Are you constantly wondering which marketing tactics are most efficient?
Do you struggle to communicate key messages to your audiences?
Are you unsure of what your brand should represent?
Well you’re in luck! Conducting a strategy session is the first step to answering these common questions. As well as many more! Every day, we see our clients benefit from the clarity that comes with strategy sessions and would like to share this with you!
Keep reading to understand what strategy sessions are, what they include and how they can benefit your business.…
What is a Strategy Session?
It’s understandable that many business owners might not quite know what to expect in a strategy session. So often we see business owners overwhelmed with marketing jargon and no clear vision of the meaning or importance of strategy.…
In a strategy session with The Creative Collective, you will be working closely with our expert strategists either in person or online (depending on your location). The session includes guided discussion that results in a thorough and informative overview of your business vision, needs and goals.…
The topics covered in this session can vary, depending on the current needs of your business. While some of our clients are just starting out and might need to begin with the basics, others may be more established and might be looking for further guidance and direction.…
What Kinds of Strategies Are There?
Brand Strategy…
A brand strategy is a great option for a brand new business looking for direction and clarification of brand voice and style. Brand strategy generally includes:
Organisational Goals and Objectives
What is the purpose or motivation of your organisation? What do you want to achieve?…
The first step of any good brand strategy involves discovering your ideal future and ensuring that all of your decisions help you get there. Ultimately, every business will have their own vision, mission and a number of specific benchmarks that they aim to achieve. Whether it involves reaching a certain level of brand awareness or increasing sales by a certain amount, you need to know what you are aiming for. Setting these benchmarks with our strategists helps all organisations progress toward an idealised future.
Unique Selling Point (USP)
Do you sell a product that nobody else does? Do you provide a service that is better and/or cheaper than your competitors?…
It is vital to clarify what makes your organisation unique. If you provide a product or service that is better, cheaper, or more unique, you need to clarify that and make it known! If your USP isn’t already obvious to you, our strategists can help you clarify how you are special in the eyes of your consumers.
Target Audience
Who are you targeting? What do they look like? What do they want?
It is so much easier to produce effective messaging for your audiences if you know who you are speaking to. While it might sound silly, it is so important to clarify your target audience’s age, geographic location, socioeconomic demographic, interests, hobbies, family dynamic and more. By clarifying these insights with a strategist, you can feel confident that you are aiming to gain the right attention from the right people!
Influencers and Industry Leaders…
Do I need to be working with influencers? Who should I contact? Should I follow industry leaders?
In this modern age, influencers can be key assets to your business. If you have strong connections with well known and trusted influencers, your product or service can be shown to a much wider audience. To make this a possibility, our strategists can research and suggest potential influencers and provide recommendations for fostering a strong relationship. This can also include industry leaders who already have a strong position in your business area. Forging connections with these leaders can help you to gain allies that may provide beneficial insight and opportunities for your organisation.…
Competitors
Who are my competitors? Should I be keeping track of their movements?…
Working with our strategists can help you determine which organisations are your direct competitors as well as determining how you can most effectively compete with them. This information is so important as it clarifies whether your organisation is holding it’s own or needs to push operations in a different direction to stand out from the crowd.
Review of Current Assets…
What do I do with my social media? Is my business on enough platforms? Should I be extending organisational operations further?
Our strategists will take the time to look over your current business assets. This includes your website, social media profiles, graphic content, as well as any client databases. This information can be very helpful as it shows what you have and what areas may need improvement. Strategists can assist in suggesting which assets are most valuable and which might be a waste of time.
Recommendations and Action Plan…
Okay, but now what? What do we do with all this information?
Depending on your package, most strategy sessions will include a number of recommendations and an action plan. If our strategists have uncovered a particular area of weakness during the strategy session, they will provide recommendations to fix the issue. In some circumstances, we may suggest that you should look into some of the other packages we provide such as SEO or social media services.…
Social Media + Content Strategy
Aside from general brand strategy, your organisation might also need help clarifying your social media and content strategy.…
Our social media and content strategy services generally start with a one-off social media consultation where we can find out exactly where you’re at, and where you want to be. From this consultation, we can help you produce comprehensive social media strategies including content style guides, content calendars and budgets.
These strategy sessions can help you answer questions like:
- Which social media platforms should my organisation be using?
- What capabilities does each platform have?…
- How do I start Facebook and Instagram ads?
- How often should I post?
- What is a good monthly boosting budget?
- How do I know that my posts are reaching the right people?
- Why isn’t my business gaining any followers?
- Am I investing too little or too much time in social media content?
What Is The Benefit For Me?
It’s easy to dive right in to business operations without having a bigger picture in mind. However, any decision made that is not based on a larger understanding of your organisation can lead to wasted time, money and effort. Strategy sessions ensure that you have a comprehensive understanding of your business. You can therefore feel secure knowing that your marketing efforts are directly contributing to your objectives.
Engaging our team in a strategy session also provides you with an objective third party that is able to view your business position clearly, without personal feelings getting involved. The feedback provided by our strategists is based purely on what they can see. This makes it extremely useful to your organisation. In addition, our strategists are experts in the field who have worked with a number of businesses across a variety of industries. They have extensive experience and knowledge and are able to provide insights that your own team may not be equipped to uncover.…
What Do I Do Next?
You can check out our strategy session options here:
Once you have completed your strategy session, there are a number of steps you can take:
Firstly, it is important that you take all recommendations into consideration and put them into action ASAP! This is a great first step that can make quite a bit of difference.
Next, if you are feeling that your team’s skills are lacking in certain areas, we can suggest a number of useful training courses from our sister company, the Training Collective. These courses can assist your team in bridging any knowledge gaps and will provide more confidence moving forward.…
However, if you prefer to outsource some of your business operations, you can engage us in any of our packages. We offer packages such as website rebuilds, photography sessions, SEO services, social media management services and more. For more information, you can check out all the links on our website.…
If you still have questions, talk to us! We offer a 15 minute no obligation complimentary chat, and from there can schedule 1-2 hour consults right through to half day and full day strategy sessions with key personnel, or the entire team.…