Particularly in smaller and mid-sized businesses, there can be a temptation to focus on individual marketing campaigns in isolation. Marketing can be sporadic and reactive, rather than focused and proactive. And while individual campaigns are obviously important, and there’s nothing wrong with flexing to react to the market’s needs, if that’s all you’re doing, you could be missing out on opportunities to extend your reach and grow the business.

The solution is to zoom out from individual campaigns and take a look at the bigger picture. What does this mean in practice? Our approach involves three Ds: define, drive and deliver.

Define
In this first phase, ‘define’ means building a marketing plan that’s based on your business’s goals. If you already have a marketing strategy in place, take the time to review and refresh that strategy to make sure it’s really aligned with the company’s goals (and not just doing more of the same stuff you did last year). And if you don’t have a marketing plan in place – say, if your activity is more ad hoc and reactive – it’s vital you define what you want to achieve and plan your activity from there.

Drive
This is the bread and butter marketing activity, the part that most businesses tend to focus on. But, with a plan in place, this activity becomes much more strategic. In other words, ‘drive’ means putting your marketing plan into action. The specifics of this will depend on your goals, but may include branding, social media, content marketing (such as articles or other content), website development, and email campaigns.

Deliver
We know that marketing is an investment. ‘Deliver’ means making sure that investment leads to great results. Reporting is therefore an important part of the bigger picture, allowing you to monitor marketing activity and measure success. From there, you can modify your marketing strategy according to what works for your business. In that way, ‘deliver’ feeds back into ‘define’ and the process continues…

Putting the three Ds into action
At OCTOPUS, our first priority is getting to know you, your business and your customers – because that’s the best way to define, drive and deliver the marketing you need. Once we understand the business and its goals, we can build your marketing plan, manage expert campaigns, and refine your ongoing strategy accordingly. Discover how OCTOPUS can help you see the bigger picture.