There are so many things grabbing for your attention at the start of every day. Sometimes it’s the emails you know have been waiting on a response for way too long. Sometimes it’s the delay of a shipment you really needed like yesterday. Sometimes it’s one too many staff members telling you they can’t show up for their shift. And sometimes all of the important things just stack up—in the worst version of “can’t stop, won’t stop” way. But the thing is, even in the midst of dealing with this and putting out that, you’re still very much responsible for making sure you’re attracting new customers—cuz in a weird way, they fuel all these attention-grabbing problems we hate dealing with but love to have. And when it comes to making sure your small business is always flush with customers to serve, having a plan to put yourself in front of them is definitely something that deserves some of your attention. So today, we’re going to make sure you really understand why marketing strategy is important for your small business, so you stop telling yourself it can wait.

What is marketing strategy?

You could Google this and get some complicated and corporate sounding answer or you can read it here in plain English. A marketing strategy is simply a plan that documents how you are going to get potential clients and customers to know you exist—and get them excited about buying from you!

Go back to that Googled answer and it’ll also make you think it takes days to create one and that it needs to be 20 pages long. More on that in just a bit, but you can stop freaking out about how hard you think it’s going to be to create a marketing strategy for your small business.

Marketing strategy vs. tactics

Before we go deeper, we have to clear something up. Because a lot of people confuse the act of marketing with having a strategy, and they are not one in the same. Because your strategy defines the destination and route to get there—tactics are what actually get you there. So while you might hear other people refer “strategies” you can try (notice the plural), here at Enji we think you should have one strategy to guide you and you have multiple tactics to do the strategy. Email us if that doesn’t make sense!

The benefits of having a marketing strategy

Which brings us to the main point we’re trying to drive home here—why marketing strategy is important. And the short answer is, having a marketing strategy is important for your small business because it helps you get your marketing right a helluva lot faster.

• Keeps you focused because you can clearly see the goals you’re marketing towards
• Makes it easier to plan out your time because you know where you need to show up
• Helps you talk directly to your ideal customers and clients (read: the ones most likely to buy from you)

Another major benefit of having one? It allows you to work smarter (not harder as the cliché goes) and with less frustration because you aren’t waking up every day without a plan of what you need to do—then freaking out and scrambling to do something that makes you feel like you marketed your business that day but you really just wasted your time and then are going to spiral trying to figure out why your marketing didn’t work. (Woof.)

The last reason we want to touch on here is the fact that it’s hard to grade your marketing if you’re taking a “marketing by accident” approach. Think about it. If you have just been doing random acts of marketing, how are you supposed to be able to judge their effectiveness? And this is a big one because we’ve yet to meet a small business owner how isn’t stressed about whether their marketing is working or not (especially if they are putting money into it). So having a marketing strategy is important because you have a documented thing you can actually come back to and judge.

How to create a small business marketing strategy

Hopefully you’re feeling more than convinced about why marketing strategy is important and are now wondering how to create one for your small business. And the good news is, it’s not a multi-day project you can’t do yourself! You can create a marketing strategy in minutes in Enji—and one that is customized to your business! Here’s how:

• Create your Enji account (it’s free for the first 14 days!)
• Complete the marketing strategy questionnaire; this typically takes people 5-10 minutes
• Click “Create my strategy” and it’s done!

Yup—it’s that easy and you’ll also get tons of marketing tactics to try as you start to strategically do your marketing.

You work too hard taking care of all the important parts of your small business to ignore this one. So let marketing grab a more of your attention and start working it into your routine with a marketing strategy you can understand and make moves on. Start your 14-day trial of Enji to get yours!

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