Developing A Strategic Marketing Plan – Websites.ca Talk Ep. 44

Sean Corbett:
Hey everybody, it’s Sean Corbett here at Websites.ca Marketing. Today we’re going to talk about developing a strategic marketing plan, sort of an overview for your entire business and a document that you can use moving forward. I’ve brought in Ken Barnes, he’s the founder and CEO of KJB Digital, which is actually here in my town, Penticton. So, that’s kind of cool. Ken, thanks for being here today.

Ken Barnes:
Hey Sean, thanks for having me.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, for sure. Before we get into the topic of the show, Ken, I was hoping you could tell us just a little bit about your background and maybe what led to starting your marketing agency.

Ken Barnes:
Yeah, sure. Well, I kind of have a background education-wise that isn’t necessarily typical of a marketing person. I have an undergrad degree in mathematics from Simon Fraser University and just was always sort of decent at mathematics. My dad was a math teacher in high school, and so he certainly encouraged that. But thanks to the Cooperative Education Program there, I was exposed to marketing after a couple of stints and found that it was something that I enjoyed, namely because it involved creativity and storytelling, and also involved some of that mathematical stuff, since you needed to analyze campaign results and come up with recommendations based upon that data. Then I followed it up with an MBA at the University of Alberta to give me some more business knowledge and theory and so forth to fill in some of the gaps, and subsequently worked for a few advertising agencies.
So, my background is primarily from a larger agency type of environment, working in downtown Vancouver with Palmer Jarvis, which is now DDB, and then also in Calgary with a firm called William Joseph Communications. And having young kids, my wife and I, being in Calgary, I’m originally from the North Okanagan, made the conscious decision to relocate back to the South Okanagan, just given the lifestyle, we’re quite active outside and so forth, and the appeal of the city life, and the older I get was less so. So, for a variety of reasons, we came back, great for kids, and settled in Penticton and have been here ever since. And so, at that time I thought, I’d been sort of mulling it over in terms of like, “Hey, I should really jump in and start my own firm.”
I had done some consulting on the side while working for various agencies and also on the client side and that sort of thing, and launched the firm and focused really on digital, which has kind of been my forte and preference. So, that was founded in 2017 and not too long after, opened up a satellite office, a small office in Calgary as well, and the team consists of eight people, which all of whom are fairly senior. And so, that’s the point of difference that my agency offers, is that it’s not particularly big in terms of number of people, but all of the personnel that work on any type of project are senior and experienced and are multitaskers and have an assortment of capabilities. So, you’re not assigned five, six, seven people on a project. You may have two or three. So, we find that that’s more efficient from a cost standpoint and also a time delivery standpoint.

Sean Corbett:
I think there’s also a fear when somebody hires an agency, they think they’re going to get the benefit and stuff of this big team, and then immediately they get sent to a junior, maybe an entry level worker, and sometimes they sit back and think, “Huh, I’m paying a lot of money to get this entry level workers out.”

Ken Barnes:
It’s a very common type of phenomenon, and from experiencing that firsthand, I’ve been that junior, where I’ve observed these big senior guys do their song and dance and it’s impressive, and they’ll show a big reel of all the different sort of impressive creative that you’ll see on TV or what have you, and then along comes the proposal or the quotation and it’s pretty expensive and they’ll sign, and then all of a sudden it’s the likes of 27-year-old me and maybe a couple other people that are 25 and 26, that have less than a year experience in the agency world working on that project, making recommendations. So yeah, I try to steer away from that because it doesn’t necessarily lead to the best results. Yeah, it’s nice to have fresh thinking and so forth, but ultimately you would like to have someone on your account working firsthand that is sort of seeing some things in terms of what works and what doesn’t, so, well, that is a key point of difference that we bring to the table.

Sean Corbett:
That’s awesome. I’m really glad to hear that. So, jumping into our topic today, I guess I’ll tee you up. A lot of small businesses especially will come to us at websites.ca or our partners and things like that and they’ll say, “I got to do Facebook, or I want to do Google ads.” So, maybe you could talk about what’s perhaps the misconception or misstep that’s happening with a request like that.

