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Is Your Marketing Puzzle Just a Handful of Disconnected Pieces?


Dozens of blank puzzle pieces suspended in the air, with some parts of the image fuzzy against the black backdrop.

Your competitor ran an Instagram contest, so you decided to try one. Then, you had a summer promotion, so you sent out a few emails. When your team spent the day volunteering, you posted photos on social media.

These are all fantastic ideas, and one or more of them likely gave you a bump in brand awareness or traffic to your website. Still, there are a few problems with this kind of approach:

  • It lacks an overall vision for what you are trying to accomplish with your marketing budget.
  • There aren’t any goals or corresponding metrics, so you don’t know if you succeeded.
  • You had a budget, but you blew through it by June because you didn’t really know how you planned to use it.
  • You have no idea what you should do next.

This kind of marketing is like a friend tossing you twenty pieces of a 1,000-piece puzzle and saying, “Here, let’s work on this puzzle.”

A handful of blank puzzle pieces on a table with four hands each holding an additional blank puzzle piece.

You don’t know what the image is. You don’t have any idea how the pieces relate to one another in the bigger picture. And you’ll never succeed at creating the puzzle without the other pieces.

Before moving on to a comprehensive marketing strategy, let’s acknowledge the benefits of this kind of marketing:

  • It’s fun. You’re just being creative and taking whatever path sounds exciting.
  • It takes as much time or as little as you want.
  • You have no way of knowing if you’re succeeding, so there are no analytics or refining.

But even with these benefits, key pieces are still missing without a comprehensive marketing strategy.

A comprehensive marketing strategy aligns with the overarching goals of your organization and you will enjoy metrics that tell you if you are focusing on the right areas and headed in the right direction.

By examining a few key aspects of marketing, you can see how a comprehensive approach provides all the pieces of the marketing puzzle and allows you to create a complete vision.

An assembled blank puzzle against a black background.

Look at how each of these areas is far more beneficial to your business as a complete strategy:

Social Media: A strategic approach to social media determines which platforms are most used by your target audience, tailors posts for your audience segments and develops campaigns that are designed to increase engagement and traffic to your website.

In a coordinated strategy, you’re not just posting when you feel like it. You’re trying to achieve specific goals with your social media profiles and you design posts to boost engagement, build a following or increase visitors to your site.

Content Creation and Distribution: With a content marketing strategy, you’re no longer creating a blog when you have a little extra time. Your team creates a list of topics that are valuable to your audience and you use your content to move leads through the buy cycle. For instance, a different topic is interesting to a consumer who is simply browsing than one that would be interesting to someone about to finalize a purchasing decision.

It goes far beyond blogs. A strategic approach determines which in-depth topics would be right for a white paper or a Q&A video. You’ll have a content calendar and a set of metrics that signal whether your mix of content types is right.

Web Design: Your website is one of the critical, if not the most critical, aspects of your marketing strategy. This may surprise you if you used a DIY template, never considering how your website would be a part of your marketing strategy. Here are a few of the ways your website shapes your marketing:

  • Search Engine Optimization: Also known as SEO, this is a set of guidelines for improving your site’s rankings on search engines like Google. It’s the foundation for strategic web design that prioritizes elements like load speed, keywords, meta descriptions, white space and image use.
  • Accessibility: Did you know that the CDC estimates that up to one in four adults have some type of disability? A website design that is not accessible is limiting the number of consumers that can use it.
  • Mobile Optimization: If your site isn’t optimized to work across a variety of devices, including and especially smartphones, you are probably losing opportunities. Users who need to scroll or resize to see menus or read your content will click away to a competitor.

Image showing a person using a laptop and smartphone with responsive web designs.

A Comprehensive Approach

It’s easy to see how each area of marketing improves when a strategy is applied. The same is true across a much bigger spectrum. When you take a strategic approach to your marketing strategy, amazing results will follow:

  • You will have a brand identity that has a certain look, voice and tone. Your audience will begin to recognize your content before you display a logo or company name.
  • As you create value-added content that guides consumers to a decision, you will enjoy being regarded not only as an industry expert, but as the brand your audience thinks of first when it’s time to make a purchase.
  • When it’s time to meet with company leadership for your marketing review, you’ll be able to show them solid results.
  • You will know what your return on investment is for your marketing activities.
  • You’ll build brand awareness with consumers and pride in your team.

Like playing around with a handful of puzzle pieces, a casual approach to marketing can be fun, but you will find you miss out on bigger rewards, like the achievement of seeing an entire vision come together and result in growth.

At SJC Marketing, we know which puzzle pieces you’re missing in your marketing strategy. Even better, we know how to help you put together a vision for a comprehensive approach that gets your whole organization excited about the direction you’re headed. Contact us to get started on your strategy!

 

 

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