You need to spend money to make money.

And platforms like Google and Facebook promise big returns on advertising spend and make it too easy for marketers to deploy ads and start spending. And marketing executives are flush with ideas on how to expend your precious resources.

But it can quickly become a bottomless pit.

Where should you spend your marketing budget so that it makes sense for your business?

A sound marketing strategy will:

1. Keep you focused on the right goals
2. Set realistic expectations
3. Stay within reasonable budget parameters

Who are you marketing to? This question is the foundation of effective marketing.

Most businesses have a few buyer personas. Each persona is a collection of common characteristics, aspirations, pain points and motivations.

We help our clients identify and flesh out the various buyer personas that engage with their businesses with specificity.

Being specific allows us to target leads with content that better resonates with them. The more in sync a business is with their audience, the better the engagement that follows.

For small businesses, ranking on Google rarely delivers the best bang for your buck. The cost of upselling an existing client may be a lot less than spending to acquire a new one.

It is important for small businesses to realise that content can serve goals across the entire buyer journey.

Whether it is opening up the sales funnel with lead generation activities OR warming up existing clients OR catalysing referrals, we help owners clarify the goals that matter the most to their business.

Can you express all that is wonderful about your brand / product in a single post? Is there one question you can address that will convince all your leads to convert?

A single brand story is never enough. An effective digital marketing initiative requires regular, varied content and consistent messaging.

We help our clients develop a systematic but simple approach to messaging in bulk. This usually involves 3 main stories types:

1. Expertise stories – share insights, knowledge and tips
2. Evidence stories – demonstrate how your product / service have manifested with our clients
3. Ingredients stories – celebrate the team, tech, and other ingredients that go into the creation of your product / service

There are a plethora of social platforms and digital channels out there. But your audience personas may only play on a handful of them.

And even if your customer is active on a particular channel, that does not mean they want to interact with your business on that channel. Being on the most popular social media platform can be the wrong thing to do.

We help clients work out which channels their customers are best engaged on.

A business does not have to rank on Google to be successful.

Neither is a spike in website traffic necessarily the end goal.

We help our clients identify the metrics that matter.

Content creation can be overwhelming.

Having a structured framework on how each piece of content will be conceptualised, created, iterated, checked and published is important.

A plan that culminates in an Actionable Playbook will keep all the collaborators on schedule and on task.

It begins with a conversation. You don’t need a complete vision. Just a desire to do better.

“Manesh was very responsive, patient and helpful. He knew when to suggest solutions but also took our request on board. We are very happy with the finished product and would certainly recommend Manesh to others.”

Director, a Melbourne Financing Company