The Vision Value Model™ helps business owners who are struggling to market their business effectively take a step back, look at the big picture, and come up with a long-term, highly detailed marketing strategy that takes into account your vision for the future of your business and the values you hold closest to your heart.
We approach things a lot differently than other marketing strategists. We’re not just here to make you money (though we’ll certainly help you do that) — we’re here to help you identify the things that matter most to you, to define your vision, and then to put strategies into place that will turn that vision into reality.
Most business owners struggle with bad marketing habits — never giving your marketing time to get traction, trying every marketing tactic on the map (and then some), marketing without any real goal in mind beyond MAKE MORE MONEY.
Sure, making more money is good, but what if you’ve got a pricing problem? What if you could be growing far faster if you changed your offerings? What if continuing the way you’re going means you’ll never get to retire?
Where do you want to be in 1 year? In 3? In 10?
What’s your endgame for your business?
These are the questions that the Vision Value Model helps you answer. This is about more than increasing revenue — this is about creating a strategy that will ensure your business and your life end up the way you want them to.
It all starts with your vision.
1. Vision
Your business has a bright future — your marketing strategy should support the ambitious vision you have for your business.
You may be looking for specific growth objectives, acquiring or partnering with other organizations for increased capital, or even exploring your options for selling or exiting your business.
Maybe you want to pass your business on to another family member. Maybe you just want to stay right about where you’re at because you like things just the way they are.
This is the time to really step back and start thinking about the future, near and far. Where do you want to end up when all is said and done? What are the things in your life that matter most, and how does that align with what you do for a living?
How can you use your business as a tool to accomplish your life goals? What is your vision for the future of your business? Is it something to sell so you can retire? Is it your legacy? Before doing any marketing work, you need to have a clear idea of what that marketing work is supposed to accomplish.
And you can’t do that if you don’t have a clear vision for the future. However, most business owners get so caught up in the grind of running their business every day that it’s easy for this to fall to the wayside.
That’s where we come in. No matter how big or bold your goals for your future are, we’ll build a marketing strategy to help you get there.
2. Value
Once you have a clear vision in place for your business and your life, it’s time to think about what you care about most — your values — so that you can ensure everything you do to reach that vision aligns with those values.
You likely have emotional convictions that support your vision. The value you get out of your business might be financial freedom, a sense of community, or even an impact on the market or environment.
Maybe you care deeply about the people who work for you and want to ensure they thrive as your business grows. Maybe you want to make sure profits are maximized and that you’re not working harder and harder without it being worth your time.
Maybe you want to be able to walk away soon, or at least one day, or maybe you want to build a family business that lasts for generations.
Whatever the case, those values should guide your marketing decisions. You need to make sure that every decision you make supports and protects those values.
For example, if you own a family business, you don’t want to pour money into marketing a service that you know will disappear in 10 or 20 years thanks to advances in technology. Instead, you want to invest in the kind of things that will always stay relevant (and maybe drop that service entirely).
If your goal is to have a business that runs itself and requires little work on your part, you probably don’t want to be out there marketing services that only you can provide at a high level.
Starting to get the picture? When you incorporate these values into your brand and marketing strategy, your whole business may have to shift to protect those values and ensure your vision can actually come true.
We’ll incorporate these values into your brand and marketing strategy to ensure that — during business growth and even potential acquisitions — we safeguard what you hold most valuable.
3. Goals
There’s nothing quite like a tangible business goal to give your marketing department something to really sink their teeth into.
Any good marketing strategy has short-term and long-term goals. When your vision is clear and your values are placed front and center, it’s much easier to set the right goals.
For most business owners, the goal of all marketing is to make more money, but as you’ve seen, this isn’t the right approach for every vision and every set of values.
You need to set goals that make your vision a reality, even if that means setting aside some revenue streams for a while so you can build up others or getting rid of certain products to move the brand in a different direction.
We’ll help you create tangible business goals that your marketing strategy will work toward. These goals will support your vision and values and serve as indicators that our marketing plan is working.
With goals set in stone, it’s time to dig into your data and figure out exactly where you stand and what you need to do on a very granular level to meet those goals.
4. Data
It’s time to get nitty-gritty with your numbers.
We’ll look at more than just your marketing budget — we’ll use historic data, market research, and our decades of experience to determine your overall marketing budget, specific KPIs, target CAC, and other key numbers.
Many businesses go into marketing with a vague plan, but even worse, they don’t have a clear idea of what their key performance indicators (KPIs) are.
Every type of marketing is different, every business is different, and every industry is different. A 30% open rate for emails in one industry might be horrible — and great in another.
