Marketing Strategy PLUS™: frequently asked questions

 

How much does our marketing strategy service cost? What exactly is included? Do we only work with companies that market to women? Find answers to your questions below. If your question isn't addressed, please email us and we'll quickly get back to you with an answer.

What can I expect during your development of our new marketing strategy?

We'll approach the development of your marketing strategy using our 5-step process, partnering with you and others you designate (including your customers, if possible), to obtain the best available information:

1. Analysis of your company's capabilities and competition. Completing this analysis will allow us to strategically position you in the marketplace according to your existing capabilities, as well as identifying the direction you'd like to grow—both of which we'll take into account while crafting your marketing strategy.

2. Creation of your company's marketing personas. The development of personas will put names, faces, and customer characteristics at your disposal in an easily understood, memorable form, immediately honing your marketing effectiveness as you find yourself automatically adjusting your approach to female customers and prospects.

3. Analysis of your marketing materials and practices, if any. Using the information unearthed during the creation of your marketing personas, we'll evaluate your current materials and practices, from email marketing to the way your prospects contact you, among many other items, to see how well they align with your target markets and your goals. If you're not doing something that could significantly benefit your company, we'll take that into account, too.

4. Completion of prioritized recommendations. Using the results of all three items above, we'll prioritize your marketing opportunities. You'll receive our recommendations ranked in the order of the likely impact on your company's increased success.

5. Execution of your top priority or priorities. Finally, we'll begin execution of our prioritized recommendations, subject to your budget and approval.

Client reviewworking with Aio Design "I cannot thank Aio Design enough for all they've done for me and my business. Their talent for strategic marketing was extremely beneficial in creating my brand, and I enjoyed every minute working with them. Tiffany and her team are truly experts in their field."

— Shauna Heathman, AICI FLC, Founder, Mackenzie Image Consulting

How much does your marketing strategy service cost?

Our marketing strategy service packages start at $10,000, a small price to pay to give your business the chance to succeed, stand out in your industry, and earn the respect and loyalty of your customers. (And it's quite a bit less than an Ivy League college education.)

For new businesses, it's also just a small percentage of a healthy startup fund. (Entrepreneurship expert Scott Shane notes that firms with more than $100,000 in startup funds are 23% more likely to survive over time than firms capitalized with less than $5,000.)

That's true... but I own a small business, and that's a big chunk of my marketing budget.

Consider what you could receive for your investment:

1. Value. $10,000 is a drop in the bucket if our marketing strategies help you bring in many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars over time. Startups and small businesses are often tempted to bootstrap their way along, and in some ways that's wise—there's much to be said about carefully controlling costs—but in some cases it isn't. There's as much to be said about spending money strategically, particularly on tools that will allow your company to bring in more revenue than would be possible otherwise.

2. Worth. Can you put a price on succeeding in business instead of failing? The tools, strategies, and people who help you move toward success are worth their weight in gold.

3. Strategy PLUS marketing tools you can use right away. Many companies happily spend $10,000 and more on marketing plans, business plans, and strategic planning consultants... and they end up with a plan. Working with us, you'll come away not only with a marketing strategy, but with the first marketing tool(s) to implement it. If we identify a redesign of your five-page website as your top priority, for instance, you'll come away with a marketing strategy and a redesigned website for your $10,000 investment. You'll hit the ground running with a highly effective marketing tool already in hand and a clear path to follow, including where you should consider investing in the future so you can effectively plan your marketing budget.

A website redesign is included?

It depends on your individual situation and the marketing strategy we develop for you.

If you bring in the majority of your business by networking, for instance, your top priority may be different from someone whose website content turns off potential clients, or whose business isn't turning up in the search engines for certain keywords. And of course, if your website contains 40 web pages and needs a complete reorganization and redesign, we're probably going to be able to get only so far using your initial investment. We'll evaluate your situation and determine where your initial marketing dollars can best be spent before making our recommendations.

After developing your marketing strategy, including the creation of your customer personas, we'll evaluate how much of your original investment remains to be to put toward our top recommendations, and apply it toward those. You'll come away with a better understanding of your customer base, an overall marketing strategy, and the first tool(s) that will help you implement your new plan.

Can you work on my website first? It needs desperate help.

We can work on your website first, but it will be far more effective to create your marketing strategy foundation first. Otherwise, we might redesign your website, move onto developing your marketing strategy, and then discover new insights into your marketplace that require us to significantly alter your new website. In effect, you could be paying for us to redesign your website twice. We'll do so if you insist, but we'd rather allocate your marketing dollars more efficiently.

Not to worry! We work quickly; you may have to live with your website for less time than you'd expect. And you might be surprised at how many businesses are embarrassed by their websites!

What about your other marketing recommendations—those that aren't at the top of the list?

We'll let you know how much to budget for any remaining recommendations. You'll decide when to embark on these—whether you'd like to start right away or you'd rather take the time to work them into your budget. Regardless, you'll understand what each piece is likely to bring to the table for you in terms of selling to your target market more effectively.

To give you some examples, our recommended priorities could include redesigning your website, rewriting your marketing content to better appeal to your target audiences, revamping your social media efforts, improving your search engine rankings, re-training your sales representatives to connect more effectively with female decision makers, embarking on a new method of marketing, or improving a host of other marketing materials and techniques.

Do you only work with companies that sell to women?

We work with women-owned, male-owned, and publicly owned companies that seek to serve their female customers better, not only creating a more effective, pleasant experience but—given the fact that women are responsible for 85% of buying decisions—often significantly increasing sales.

When it comes to our Marketing Strategy PLUS™ service, we do focus on female customers and prospects. Women—particularly mass affluent women—form our area of expertise.

How much more will I be able to sell after using your services?

The way to answer this question can be put in the form of an equation:

Our expertise + your abilities +/- the market's demand for your services = increase in sales

We're definitely part of that equation, but you and your resources, including your team, are critical to it as well, and so is the state of your market. If your market area or industry is in a deep recession—for instance, the custom home building industry in some areas of the country today—you may increase your sales, but not nearly to the extent of a business owner who is fortunate enough to be operating in a market that's recovering speedily from the recent economic doldrums. On the other hand, you'll build a solid foundation that will position you well against your competitors during the coming upturn.

Your ability and willingness to implement our recommendations effectively are also key to your level of success. Our work is based on best practices in marketing and solid research, but if you have a salesperson who turns off your prospects, our work on your behalf will have little value where those prospects are concerned. (Hence our warning at the end of our marketing services page!) If your team has the talent and drive to take our strategies and tools and run with them, though, you'll enjoy a significant advantage in your marketplace.

I'm eager to get started, but I don't have the entire $10,000 available yet.

We understand! Although it can be more efficient to conduct our 5-step process without interruption, we've worked with enough small businesses and startups to understand the realities of running a small business. In cases where budget is a serious factor but you're eager to begin improving your company's position in the marketplace, we can work with you in stages, proceeding through each step in our 5-step process as your budget allows.

Ready to get started?

Contact Nancy Bowers at 803.760.5875 or via email. She'll guide you through the beginning of our process and be available to answer any other questions you might have.

 

What else would you like to know?