Soul Marketing – Marketing Strategy Scan

When organizations want to do something about it, they often turn to solutions like:

• Technology, processes and actions with questions like: how can we do more with social media?
• Place more advertisements to generate more visibility (or use less advertisements to cut costs because they don’t know what their added value was in the past).
• A larger focus on their products or services with the idea that they will sell themselves (what sometimes is the cause, but more often not).

In other words: there is the focus on a one-sided solution instead of looking at the whole picture. Or new tools or technologies are used when the foundation is not clear.

Soul Marketing (= Marketing, the Soul Business way) provides answers to the marketing questions at hand. The tool we use is a Marketing Strategy Scan.

What is it?

The “Marketing Strategy Scan” is a short audit of an organization. The result is a report that contains both a recommended marketing strategy as directly applicable tips (so both long and short term solutions).

These are the three steps:

1. Assessment of the current situation

These are important elements:

• Why? What are the reason of existence and the purpose of an organization? We call this the foundation: mission, vision, purpose, values and DNA. Besides that it is important to know what the organization wants to achieve in the short and long run.
• For whom? Who are the customers and what is the process or journey they go through?
• With whom? Who is part of the team? Not only from the sales and marketing department, but also from the rest of the organization and its (potential) ambassadors.
• What, how, where & when? What are the current marketing actions and strategy? Which channels are used? What does the marketing funnel look like? When and where are which actions performed?

2. Report creation

A report is created that contains the description of the current situation, practical suggestions and directly applicable tips taking into account the current situation and the desired one.

Soul Marketing is different than other ways of working because of:

• A “holistic” view: we take into account all relevant elements (why, for whom, with whom, what, how, where and when) instead of just focus on specific actions like starting a blog, creating a brochure or a better use of social media.
• “Stealth marketing”: what can have the biggest impact with a small budget? Of course there is a trade-off with time that has to be invested, but most suggestions from the report cost less than a couple hundred euro.
• Fast:
  • When looking into the current situation: no time-consuming studies or panel discussions, but short interviews of key people who can provide relevant information. In that way you will have the report in no time and you can start very quickly.
  • When implementing: the suggestions contain both the marketing strategy (helicopter view) as quick wins. In that way the first results can be obtained very fast.
• Tried and tested: the suggestions are based on what Jan Vermeiren has learned (both do’s and don’ts) when creating two worldwide bestselling books and building a mailing list of more than 100.000 people. This not only led to a successful company, but also to appearing on the radar of LinkedIn. The result? They chose Jan’s previous company, Networking Coach, as their first partner in the world to provide the LinkedIn Live sessions.

3. Discussion and advice

The suggestions of the report are discussed and – if necessary – explained more in depth.

The recommendations and priorities are assigned so action can be taken immediately.

The organization has then enough input to take action itself. If desired, a consultant of the Soul Business team can be hired as a strategic sparring partner for the roll out or to work on specific processes or projects.

Way of Working

The way in which the current situation is assessed is a pragmatic one: interviews with the key managers or other co-workers who have a good overview and understanding of the situation. If necessary, a short questionnaire is sent to other co-workers to collect the necessary input.

In this way an image of the current and desired situation can be formulated in a quick and efficient way. In other words: there are no time-consuming studies or analyses.

Customization

Since every organization is different, with its own culture, own products and services, own level of employee and customer satisfaction and own sales and marketing approach, every Marketing Strategy Scan is customized. Only the topics that are relevant for the organization (or project) are included in the Scan.

Result

The result of the Marketing Strategy Scan is a report with suggestions regarding the marketing strategy including how to optimize the marketing funnel and the customer journey.

The report also contains tactical and practical elements. For example: which actions to take and which tools to use. Some examples: social media, events (participating, sponsoring or organizing), advertisements on traditional or new media, press coverage, own website/blog, sampling, fairs, webinars, white papers, … Of course the selected actions are dependent on the situation of the organization.

Finally the report contains quick wins so real results can be achieved fast!

The recommendations from the report can be put into practice by the organization itself, whether or not assisted by a consultant of the Soul Business team.