How will you know if you don’t look at all the data? How will you know if something’s not working — or if it’s working great? How will you know where your money should go, or how much to spend?
We’ll even help determine your multiple if you’re looking to exit the business and determine steps to integrate into the marketing strategy to improve that multiple.
With data guiding the way, we can now create your actual strategy.
5. Strategy & Playbooks
Finally, the fun part! We’ll create a plan with actions and tasks outlined for you. You’ll know exactly what marketing tactics you should be employing and when you should be employing them.
During the strategy phase, we will also thoroughly review all of your existing campaigns, collateral, and analytics to determine what assets we can continue to use and which ones need improvement.
With the completed strategy, we will also deliver a 12-month schedule of your marketing spend and detailed playbooks for each tactic recommended in the strategy.
These playbooks are really something special. They are incredibly granular and cover every facet of how to actually implement all the strategies we’ve put in place.
Anyone can use these to hit the ground running and start putting marketing processes in place that will move you directly toward your vision.
You can hand this to your current marketing team, a new hire, or even another marketing firm (though we hope you won’t!), and they’ll be able to start working right away with no input from you.
Think of them as incredibly detailed standard operating procedures, instruction manuals that break down every single step that someone will have to take to, for example, create, publish, and manage Google ads, write a series of blog posts, or create a monthly newsletter.
This takes a huge amount of work off your plate and allows you to just hand the reins over to someone else and focus on actually running your business.
6. Implementation
Getting your marketing strategy is the first step — implementing and overseeing it are steps 2 through infinity. If you’re not ready to grow your marketing team just yet, we can oversee your strategy and campaigns for you.
We’ll act as an integrated part of your team to monitor progress, make ongoing strategic decisions with you, and provide reporting and input on your campaigns.
However, if you do have someone in mind, you can toss them the playbooks and let them do their thing — your playbooks contain all the information they’ll need to turn your vision into reality.
What to Expect During the Process
Building powerful marketing processes into your everyday operations can’t happen overnight.
It takes time and research by our marketing experts — combined with multiple intensive discussion-and-review sessions with your team — to draft a detailed, comprehensive strategy that will guide your organization to unparalleled growth and success.
Here’s how it all works.
1. We’ll compile a checklist of homework items for you to complete, including:
- Completing the Budget Builder
- Gathering all marketing assets
- Providing access to dashboards and analytics
- Compiling information about past and/or current campaigns
2. All stakeholders will participate in the strategy kickoff call — allow up to 2 hours to review all homework items, go through the Vision Value Model, and discuss goals.
3. We’ll likely need additional time to dig deep into your internal operations so that we can better understand every moving part of your business. Plan to spend an additional 2 hours with us as we work on the strategy
4. We’ll use the data provided, market research, and our decades of experience to create your marketing strategy. During this phase, we’ll reach out to you for more information or clarification as needed.
5. All stakeholders will participate in the strategy delivery call. Allow up to 2 hours to review and refine the budget, strategy, and implementation plan.
6. We’ll deliver the final strategy, playbooks, and all documentation after the delivery call.
All the Deliverables You’ll Get
When we finish our work, you’ll walk away with all the tools your marketing team needs to start work right away.
Metrics & Research
Key metrics for your business based on your performance and our research.
Strategy Snapshot
A brief overview of your general marketing strategy.
Implementation Plan
Your Year-One marketing plan organized into a calendar — plus ongoing review schedule.
Competitor Analysis
Thorough review of our findings on your top 3 competitors.
Marketing Inventory
A review of your current marketing assets and suggestions for improvement.
Marketing Analysis
A review of your current marketing performance and overview of gaps. Detailed review of each of your key marketing assets like website, social media, and collateral.
Audience, Brand, and Goals
Definition of your ideal audience, the brand you want to bring to the market, and the short- and long-term goals fueling your marketing plan.
Lead Generation, Move to Close, and Post-Sales
Specific tactics to generate leads, move them to close, and continue to sell to your customer base. This also includes detailed playbooks or operating procedures for each tactic we recommend.
Marketing Budget
Specific budget for each tactic in your strategy as well as ongoing fixed costs, ad-spend, and other marketing expenses.
The Last Marketing Strategy You’ll Ever Need
We’ll be the first to admit that the process is long and involved, but there’s a very good reason for that: it’s incredibly thorough and leaves you with extremely detailed playbooks that you can use for a long time to come to ensure your marketing is being done correctly and is right on track.
And if you decide in the future that it’s time to pivot, we’re always here to help.
Let’s Get This Party Started
If you’re ready to invest in your business and pursue your vision with clarity and confidence, let’s talk.