If you are someone that thinks that marketing is a dark art and that no one on earth can help you grow your business, through a little bit of planning then marketing strategy isn’t for you.

The businesses that continue to benefit from marketing strategy year on year are the ones that are open to the whole growth process at the beginning.

For some, strategy can feel like a massive chore that comes with a free headache. It feels like a heavy process and document that will never get used, it feels like a lot of planning and a lot of time waiting for something that you have no guarantees will work.

For others, it feels like a breath of fresh air.

It is a new lease of life and some creative hope in an otherwise, fairly mundane offering. It can create structure and accountability for everyone involved which basically just reduces stress and makes sure marketing is actually done with pride and dedication.

Until you have had a full marketing strategy done for you, it is understandable that it can be confusing as to what this can entail.

Strategy is designed to take the basics of a marketing plan and beautifully dovetail it with the rest of your business so that marketing doesn’t sit as a separate entity. Marketing as a separate section of your business is a very old school way of thinking and nowadays and certainly in my approach, you simply can’t separate it from every other aspect of the business.

Sales, customer service, technical support, drivers, designers, finance, receptionists… whatever. They are all highly integral to marketing and successful marketing output.

This is where people go wrong.

They spend years wasting money on ‘tick box’ marketing hoping for the best, quietly sitting there with their fingers crossed behind their back just willing it to work with little effort.

Long-term it never works but it can feel quite reassuring as a business because you are at least doing something, right? Having a strategy just means that there are no headaches, no nasty surprises and no wasted money.

Everyone knows exactly what’s happening when it is and there is a plan for the year ahead. I must stress though that this doesn’t mean everything is rigid and you have to stick to it and nothing can change because as we all know in business, things do.

Therefore, you get the best of both worlds, you have the structure and strategy as your comfort blanket but then on top you can couple it with reactive content and marketing as well to make sure your business remains dynamic and agile.

So, the question is…

Are you the person that marketing strategy can work for or are you the one that will just spend the next few years wasting money and avoiding what you know could really accelerate your business? Are you avoiding it because of the upfront time involved in creating it?

Let me give you some free time, less stress, happier customers and a better business. Visit my website for more information www.gemmaangharad.com.