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Ten questions to drive your marketing

January, 2017

Before diving headlong into marketing your company, Andrew Metcalf, director at Kent PR and marketing agency Maxim, advises you to step back and answer the following fundamental questions about your business.

  • Why does the business exist?  Answering this will determine the foundations for the marketing of the business.

  • What makes the business different from your competitors?  Understand this and you can then start to build a story about your offering, and position yourself in the marketplace.
  • Who is your perfect customer?  Define this and then you’ll be better placed to target them. Identifying them specifically, and their key contacts, takes time, but if you don’t do it, your marketing will cost more and miss the target.
  • Why do your existing customers buy from you rather your competitor?  Understanding why people buy what you’re selling will help define the core sales messages that can then be woven into your marketing communications.
  • What will motivate your ‘perfect’ customer to switch allegiance from their existing supplier?  What motivates one person may not motivate another. Understanding what motivates your customers enables you to send out the right messages that hit the right buying buttons.
  • What are the three things you want the business to accomplish this year?  This will focus the mind and help determine the scale of the marketing task you face.
  • How are you going to achieve your goals?  Answering this question may need expert help in terms of determining what marketing is best suited to reach your perfect customers and existing customers.
  • How can you reach your perfect customer?  You know what motivates them, you’ve agreed the messages, now you need to reach them, but that’s the hard part. Who do your competitors work for?
  • How much money do you have to invest to achieve your goals?  At the end of the day this will determine the scale of your marketing, and often the portfolio of marketing activities that you could put to good work.
  • Who is going to champion your marketing?  A fundamental question for the management of the business. Whoever it is, they have to have influence, understand it, be able to lead the marketing and take the rest of the management team with them.

When you understand your business’s function, its position in the marketplace, and your perfect customer, you will be much better placed to invest your marketing budget wisely and grow your business. 

Andrew Metcalf - Director

Andrew Metcalf

Maxim / Managing Director

posted in: advice, marketing,

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