plan. It includes:
- Creative ideas
- Imagery and text
- Task distribution
- Goals
- Deadlines
- Anticipated web traffic patterns
All of these things might seem obvious to you (or not), but until you put it all together, you run the risk of missing important steps. The odds for error increase tenfold if more than one person approaches your marketing plans at a time.
How Can a Marketing Framework Benefit Your Business?
Whether or not planning is part of your personality, it will definitely help your business run more smoothly. Here are reasons to make marketing frameworks part of your routine.
A Marketing Framework Helps You Tackle New Situations Efficiently
“Go with the flow” doesn’t work very well in the business world. A marketing framework is just another tool that puts you in control and helps you get in front of mistakes.
Say your marketing strategy falls flat the first week. Without a framework, you could be left floundering for solutions. But with a framework, you’ll have already considered a host of things that could go wrong. You’ll tackle the problem logically, using your marketing framework as a guide.
It’s a One-Stop-Shop for Your Branding Needs
A marketing framework houses all of your brand information, transformed for each unique strategy. Whether your current marketing plan includes a seasonal discount or referral bonus, your framework will have the imagery and verbiage required for success.
Remember, top-tier branding is consistent across all platforms of social media and your website. It makes sense to create and keep all of your marketing content in one place to ensure it fits your voice, tone, and visual identity.
Related: 5 Reasons Why It’s So Important to Invest in Branding for B2B
You’ll Better Understand Your Clients
Even if you think you know your ideal clients pretty well, your marketing framework can prove or disprove your theories before rolling the dice with a new marketing strategy. A thorough framework requires research to learn more about your target audience and correct mistakes before you make them in real life.
For instance, your research might reveal more client interaction on Instagram than Facebook or LinkedIn. Knowing that will steer your marketing efforts in the best direction.
Sticking to Your Marketing Framework Leads to Better Business Decisions
Your marketing framework is something to lean on when the going gets tough. It’s a map that everyone on your team can follow, ensuring thoughtful and sensible decisions are made from start to finish.
There may be multiple paths to success, but you have to choose one in order to get there faster. In other words, if you outline steps A, B, and C in your framework, you’re less likely to panic and deviate to X, Y, or Z—even if they seem like good decisions out of context.
It Smooths Out Internal Marketing Processes
No one can argue with a blueprint, right? Just as carpentry contractors rely on a matching set of instructions to build a house—they each know their role and timeline—your teammates can rely on their marketing framework to guide the way.
A marketing framework ultimately saves you time and money by removing any guesswork. Your team members are able to jump into their assignments with enthusiasm and very few questions with a plan in their pocket.
Related: Defining and Redefining Your Business Processes
You’ll Have a Clear Path to Achieving Your Goals
You may have heard: the best way to reach your goals is to plan backwards from them. Your marketing framework is the plan! Create it with your goals (both short-term and long-term) in mind and you’re more likely to reach them.
An effective marketing framework is loaded with data figures and projections to steer your decision making. If you want to grow your revenue by 20% this quarter, your moves to get past that mile marker should be described (vividly) in your framework. Failing to do so nearly guarantees disappointment.
3 Steps to Start Building Your Business’s Marketing Framework
Understanding the concept of a marketing framework is somewhat different than applying its principles to your business. Many business owners don’t know where to start! Get a leg up with these three valuable tips.
Define Your Ideal Client
Begin your marketing framework with a detailed client description. Include where they spend their time on the Internet, how much money they make, and their specific service needs.
This step is never a waste of time! In fact, you may be surprised by how subtle details change every marketing cycle. The longer you’re in business, the more familiar you become with your clients—as long as you’re paying attention.
Determine Your Business’s Goals and Objectives
Create ambitious, but realistic goals upon which you can design your marketing framework. Make sure your goals are specific and measurable for the best results!
For example, your marketing plan may say, “engage with ten different online profiles each day during the first week of this cycle.” This specific direction will bring you closer to your short-term goal of building your client pool by 50% by December. And achieving your short-term goal brings you closer to accomplishing your long-term goal: reaching $2 million in sales by next spring.
Decide How You Will Use All of Your Available Marketing Channels
Check out everywhere your business exists online. You have several pages on your main website, an ever-growing email list, and multiple social media platforms. How can you use each of these to reach your audience?
Bucketing your marketing framework into channels can help you divide and delegate. A portion of your team can handle social media content, while others can manage email blasts and funnel plans.
When it comes time for action, you want all moving parts to come together like an elegant dance—not crash and boom! The more details you include in your marketing framework, the easier it will be for your team to execute.
Leveraging a marketing framework will enable your business to expand with fewer growing pains. You’ll get all of your team members on the same page, doing quality work to achieve the same important goals.
Our team is here to help you create and implement the perfect marketing framework for your business.
