Podcast: What Is a Marketing Strategy and Why Do I Need One?

Bryn: Hello and welcome to the The Business Growth Agency’s Podcast the home of short highly actionable guides that help you and your business to grow. In episode number 7 [correction: actually number 9], we’re talking to Ceylan Boyce, a marketing strategist coach and consultant.

Now, when we talk to our clients about marketing strategy, branding, understanding their position in the marketplace their eyes tend to glaze over. I think there’s a perception that these kind of ideas aren’t practical, they’re complicated and they’re only relevant to big corporate businesses. In the next 10 minutes Ceylan is going to blow that idea out of the water. She’s going to explain why a marketing strategy is the first thing any business needs, especially if you’re an SME. Enjoy.

Ceylan: The customer doesn’t want to know about you. They’re not interested in you. The customer will listen to you only if you demonstrate a genuine understanding of their challenges, their needs, and potentially their dreams and aspirations. So instead of talking about your product you can just talk about their needs or their concerns.

Margarida: So welcome Cey, let’s go straight into the first question. Why do SMEs need a marketing strategy? Isn’t that something that only big corporate organisations need to do?

Ceylan: Yeah, hi Margarida, thank you. This is a great question. I had read an article on the smallbusinesses.co.uk website and the insight was quite interesting. They have conducted this survey amongst 250 SMEs and saw that more than 2/3rds of the companies were planning to increase their marketing budget but yet more than 60% of these businesses were actually not using their budget in a strategic or, I would call, wise way. So the marketing effort were very sporadic, or would be the spent on the same media channels as their competitors just to be present, you know? This is like not a happy stat. You know with all the new media, new buying behaviours, it is more important than ever to have a strong marketing strategy so that you don’t just waste your money basically. If you want to grow your business in an intelligent way, in a way that can scale up, then I would say marketing strategy is one of you key areas to really get strong at.

Margarida: Can you give us an example of an SME you’ve worked with who has written a marketing strategy?

Ceylan: There are several examples. This is a fashion influencer who had started her own press editorial agency in the fashion business. She called me, she’s a friend of a friend, and she was a little bit lost in the whole thing. She’s great at what she’s doing but she isn’t really ‘business wise’ let’s say. She was at the beginning of the adventure and she was getting her business through her personal business influence circle. So she would just call friends and clients she worked with before and get her business through that. When she called me we decided to go through one of the workshops in order to capture her uniqueness and adapt it to her audience’s needs and expectations, and we wrote a detailed marketing plan for her. This is what she said to me about 3 weeks ago, she sent me a message saying by month 6, after we did this marketing plan, she had tripled her followers and she started to get queries from big brands through all media channels. So this was one of her targets. We started to work with her about 18 months ago and she’s saying she is now working with massive luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, she has 7 employees and 12 freelancers. This is the power of planning strategically.

Margarida: And what are the key components of a marketing strategy?

Ceylan: I mean, if you went, let’s say, in a very scholarly way – there are 7 Ps of marketing… 4 Ps of marketing… blah blah blah. What I would say, for me, a thorough understanding of the market and deep insight into your audiences makes the deal. Is if you understand the shape of your market and you know exactly who your audience is then you can define how you’re going to act for those people.

Margarida: Why is it important for you to understand your customers decision making process?

Ceylan: Oh, this is my favourite question! When it comes to audience I always say “put those damn shoes on”. You know, it’s not just about profiling you customers and saying “oh, it’s predominantly male, x age and…” You know, this is yes, good. This is a controversial thing that I’m going to say but most of the companies they talk about their product, right? They go and they talk about their product and they say “here’s how my product is that good and how my company is that good and that’s why you should choose me”. The problem with this is the customer doesn’t want to know about you. They’re not interested in you. The customer will listen to you only if you demonstrate a genuine understanding of their challenges, their needs, and potentially their dreams and aspirations. So again, getting a deeper insight into customers life is much more than just, you know, profiling your customer in gender, age, economical or educational categories. There are a bunch of techniques and tools that I use to, kind of… given real insight and understanding of that customer life and real true needs and expectations in their life and then you can start to adapt you message…

Margarida: To their needs?

Ceylan: Yes, exactly to that customer. So instead of talking about your product you can just talk about their needs or their concerns, and give a solution and say “this is how I will resolve that”. So understanding the customer is basically the key to marketing but also sales. I mean understanding the customer is the key to growth.

Margarida: What do we mean when we talk about our company’s brand?

Ceylan: Oh, really spot on question again. Yeah, this is funny because, you know, most of my client when they come and we talk about this ‘brand’ thing they talk about “oh, I have this colour… we have this logo…” and they’re very enthusiastic about their website and what I see is there is actually great confusion about what brand is or should be and how you can actually have a strong brand. So this is the way I see it, the brand is your first way to connect with the customer. Consider it as the personality of your business. So the logo is one of many aspects, right? So I mean the name of your business is a brand, and then the logo comes with the visual identity. The way your business communicates: let’s say, are you a very professional and distant communicator or is it more friendly? Which media are you choosing? Are you more in the press? Or on social media? Which channels on social media are you choosing? Your team’s interactions with customers? These are all making a way to present your company or your product to your customer which is actually part of the brand. So if different aspects of your business are consistent then what we call your brand equity is strong. Thus, you would be able to connect with your customer in a deeper and efficient way. So yeah, I would say that ‘brand’ is much bigger and should come once you understood the customer so that you can use it as a business asset and as a business tool to connect with the customer. Does that make sense?

Margarida: Absolutely, absolutely.

Ceylan: Oh, great.

Margarida: So, our final question for you is: where can people find you online? Is there anything you would like to plug?

Ceylan: Oh, yes, thank you very much, first of all, for inviting me on the podcast. I really enjoyed the questions. You can find me on www.ceylanboyce.com or follow, again, Ceylan Boyce on Instagram or LinkedIn – there are many articles on LinkedIn. So I’m a consultant and I train and coach companies specialised in different sectors, but mostly in small to medium companies and we help you basically to take complicated decisions through our simple workshops and tools.

Margarida: Thanks Cey!

Ceylan: Oh well, thank you very much Margarida.

Bryn: If you have enjoyed this podcast and you want us to make some more, do let us know. Write us a review on iTunes or leave a comment on the The Business Growth Agency’s Facebook page. Thanks for listening and join us again next time.