Ken Barnes:
Sure. And I fully appreciate where small businesses want to pursue a particular vehicle or something like that because they’ve heard about it and their focus is inevitably on gaining new customers, serving the customers they have and running their business, and they don’t necessarily have an in-depth knowledge of digital marketing, and that’s totally fine, that’s to be expected. However, to answer your question, we see that fairly often, where if you’re a small or medium-sized business and we have a business owner or operations manager or someone of that type of title come in and say, “Hey, we’ve got to get on Facebook and we’ve got to run a campaign and drive traffic and get more customers and so forth,” and that may be a good vehicle to pursue. However, one size doesn’t fit all.
So, we try to take a step back and say, “Look, have you got a marketing strategy? Do you have a strategic document? Even if it’s a five-page type of document that identifies what your competitive advantages are, who you are trying to sell, what types of messaging appeals to your customers? Why are they shopping with you?” So, really trying to get some of these small and medium-sized businesses to sort of put the brakes on for a second and say, “Look, let’s identify who we’re trying to sell to and why, and craft some type of initial planning document so that you can use that as a roadmap.” Because inevitably, the types of vehicles or channels that you’re going to use to be able to reach that audience flows from that document. And that’s why marketing strategy is so critical, right? Because when it comes to small and medium-sized businesses, a lot of the time there’s this misconception that, “Well, I don’t really want to do or have or pursue a marketing document because A, it’s going to be this big lengthy document that nobody will read,” and that’s not necessarily the case. In fact, it shouldn’t.
And B, “Well, I know it all. I know my customers and I know what they want.” And it’s like, “Well, that’s anecdotal. So, there’s some risk in that as well. Yes, I’m sure your business and so forth, but do you really know what your customers want and what they’re looking for, and how do you prevent them from going to competitors and so forth?” And then thirdly, how do you position the business and how do you evolve your business in terms of moving forward so that you can stay on top of the mountain or work your way to the top of the mountain? These are different types of components that can be articulated in a plan. And again, it doesn’t have to take a long time.
So, that’s something that, when we’re working with a new client or if we’re working with an existing client and their plan is out of date, we’ll say, “Hey, let’s spend two to four weeks before you get into spending dollars on developing advertising and pushing it out the door on something like Facebook or Google Ads or what have you, or a billboard for that matter, and really ensure that you’re getting the best return on that investment.” And so, when it comes to marketing plans, I just really want to underscore that they don’t have to be these long documents, and in fact, we try to stay away from that because nobody wants to read a long document and nobody wants to read a big wall of copy, just like that.
So, we have to be concise and to the point and make it interesting and really cut to the chase. And so, there’s some components in a strategic plan that every business can pursue. And so, we work with clients to sort of guide them in that way and we’ll construct the plan and interview the executive and so forth. But really broadly speaking, there should be number one, an overview of the business, in terms of what you sell, why you sell it, what has worked well, what hasn’t worked well? So, kind of an historical overview that could be a one page and that can be obtained from speaking with different personnel within the company or the business.

Sean Corbett:
And that’s just to put a point on that one, when you say what’s worked and what hasn’t, you’re basically asking them if they’ve done any advertising or campaigns in the past or maybe where they’re getting most of their new business from, if it’s referrals or whatnot. Is that basically part of that discovery process?

Ken Barnes:
It is. It’s really nice to set the stage by identifying how they’ve reached the point that they’re at now. And certainly, if there’s something that they’ve tried in the past and it hasn’t worked at all, then it’s good to know that, so that we can at least take that into account. Does that particular type of initiative, is it guaranteed to fail in the future? Not necessarily, but it’s good to have the information to understand, to see why it may have failed.
So, for example, if they say, “We’ve done these MailChimp campaigns and they’ve just been a complete waste of time and we’ve had zero opens and so forth.” “Okay, good. It’s good to know. Now let’s maybe take a little bit closer look at what went out the door, and maybe that’s not a good fit.” And then also conversely, if it’s, “Hey, we’ve run this particular promotion, buy one, get one, or what have you on Instagram, and we had a lineup outside our door,” then that’s also good to know, because if that’s something that’s been effective in the past, then it’s certainly worth looking at for the future as well.
So yeah, just really taking a broad sweep and understanding the history of the business and as I mentioned, what types of things they’ve undertaken in the past can be useful for those reasons. And again, I don’t want to go into gory detail within the document. It’s got to be concise, here are the highlight points, here’s sort of the key things that we need to know based upon that experience. So, the second part, which is really important, are identifying and setting measurable objectives. Because a lot of the times, my experience and everywhere, we have businesses that come and say, “I just want to increase sales, or I want to get more website traffic.” It’s just not useful, because how do you know if you succeed? You have to have very defined, measurable goals that you can then say at the end of the campaign, “Hey, we achieved 50% or we exceeded that, et cetera, et cetera. This is great.” Right?

