One of my first marketing jobs was running Local Store Marketing for a regional developer in a fast casual restaurant franchise. We were growing aggressively and had 13 restaurants launch within the span of about three years. A question that every new franchisee struggled with was this question “When do I start marketing my restaurant?”
If you start marketing too soon, you run the risk of spending money when your intended target audience forgets about your offer when they’re ready to buy.
If you spend too late, your business is sitting idle while customers are just learning about you and why they should work with you.
It’s important to understand that you cannot run ONE marketing campaign and expect to reach your goals! Knowing when to launch — and how long to sustain — your campaigns comes down to understanding a few core principles. Here’s the framework we use with clients to build campaigns that convert
Understand Your Marketing Mix
First you need to understand your Marketing Mix - Product, Place, Price, and Promotion – and what those decisions mean to effectively reach your customers. The key here is to work backwards – start with the type of customers that you want to reach and then build your Marketing Mix to properly reach that group.
Product and Price: If you’re buying a brand new car for $50,000 it’s going to take more time for your customers to make a decision than a $6 burrito. How does that value proposition compare with everyone else in your space? Are you the most expensive offer with the highest value? Are you the cheapest choice that can be fulfilled in the fastest time?
Place / Promotion: Where do your customers get their information and how much effort does it take for you to get your message across to them versus the competition? In digital marketing, we do a lot of work on Google and Facebook advertising to track audiences based on their location. But if you’re trying to connect with someone in the middle of their morning commute, you need to find a way to reach them while driving. That might mean radio, or podcasts, or billboard and transit advertising.
Time to Run Your Marketing
Once you know the desired audience and how you plan to reach them, you can look at the amount of effort that you need to reach them. Who else is using that same tactic? Are you competing with 50 other firms for the AI response to a search on Google? How many advertisers are on the hottest iHeartRadio morning radio show in Dallas, Texas?
Consider the amount of “touches” you need to properly reach that group to convince them to buy from your business. Research has long suggested that a prospect needs multiple exposures before acting — estimates that hovered around 7 touches in earlier decades are now closer to 15–20 in today’s fragmented media landscape.
Apply this exercise to your business and you’ll be able to estimate the amount of runway you need to launch your own Revenue Engine for your marketing.
