Establish and align on target audience, unique value proposition, and core messaging that will drive all subsequent marketing efforts. Without a clear understanding of the “who,” “what,” and “why,” all other marketing efforts will be less effective and potentially misdirected.

• Market Definition & Analysis
  • Define target market segments and ICP
  • Deliverables: Documented target market segments with key characteristics, needs, and pain points.
• Personas
  • Create detailed representations of your ideal customers.
  • Ideally we narrow it down to no more than 3 distinct buyer personas.
  • Map their customer journey and identify key touchpoints.
  • Deliverables: Detailed persona documents for each identified ideal customer type.
• Solution
  • Craft a clear, concise, and compelling statement that articulates our solution, value proposition and competitive differentiation
  • Identify key differentiators and competitive advantages.
  • Deliverables: A finalized and agreed-upon positioning statement.
• Competitive Analysis
  • Understand direct and indirect competitors, their strengths, weaknesses, marketing strategies, and target audiences.
  • Identify key competitors.
  • Deep Research on each – websites, content, social media, pricing, and customer reviews.
  • Document their positioning, messaging, and target audience.
  • Deliverables: A comprehensive competitive analysis document.
• Keyword Research
  • Identify the key terms and phrases your target audience uses when searching for solutions related to ATC
  • Brainstorm initial keyword ideas based on your market, personas, and positioning.
  • Utilize keyword research tools (e.g., Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush – free versions initially) to expand and refine the list.
  • Categorize keywords by intent (informational, navigational, transactional).
  • Deliverables: A prioritized list of relevant keywords.
• Style Guide
  • Establish the foundational visual and verbal elements of your brand.
  • Define core brand colors, typography, and logo usage guidelines.
  • Outline brand voice and tone.
  • Deliverables: A basic brand style guide document.
• Call-to-Actions (CTAs)
  • Define the primary actions you want your target audience to take at different touchpoints.
  • Brainstorm potential CTAs based on your offerings and target audience needs (e.g., “Learn More,” “Request a Demo,” “Download Our Guide”).
  • Develop initial versions of these CTAs.
  • Deliverables: A list of initial CTAs with clear intended actions.
• Content Pillars
  • Generate initial ideas for content that will resonate with your target audience using Deep Research on LLMs.  That’s content that
    • ​​Addresses specific pain points of our target audience in the context of our ICP
    • Demonstrates thought leadership in our industry
    • Provides actionable insights and value
    • Can be repurposed across multiple channels
  • This content is primarily educational in nature and focused on solving real problems our personas face versus promotional material about our product
  • Deliverables: A preliminary list of content topics.
• Articles & Publication Process
  • Define a basic process for creating and publishing content.
  • Outline the steps involved in content creation (ideation, outlining, writing, editing, approval, publishing).
  • Deliverables: A basic article outline template and a documented initial publication process.
• Target List and Segmentation
  • Based on ICP develop a target set of accounts and people at those accounts (mapped to personas) that we are going after
    • We’ll have a contractor build this for us – we don’t need to do it directly
    • SaaSRise recommendation is: sleek.bio/aminservices
    • They’ll be able to build 100K targeted leads for approximately $600
    • Alternatively Fiverr or Upwork will let us pull in data specialists who can build the lists
  • Determine if we need to do a secondary segmentation of the list based on any of the following
    • Company Size
    • Company Industry
    • Note: We don’t have to segment the list – this is only useful if the buying process or pain points we’re addressing materially differ by any of the factors above

The activities within “Marketing Basics” are sequential and interdependent. We cannot effectively develop personas without understanding the market, and positioning will inform content topics and CTAs. Therefore, the prioritization is largely the order listed above.

The absolute priority is to align on personas and positioning.