Before You Hire a Marketing Strategist

If you’ve ever worked with a branding or marketing professional, you know that we have a lot of questions. It’s our job to get to the heart of your brand so that we can faithfully design a plan for you to execute with confidence.

In order to get the most out of our time together, there are a number of exercises that I recommend any prospective clients complete before we work together. And if you’re not ready for the next step, that’s cool too. I hope you find them helpful and I would love to hear your thoughts and the results you experience either way.

• Reflect

Whether you’re a small firm architect, interior designer, or creative service provider, it’s tempting to focus primarily on what’s next. This year-in-review activity yields a high-level recap that will help you see the ebbs and flows of your year.

Using this simple template, or a blank calendar of your choosing, do a five minute brain dump of the past 12 months. Major projects, business milestones and events, personal engagements and commitments. Keep it high level in terms of information (Mom’s birthday as opposed to ‘this year we celebrated Mom’s birthday at my brother’s house…’). The goal is to get an idea of the ebb and flow of your life so that you can plan around that going forward. I’m also always amazed to see what we focus on and what we forget from the past few months. See what comes up for you and then look for themes and trends.

If prompts are helpful for you, try thinking about it like this — If you could edit the past year like you would a space you’re designing, what would you…

…emphasize or embrace?

…demo or remove?

…replace?

…refurbish?

…add more of?

…was anything missing?

• Audit

  As you build your brand, you create different touchpoints where your audience can interact with you. Your website, social media profiles, trade shows, business cards — some we create right away, others we execute on an as-needed basis. In this exercise you will create a comprehensive list that will help you keep track of what’s working, what needs to be updated, and what could be pruned.

  Make a complete list of all of the different places — both in person and online — where people might interact with your brand. When it comes to the digital realm, include both live and dormant accounts to ensure a cohesive brand experience.

You can also use this brand touchpoints checklist to make sure that there aren’t any that you missed.

• Align

  One of my main business mantras is, “If it doesn’t align, it doesn’t get time.” This exercise connects your goals with your efforts and provides a simplified take on how you’ve been marketing your business.

  Consistent marketing is a commitment. There are endless tools and resources and even the most tried-and-true platforms are constantly changing. It is important to periodically assess what is and isn’t working, as well as exploring new ideas and opportunities. This activity allows you to think objectively about your approach.

  • Take a piece of paper and fold it in half

  • On one side of the paper, write out your complete active brand touchpoint list including any branding or marketing efforts that you have spent time on in the past 12 months

  • On the other side of the paper, write your business goals as they stand today

  • Draw a line connecting each effort with the goal it is helping you achieve

Once you’ve gone down the list, see if there are any efforts that could not be connected to one of your goals. If so, something needs to change.

If the effort is something you love or enjoy or is important to your overall brand or audience, brainstorm ways to tweak it to make it work.

If the effort is a drain in any way, consider eliminating it from your efforts. When we stop doing something, it can leave just enough space for a new idea or opportunity to present itself.

What about the time and money spent on marketing?

For extra credit, you can add a third column with what you budgeted for and spent on each effort in the past 12 months. If there was no cost, but you or someone on your team dedicated time to that task, estimate the number of hours spent on the task each month and multiply by their hourly rate.

• Question

  These reflection questions are designed to help you dig deeper into the work you’ve been doing, where you want to go with your business, and what you need to do or change to get there.

  I have always loved a good project post-mortem. Taking an objective look at your work, assessing what went well and what could be improved, pinpointing specific changes that can be made — it brings closure and sets you up for improved performance on the next project.

Think about the past 12 months as one big project and then consider the following reflection questions:

What went well?

What went poorly?

Who were your most favorite clients to work with? What about your least favorite?

How did each of those clients discover you?

What steps were involved in their journey to becoming a client?

Where did they interact with you, both in person and online before hiring you?

What aspects of these jobs/client relationships did you especially like or dislike?

Were there any desirable leads that went dormant?

What do you think prevented them from moving forward?

Is this a place where more prospective clients might be getting stopped up?

What kind of work do you want more of in 2024?

What is standing between you and that work?

• Goals

  If you don’t take time to think about your goals and flesh them out in a specific way, the odds are not great that you will achieve them. Put your own twist on this classic marketing exercise to create concrete goals that you will be excited to track and achieve.

  Spend some time thinking about the goals you would like to achieve in the next one-to-three years. Challenge yourself to make them SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound):

Specific: I want to spend more time working ON my business this year (rather than IN my business)

Measurable: I’ll spend two hours each week planning and marketing my business and set one half-day every three months for quarterly planning

Attainable: I’ve been running a successful business for XX years and handling many of my own marketing efforts

Relevant: I love my business and delivering first-class service to deserving clients, so this will help me attract and continue to work with top-notch people

Time-bound: I’ll start working on my marketing plans for the new year by the second week of January

If SMART goals seem like too much to tackle right now, think about your goals in Good, Better, Best-case scenarios.

Good: Conduct one meeting to plan our marketing for the rest of the year.

Better: Conduct quarterly meetings to plan our marketing throughout the year. Set aside time at the beginning of the meeting to review what did or did not work since setting our goals and consider how we can adjust and improve our efforts.

Best: Conduct monthly meetings to review and plan our marketing. Make clear benchmarks to show progress. Plan celebrations when we reach individual goals.

Your Goal-Oriented Marketing Strategy

If you’ve made it this far, I’m excited for you. Working through these exercises will help you gain clarity. From there, we can work together to distill your messaging and simplify your marketing efforts. The work is not always easy, but I can promise you that it will be worth it.

When you’re ready, reach out to me. I would be honored to help you create a strategy that gets you closer to your goals. I promise that we will make it as simple as it needs to be in order for you to actually implement it.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Kim