At Monkeytag, we work with businesses ranging from large to small, across all industries seeking out ways to market for success. Our agency’s approach is about marketing for success by helping decision-makers understand how our team can grow their bottom line with effective planning and strategizing.
It’s essential to understand that marketing is a constant endeavor, ever-evolving based on your customers’ needs. Our role is to plan and execute new strategies to help you succeed continuously.
What does marketing for success really entail? We’ve found many people have similar questions regarding how to get started, what marketing tools to use, how much to spend, and the value of working with an agency.
Below we look to answer some of those questions.
Q: What is and why do you need a brand strategy?
A: A brand strategy is a long-term roadmap that allows you to understand your brand’s full value and how to position it in alignment with your overall business goals. It helps solidify your purpose to have a clear identity among your customers, community, and competitors.
Our brand strategy process includes five steps:
- Brand Audit – We review your existing materials and tools, analyze and define your competitive landscape, and research your audience and overarching category.
- Brand Plan – We define your brand core by outlining your vision, purpose, values, positioning, and goals.
- Brand Communication – We develop your tagline, value proposition, messaging pillars, voice, and tone.
- Brand Design – We review or create your brand identity, assets, and guidelines.
- Brand Marketing – We identify and outline marketing priorities, tools, timelines, resources, and budget.
Q: What is and why do you need a marketing plan?
A: Once your brand strategy is defined, the next phase is building upon those strategic components to develop a marketing plan. A marketing plan is an operational document that outlines your short-term approach for the coming year, including detailed action items coupled with forecasted results. A marketing plan will act as your playbook to keep everyone on your team aligned.
Our marketing plan process includes six steps:
- Marketing Strategy – We lay out the framework for how to reach your long-term brand or company goals, determining what actions to take to build towards them.
- Marketing Goals – Then we outline specific short-term goals to help establish progress or success along the way.
- Marketing Audience – We identify and define who your brand or company is trying to reach.
- Marketing Tools – We determine which marketing methods or channels should be used to reach your target audience.
- Marketing Campaign – We plan what content is needed to best engage your audience. Campaigns are focused and aligned to your short-term goals, generally addressing or solving a need your customer may be having.
- Marketing Results – We determine what metrics or data should be measured to track progress and success.
Q: What tools do you need to market your business?
A: Marketing tools are methods, materials, or channels that companies use to promote their products and services, such as a website, social media, email, or print. Most companies will use a range of marketing tools depending on their goals, audience, and objectives.
Q: How do you determine a marketing budget?
A: Determining a marketing budget is vital to allocating enough resources to help market your brand or company effectively. Since businesses rarely benefit from the concept of “build it and they will come,” then it’s essential to ensure your marketing budget aligns with your financial revenue goals. We advise our clients to allocate anywhere between 5% to 18% of their gross annual revenue towards marketing. This budget range varies depending on the goals of the company, as some clients will budget more if they are launching a new product or service, while others will budget less if they are simply sustaining one.
Try our marketing budget calculator to get an idea of how much your business should be investing towards marketing needs.
Q: How can an agency help your business?
A: First and foremost, we believe an agency should act as a partner and as an extension of your team to help you identify opportunities for your business to grow. An agency that is transparent with its methods and communication can assist with evaluating your company’s marketing needs and outline action plans to help implement them. Additionally, an agency will support your company with not just one person but a team of people to collaborate and problem-solve together.
That’s a quick look at our approach to marketing for success. We hope these answers were insightful and helpful. If you have any more questions for us, please feel free to get in touch. We would be happy to hear from you.