Sean Corbett:
For sure. And also what happens, to use your website traffic example. So, what happens after you get the traffic? What is the actual goal? Because we can all get people tons of traffic, but it might not be qualified traffic.

Ken Barnes:
For sure. Yeah. Yeah, that’s such a great point. Sometimes it’s like, “Hey, my social posts got 1,000 likes. This is wonderful.” But if it doesn’t translate into conversions and sales, then how good is that?

Sean Corbett:
And especially, to come to your point about the overarching plan. If you’re always thinking about something like a social post or an email in terms of just a one-off, right? “I did a social post. I hope it goes viral. I sent an email, I hope it gets…” Well, where does it sit in the whole scheme of things and the whole plan? This isn’t a one-off, it’s maybe not a forever plan, but we’re talking a long time horizon.

Ken Barnes:
Yeah. Typically 12 to 24 months. And again, it’s not written in stone. It’s something that circumstances and environments change and you can modify the plan, but it’s nice to have some type of blueprint that you can follow. So, an analogy would be, you’re going to build a house, you want to just start setting out and say, “I want to build the living room here and well, I guess we should do this over here.” You have to have some type of overarching thing. Yes, things may change as new events come about, but yeah, absolutely. It is something that can act as a common point of reference where if someone new comes into your business or if someone exits, you’re not sort of beholden to that person because they’re leaving with all the knowledge.
You have a common point of reference that you can use with your advertising or marketing agency, and then also remind yourself, “Hey, in this plan, not to jump too far ahead, but if we’ve defined key messaging and we’re thinking about doing some new promotion,” because inevitably we’re all full of good ideas and things come about, it’s like, “We should do this.” It’s like, “Wait, wait a second. Does it match what we’re trying to do here with the plan we’ve set out?” But the news is not to sort of deter new ideas or anything like that, but just to keep things in check because that power of consistency over time, that can’t be underestimated.
But getting back to those clear objectives, those are really critical and more difficult to put together than you might think. So yeah, website traffic, an okay goal is, “Well, we want to increase our website traffic in the next quarter, the next two quarters by 30%,” a better metric is saying, “We want to increase our website traffic by 30%, and we want to increase our conversions by 10%, and raise our sales numbers for this particular product line by X percent.”

Sean Corbett:
Right. You’re tracking traffic through to conversion. Now they have two different goals, just little pieces of, how do I say it? You basically make an achievable goal and then look where that leads, and so on.

Ken Barnes:
Yeah, that marketing funnel, because at the end of the day, why are we even doing this stuff? Outside of recruitment, which is designed to increase numbers of employees, which will drive profitability, pretty much in all cases it’s to increase sales and profitability.

Sean Corbett:
Of course. Yeah.

Ken Barnes:
When it comes to goals, they should be probably tied specifically to increasing your sales in one way or another. So, be that of whatever product or service that you’re trying to hone in on, zero in on. But yeah, so having those measurable objectives, and we work with you, so sometimes a client of ours, we’ll say, “What do you want to achieve here in the next two quarters, the next four quarters?” And they’ll say, “Well, we want to sell more of this particular type of product, or we want to expand into this new geographic region.”
And it’s like, “Well, we’ll work with you to crystallize what that means and then get consensus and then document it.” And then we’ll work from there and say, “Okay, here’s the overall goal in the next 12 months you want to achieve. Where do we want to be in six months? What portion of that is achievable? What will be considered a success, and what won’t?” And then as we’re going along, because this is the real power of digital marketing, is that you can modify it on the fly, whereas compared to back in the olden days, so to speak, is with a newspaper print ad or with, say even a billboard, which nothing against billboards, I kind of like billboards, but if you put the creative out there, you’re kind of stuck for at least four weeks before you can change it out, even longer, because it takes time to change it out.
When it comes to digital marketing, if we’ve got these sort of goals that we’ve identified over on a monthly basis or a quarterly basis and we’re looking at the numbers at any time and we can see that certain ads are underperforming or they’re not reaching these targets, we can change them out right then and there, and say, “Hey, this is not working. This is not hitting our goals. We have to implement plan B and see if that’ll make a change.”

