Building Your Marketing Wheel

Build a marketing wheel to move your business forward.

What is a Marketing Wheel?

A marketing wheel is one way of visualizing how all of the various writing components contribute to an effective marketing strategy.  The wheel can be very simple if you are just starting or very complex if you are a ways down the road already.

Who Benefits From a Marketing Wheel?

If your marketing plan fills a good part of a wall, then you won’t need the ideas presented here.

If you at the point of needing to start or refine a marketing plan, then the ideas could help clarify and prioritize your marketing steps.

The Hub of  Your Marketing Wheel

For most businesses, the hub of your online presence will be your website.

While some small businesses will build Facebook Pages or use other platforms instead, do you do business with any company that does not have a website?

Your website can work with all of the other marketing pieces to implement an overall strategy, including list building.

Why You Need More Than One Marketing Spoke

Let’s say you build a website and put all of your effort into Facebook.

You get a plan that may work, but is unstable.

Possible Spokes for Your Marketing Wheel

The marketing ‘spokes’ in the following list represent a rich list of possibilities.

My recommendation is to start with three spokes and build from there.

The marketing components that will work best for you depend on the following:

1. The product or service you offer.
2. Your ideal customer.
3. Where your ideal customers are online? Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterist, email lists, forums, …

Suggested Starter Marketing Wheel

Like a wagon or car wheel, your Marketing Wheel will have more strength is it is built using at least three spokes.

Here are my suggestions for three spokes. Again, your business may work better with others, though these are close to universal for successful online businesses.

1. Mailing List
2. Email Newsletter
3. Social Media Platform

How to Roll Your Starter Marketing Wheel

Here are some basic steps for getting your marketing wheel moving customers your way.

Step 1: Setup Your Website To Receive Visitors

No point in spending time and money sending people to your website unless it can do the following:

• Present your business, products, and services in a clear, attractive way.
• Make it easy for people to order or contact you.
• Invite the visitor to join your mailing list.  Promise a free newsletter or gift of some kind to reward them for joining.

If you do not have a website, I suggest WordPress.  You can get started yourself for free or near free, endless ways to customize, and many resources for support.

I can help advise or create a website for you.

Step 2: Send Traffic To Your Site

Here is one strategy to drive traffic to your website:

• Add a blog post or article on your site.
• Post a short description and a link to the post on social media such as Facebook.

Other strategies include:

• Networking.
• Sending personal email to announce your site or new posts.  Be sure to encourage people to join your mailing list.

Important!
Please do everything you can to try to capture people on your mailing list. 
Building your list will likely be the most valuable activity for future growth.

Step 3: Send Out Regular Newsletters

Plan to send out a regular newsletter to your mailing list, even if no one is on it yet!

Send it out even if there are only a few people on your list.

Here is a content strategy that combines social media and your mailing list:

1. Write content for an article or blog post.
2. Promote the post on social media.
3. Send out a newsletter with similar content or an introduction with a link to the blog post.

Aim for sending out content that the reader will find valuable and will share.

Add More Spokes To Your Marketing Wheels

With your basic marketing wheel in place and rolling, try adding more marketing ‘spokes’ to increase your range and reach.

The following six ‘spokes’ will provide a fairly complete and balanced marketing plan for a modest operation. You will select spokes that are appropriate for you and your business.

1. Mailing List
2. Social Media
3. Newsletter
4. Networking
5. Content Marketing
6. Direct Response Advertising

Measure and Adjust

Try to measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. For example, track how many people respond to a social media post and visit your site. And track how many of those visitors join your mailing list, contact you, or purchase something.

Drop what is not working and try something new.

Split test to identify what works best for you and your ideal customer.

Need Help?

I can help you develop a marketing plan and help implement most of the components.

Please send a note to gregdixon@sharedvisions.com

Need More Information?

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I will send regular newsletters with information to help you roll your own Marketing Wheel and create the writing and marketing components.

See Also:

• Case Study: Marie Forleo Marketing Example
• Marie Forleo Interview with Seth Godin on Marketing
• Why Your Website is the Hub of Your Marketing Wheel
• Services