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Growing Your Business - Building Your GPCT For Marketing Success

Online Marketing StrategyAt Revenue River we've been meeting a lot of great companies lately looking for some form of marketing (it really does pay to be at the top of search engines). Everyone we meet has a different story of course, but in so many ways they're all the same. 

 

  • They're all looking to grow.
  •  They all realize that online marketing is no longer an optional investment. 
  • They all have better things to do with their other than analyzing their website page performance and conversion rates. 
  • They understand that unless they make a real commitment to marketing their business they won't reach their goals.  

Regardless of the size of their business or the state of their digital assets we always start out with the same conversation.  I like to ask a lot of questions and I always want to know stuff like:

Who are your customers?

How do they find you?

What are your growth goals?

 

Probably not a very good display of the Socratic Sales Method but that's for a different article.  This article is about your business and where you want to take it.  It's about trying to stimulate some critical thought about where you are, what you have in place, and where you'd like to go.  It's much more about business goal setting and projections versus inbound marketing and web design.  There isn't a lot of advice about social media services, but there are a lot of questions about your plans and challenges you face.

First Step:  I ask some basic questions about your business, sometimes the simplest questions spur great conversation.

 

“How do your customers buy what you sell currently?”

“What role does the website play in bringing in business?”

“Who and where are your target prospects?”

“Where do your prospects find what they're looking for?”

 

Next, it's time to go into your GPCT

  • GPCT

    • Goals

    • Plans

    • Challenges

    • Timeline


GOALS

“Do you have any specific goals or objectives the company is working to hit in 2013?  (Revenue, sales, profit margin, etc…)”

“What is the overall online marketing strategy for the year?”

“How many new customers do you need to bring in to hit the goal?”

“When you do achieve your goals, what will that change in your business?

"What will it change for you personally?"

Have you put thought into what will happen if you don’t achieve these goals?”

“What would happen if you didn’t do anything different?”

 

PLANS

“What are you trying to achieve with the web site?”

“What did you do for sales and marketing last year?”

“What online marketing activities do you have planned?”

“How many leads are you generating currently?”

“Tell me about your sales team. Are they cold calling?”

“How much does it cost to acquire your leads/customers?”

 

CHALLENGES

“What obstacles do you think will keep your plan from working?”

“What assets do you already have in place to achieve what we’ve talked about?”

“What do you think is your biggest online marketing challenge?”

“Do you or your employees have enough time and skills to do it yourself?”

“If you or your employees spend the time necessary what is the opportunity cost?”

 

TIMELINE

“When do you need to achieve these results?”

“What do you need to put in place to hit your goal?”

“What is the timeline to achieve your goal?”

 

As you can see this is a lot to go through, it takes some time to evaluate opportunities and determine whether we're a fit for each other or not.  Each of these questions can lead to critical thought and many more follow up questions.  All of this and we haven't really talked about what we do at Revenue River at all. We haven't talked about how online marketing is the perfect recipe for almost any business or service, it's just a matter of blending the right spices. 

But we will the next time, or the next time.  What we do is much more about understanding what you do than telling you about us.  Always has been, always will be. 


internet marketing, online marketing