Sean Corbett:
And also, that’s so powerful because once you’ve done that tweaking and testing, then you’re arriving closer to, say a billboard worthy message because you put it through the gauntlet, right?

Ken Barnes:
Yeah. Yes, exactly right. Yeah, if you have a proven message, that’s a really good point actually. Yeah, it’s kind of a testing ground in some cases because you can test your creative, and we’ll talk about that in a second, and to gain feedback and ensure that it’s sort of on the market and resonating with your target audiences. But once you’ve gone through that process and you’ve got creative out in the marketplace through let’s say a pay-per-click campaign or something like that, and it seems to be doing really well, then you can say, “Hey, maybe I want to supplement that with something like radio and/or out of home or what have you.” And you can replicate that message there because you’ve got the confidence that it is resonating with your target audience. It’s driving sales, so then you can expand your awareness accordingly as well.
So yeah, digital is great for testing, but even before it hits the road within a digital vehicle, it’s nice to, if you can, and have the budget to test it within your target audience, be it informally or in a more formal fashion. And that’s sort of the next segment of the marketing plan. So, you’ve got overview, objectives, and then research or review of secondary research and/or primary research. So, secondary research is kind of stuff that you can easily find or cheaply find on the internet. So, similar types of companies that have done similar things, you can look those up and say, “Hey, this business is similar to mine and it has a similar target audience and it initiated these types of programs or campaigns and so forth, and that seems to work, so that is ammunition or supporting my theory that this type of creative or this type of approach would work.”
So, you’re kind of building and acquiring evidence to bolster your argument that something like this could work. The advantages of that are that it’s inexpensive, it’s readily available, and the disadvantages are that it’s not entirely specific to your case. So, primary research on the other hand is when you’re like, “Hey, I really want to understand specifically what my target audience is thinking about a particular message or my product or my customer service or something about my business.” In that case, if you’re thinking about planning a campaign, what is typical?
Let’s just use an example. I’m a home builder and I’m thinking about launching a marketing campaign in Kelowna, and I’m targeting young professionals and I have this great idea in terms of what the creative should be, but before I spend a bunch of money in terms of advertising on bus shelters and via email and digital and so forth, I want to get some of these, I’m going to identify a sample of these types of likely home purchasers for my product, namely people within my target audience, get them into a room and run the creative buy them first and get their feedback, known as a focus group.

Sean Corbett:
Will you guys will actually help with that, go and do the audience research, maybe even interview past customers, all that kind of stuff?

Ken Barnes:
Yeah. And this is where that mathematics background for me personally comes in really handy, because there’s a lot of statistics and so forth that is involved here. So, we’ve done a lot of this type of work where first of all, you need to identify what is the most appropriate type of research initiative for the client at hand and their objectives, because if you’re catering to, say really high net worth individuals or something like that, and they’re geographically dispersed, you’re not going to get them in a room.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah. For sure.

