This week sees the launch of UniquiTV – our weekly video blog answering your marketing questions.

Today’s question: Where do I even start with my marketing plan?

You can download the clarity test template here.

Financial Services, marketing, Financial Planning, marketing plan

TRANSCRIPT:
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Hi, I am Laura Janes. Welcome to UniquiTV.

Every week we answer your questions on Financial Services Brands & Marketing and we are kicking off our first episode with a question that is “Where do you even start with marketing?” How do you know that you are on the right track? Hosted by Laura Janes founder of Uniquity

The way I would approach this is starting to think through a very simple framework that has got four parts to it.

OBJECTIVE
The first part is the Objective. What are you trying to achieve with your marketing? It helps if you have a specific goal in mind. Grow by X or something like that.

CUSTOMERS
The second is being really clear about your customers. Who you are trying to target and engage. You can use some type of demographic segmentations but I much prefer it when we think about the emotions of customers and human engagement. Netflix, in, fact have said that demographic segmentations are a completely worthless thing to do, and you really have to get more into the emotions of how your customers think and feel. Think about how groups of your customers might think in similar ways.

CONTEXT
Then there is the Context. What is the context that we are operating in? We live in unprecedented times, we have rising inflation, we’ve got Brexit, we’ve got all the tech that is coming into the market. You have to understand the context that you are operating in and the competitors that are also at play to understand where you can strike your unique voice in the market.

BRAND
And finally, there is your Brand. What does your brand stand for? What does it mean? Who would even care about it? It has to be something really compelling.

Those four things might sound like a lot and yes it is. You really have to do quite in-depth and deep analysis of those four different things to get a really great answer!

THE CLARITY TEST
One way of starting is what I call The Clarity Test. You can get a copy of this on my blog where you can print this off and have a discussion with your team about whether you can answer these questions. So the questions are quite simply:

WHO ARE YOU?
What are you known as? What is your brand in the market?
For me, it would be Uniquity.

WHAT DO YOU DO?
What services do you provide?
We provide financial services marketing and branding.

WHO DO YOU DO IT FOR?
Who are you trying to target?
I mainly work with ambitious or growing financial services brands and that’s the mindset group of people who want to learn and grow.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?
This is perhaps the most important. Why does what you do matter? Because if you can’t answer this with a really compelling answer and something that you really care about then you can guarantee that no one else is going to care about it.

Why does it matter, Uniquity as a brand is all about potential. Helping people realise their potential, helping businesses realise their potential, it underlines everything that we do.

I really recommended if you just want to start somewhere, print this off, and have a discussion with your team. See if you can answer these questions. If you can, brilliant, you have probably made a great start on your branding and positioning. The next step would be whether your brand identity and how you look visually makes a good representation of that. This is a really great place to start and in future weeks we’ll be going through some of the other areas of customers and objectives and contacts and how to dig under those a bit more.

I’d love to see what you come up with. I am on @uniquity_co on Twitter. Snap a picture, I am happy to give you some feedback.

I look forward to seeing you next week.