Ken Barnes:
So, you have to do interviews, in that case. If you’re catering to a mass audience, then it may be more effective to do some type of online or telephone study, usually online these days. But if you have a specific localized group of people, like potential home buyers aged 32 to 45, that make X dollars or a range of dollars per year, it may be feasible or advisable to get them in and run a couple of focus groups and get that sort sort of information firsthand in that environment.
It’s really what’s known as a division between quantitative and qualitative type of data. So yeah, our business, in terms of what we do from a research standpoint, we will identify the type of tactic that is best, design the study, be it a qualitative focus group or which is known as a moderator’s guide, or a quantitative type of online survey, or even a mall intercept. Sometimes you want man in the street type of perspective, and then execute it. So, moderate the focus groups and then interpret the data and then crunch all that sort of down and put it into a concise format that we’ll build into the report and say, “Here are the findings, here’s what we did, here are the findings, here are the recommendations.” This either substantiates this type of approach, or the findings are that this particular type of creative is not going to work.
And there’s famous examples of companies going to market where they kind of skip that step and failing spectacularly, in big companies like Pepsi in 2010 did a campaign called the Pepsi Refresh Project, and they were kind of jumping on board with this whole social responsibility aspect, and they came out with this campaign that was really geared towards, “Hey, we’re going to be donating all this money towards different campaigns,” all this sort thing. It really caught their target audience by surprise, because their target audience is more about lifestyle and excitement and all this sort of the Pepsi challenge and all this sort of jazz. And so, they really failed to recognize that their core customers had different motivations, and if they had tested that creative in advance more thoroughly or if at all, then they would’ve found that out. So, it can be really worthwhile to spend a little bit of money up front to ensure that you’re hitting the streets with the right message.
So, that’s why research can be really important, and it is important. If you don’t have a big budget, it doesn’t have to be expensive. Focus groups, it’s as much as you want to spend. If you’re like, “Hey, we want to launch in the United States,” and all this sort of thing, it’s going to cost quite a bit of money to do a bunch of research, but if you’re looking to launch in the Okanagan or BC or what have you, can make it pretty economical. And then, even if budget is constrained, then rely upon secondary research and really, “Let’s scrub the internet and find some local cases and so forth.” AI is a big tool now. You can ask ChatGPT through some clever prompts in terms of, “Hey, can you give me an example of different types of businesses in this industry in terms of what has worked with their customers and so forth, from an advertising standpoint?” And it will spit out some pretty decent examples usually. So, there’s ways to get around it and work with your budget.

Sean Corbett:
We could probably talk all day about the audience research aspect, because not only is it super important, but it’s also very fascinating to me. I guess before we move on from that point, I did want to ask one thing. Again, it could be kind of a complex answer, but I’m always nervous when doing research with a group of people or surveys or things like that, that A, what people say versus what they’ll actually do. There’s sometimes a disparity there. And also, sometimes you’re talking, one of your examples would say the man on the street type of thing. Sometimes the zeitgeist that’s floating in the ether tells 20 people in a row to say the same thing as they may not even necessarily believe, but they think they have to say it in public. So, I’m wondering, you don’t have to give away all your secrets, but I’m wondering some of the tricks of the trade of how you would slice and dice that, maybe how you would word a question to get the more actionable answer, things like that.

Ken Barnes:
Yeah, you’ve raised some valid points. So, there’s a few things that researchers undertake to counteract that. One is by asking a series of questions or a question in different ways and repetitively. So, I guess I don’t want to get into too much detail, but you can typically, let’s say if you’re talking about a quantitative study, so an online type of survey that may have 25 questions, these famous emails that they come across that are like, “Hey, 10 minutes of your time be entered to win a gift,” or whatever. You don’t want to have all the questions… In short, there’s an art in terms of how to put those questions together. If you’re rating a question between one to five, sometimes you’ll switch the scale. You’ll hit these questions from different angles. Second, you want to make sure your sample size is appropriate so that if you have a really small sample size, it’s not going to be statistically significant when it comes to a quantitative type of study. So, you need to be able to hit enough people.
Third, you need to ensure that people recognize that their responses are going to be confidential, and often you’ll have it so that you either don’t collect their personal information, which frees them up to answer accordingly, or you can have it as an optional set of questions at the end for them to, or fields at the end for them to fill in. When it comes to focus groups in a more qualitative setting, a skilled moderator will often know or suspect when someone is either hogging the conversation and/or not responding truthfully. And that’s why you want to be able to have a good mix of people, have a skilled moderator, run more than one focus group. There’s different types of tactics in both environments or both sets of initiatives that you can undertake to essentially try to weed those out or identify them.
It hasn’t been a big issue for our business. When you get a more emotionally charged topic like politics, which we haven’t done a lot in, then you run the risk of having that a little bit more. But when you’re talking about products and services and so forth, people tend to answer relatively honestly, because there’s not really any social risk in terms of what their friends are going to think, especially if it’s in a contained environment.

Sean Corbett:
For sure.

Ken Barnes:
So yeah, there’s different types of measures that you can undertake to prevent the skewing of results or false types of responses. That said, in some cases, some of that stuff may get through, but hopefully you’ve got a sample size large enough so that it’s not going to impact the overall recommendations.

Sean Corbett:
For sure. Yeah, I know, and that all makes sense. So, once those steps are done, then does that essentially complete the foundation of your strategic plan?

Ken Barnes:
Yes. I would say that the only other component when it comes to research is ensuring that you have some perspective from the business itself and not just the CEO, so that you take the time to be able to speak with people within the business and gain their perspective so that you can balance that with the information that you’re collecting from the target audience or the outside sources. So yeah, that really does collectively comprise that. Again, it doesn’t have to be a super long section of the plan. You’re pulling the highlights, but what it does is, it gives you some rationale or it can substantiate your recommendations because then you can say, “As per this finding in the research, this is something that is recommended for you to infuse in your messaging going forward.” So, any type of recommendation should be easily traceable back to some type of evidence so that it’s based upon, it can be substantiated in other words, as opposed to, “I’ve been in this business for 20 years and I know my customers.” And it’s like, “Well, okay, but-“

Sean Corbett:
Maybe.

Ken Barnes:
… “it’s not really good enough.” You know what I mean? So, it’s like really, because you haven’t been in the store in five years or whatever, or you haven’t been on a job site or what have you. So, it’s nice, not to sort of downplay that, that sort of experience is certainly important, but it’s nice to complement it with some objective research as well. So, that’s really the front end. And then you get into, let’s clearly, and I can’t really underestimate or I guess highlight this enough, is arguably the most important section of a strategic plan is clearly, in a clear crystal way, defining your target audience.
So, you should really understand your target audience inside out, your target consumer, who they are in terms of a demographic, from a demographic standpoint, what they like, psychographics, just really having a clear picture so that if you can easily identify who they are, what their media habits are, et cetera, et cetera, because that will save you a lot of money and a lot of time if you know that inside out.

Sean Corbett:
Their pain points, their fears, their hopes and dreams, because so much of that dictates creative in the future.

Ken Barnes:
Yes, absolutely. Because you don’t care from a business if someone that is not a customer of your business, if a message resonates with them or not, or if they even hear it. And that’s where another advantage of digital, is that you can be far more precise in terms of reaching those target audience members. So, if you compare a creative or an advertising campaign that’s on radio, yes, you select a radio station or a set of radio stations that are likely to have a large listenership that is comprised of your target audience, but inevitably you’re going to have a whole bunch of people in there that are not a part of your target audience. And so, all these other people are hearing your messaging that you’re paying for, and that’s called spill, right? So, you’ve got a message out there, maybe you’re running it in Penticton, and this particular radio station has like 5,000 loyal listeners, but really only 500 are likely customers or potential customers.
So, that 4,500 are hearing your message and you’re just paying for that and it’s a waste of money. Whereas if you go with digital, then you can be far more precise. You can say, “I only want people within this age range, that have interest in this particular type of activity, that live in this geographic region to be exposed to this.” So, you’re getting far better return on that investment because you’re more closely catering your message to an audience. And that’s where it’s so important to know who they are, because if you’re like, “Hey, my target audience is females older than 25,” that’s not really good enough because you’re going to-

Sean Corbett:
It’s a wide net.

Ken Barnes:
… you’ve got to be far more precise than that. So, being precise can save you a lot of money and generate far better ROI.

Sean Corbett:
Well, that brings us completely full circle because then once you’ve done all that, the question, “Should we do Facebook?” becomes a lot clearer. You might be able to say, “Well, our target audience isn’t at all on the platform that you said you wanted us to target.” Or maybe, “Hey, good news, excuse me, we’ve got it narrowed it down so much that we can use this platform and this platform and this platform because they have all the filters in place for us to select our audience that we’ve realized we have to focus on.”

Ken Barnes:
Yes, that’s a great point actually, because not all digital vehicles are the same in terms of how to target. Facebook has some targeting that is really good, but it’s far better in the US. Canada has more restrictions in terms of how narrow you can focus, and then also, an older demo usually is more active on Facebook as compared to TikTok or Instagram. So, depending on the age and media habits of your target audience, you may not want to select Facebook. It might be a better value for you to use a different vehicle altogether.

Sean Corbett:
Exactly. Especially in a limited budget, you got to go with what gives you the best chance of success, at least to start off with.

Ken Barnes:
And that’s a common thread that’s basically across all small to medium-sized businesses. None of them want to just throw money aimlessly at like, “Oh, just do it all.” Right? I think I’ve never heard that. So, let’s be really strategic and efficient when it comes to those dollars to ensure that we’re have the highest degree of probability that we’re going to reach conversions. And then the messaging. So, selection of the media mix, entirely dependent on clearly understanding your target audience, and then also the campaign messaging, entirely dependent on clearly understanding your audience. Going back to that Pepsi example, not understanding that target audience, not testing that creative with the target audience resulted in failure. So, yeah, it’s great to want to evolve your message and it’s like, “Hey, I want to jump on this new trend that’s out there,” but does your target audience, do they like that?
If you’re targeting seniors in Kelowna that like high-end furniture, chances are they’re not going to resonate, it’s like, “Hey, I want to be really trendy and jump on this new hip hop musician or something like that.” It’s just not going to be a fit. That’s an extreme example, but just really understanding what they like. You want to stick within that range, be creative and so forth within those constraints, but get something out there that is going to A, reach them and B, engage them. So, that’s where that target audience, oh, I keep on coming back to that because sometimes it’s glossed over and I just have to put the brakes on, it’s like, “No, we have to really understand who they are.”

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Also, I think it’s truly easier to be creative when you have some defined confines and rules.

Ken Barnes:
Yes.

Sean Corbett:
You put up your fence, and then whatever happens inside that fence, that’s the creative part.

Ken Barnes:
Totally. Right. Some people may think, “Oh, well, that’s really constraining, what we can do.” Well, you kind of want those constraints because it’s difficult to come up with a message when you’re just wide open. It’s like, “We can do anything well, like a completely blank canvas.” It’s nice to go through what you’ve done in the past, what has resonated, what hasn’t, and what do we want to do that’s fresh and is likely to appeal to these customers? And then you can, “Okay, now let’s get the creative juices going and come up with something that can be really cool and get them excited because…” And we also want to look at competitors too, because we don’t want to come up with a message that they’re doing, because that’s going to look bad and confuse people.

Sean Corbett:
For sure, and I think, just for the audience, in case they didn’t pick that up, it’s not just about asking the right questions, it’s about asking them in the right order. And you did the high level stuff first, and then you got to the creative stuff, the specifics, the whatever. So, the strategic plan, you have to think about this. It is an ongoing asset. You’re creating an ongoing asset for a business. You’re investing in an ongoing asset, and that’s what that is. So, Ken, what’s the process if folks want your help with a strategic plan, how do they go about doing that?

Ken Barnes:
We offer a complimentary discovery meeting where we can chat about the business and their objectives and so forth, what they have in place and that sort of thing. We spend half an hour, 40 minutes doing that, and the best way to initiate that is likely to just email info@kjbdigital.com, or you can visit our website, kjbdigital.com and call our 800 number. But yeah, email is usually the best.

Sean Corbett:
Perfect. Yeah, and I’ll put that in the show notes, obviously. Ken, I really appreciate you coming on today. Last word goes to you. Anything else you want to add?

Ken Barnes:
No, and it’s been a pleasure. Not really, Sean, thank you so much. I just want to underscore, I guess one point, is that it doesn’t have to be expensive to have a strategic plan. If you have a budget of say, “Hey, we’re going to spend $20,000 or $5,000 over the next quarter, but we don’t have a strategic plan,” you can spend less than 10% of your budget for sure on coming up with some type of document, and then using that over the next 12 to 24 months to ensure that you have a consistent message out in the marketplace.

Sean Corbett:
Perfect. Great. I really appreciate it, Ken. Thank you.

Ken Barnes:
Thank you, Sean.