Your Marketing Plan Starts with A Vision

Do you want to start or increase mar­ket­ing for your paint­ing busi­ness, but aren’t sure where to focus your efforts? Maybe you are deal­ing with the oppo­site prob­lem — you are already putting in a ton of effort, but don’t feel like you are get­ting enough back.

Either way, it is often the result of a skipped yet crit­i­cal step in cre­at­ing a mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that is effec­tive for your unique paint­ing busi­ness.

That step is to cre­ate a vision for your paint­ing company. 

You may be more accus­tomed to hear­ing about vision from busi­ness con­sul­tants vs. a mar­ket­ing agency, but the truth is that vision is impor­tant for all aspects of your busi­ness. And for mar­ket­ing in par­tic­u­lar, if you don’t know where you want to go, how can your mar­ket­ing help get you there? 

A host of fac­tors, includ­ing the rev­enue you are tar­get­ing, the ser­vices you pro­vide, and the cus­tomers you seek (all part of the vision), inform how you will market. 

To get a clear­er pic­ture of the impor­tance of vision and get some prac­ti­cal steps on cre­at­ing one, we talked with our good friends over at Nolan Con­sult­ing Group.

Nolan Con­sult­ing Group helps get con­trac­tors out of the hour­glass by focus­ing on sys­tems, num­bers, and teams to achieve prof­itable growth. The first thing they do with clients? Define vision. 

“When own­ers don’t have a clear pic­ture of where they are head­ed, every deci­sion becomes reac­tive,” says Mol­ly Nolan, Mar­ket­ing and Pro­gram Man­ag­er. ​“You’re con­stant­ly in the weeds, mak­ing deci­sions in the moment, man­ag­ing your feel­ings and emo­tions, and won­der­ing why noth­ing seems to stick.” 

She says that vision is how they kick off the entire plan­ning process. The rea­son? So you don’t spend your days work­ing hard to get to an unknown destination. 

What Exact­ly Is a Vision? 

As Nolan defines it, it’s a ​“desired future state,” and it has a few impor­tant ele­ments. First, is that it’s writ­ten. Sec­ond, is that it’s writ­ten in the present tense even though you are writ­ing about the future. Third, is that it is anchored in a spe­cif­ic date. 

“You are writ­ing where you want to be three years from now, as if you are there, in that time, describ­ing what you are doing and what you have built,” says Nolan. 

Nail­ing Down Your Vision

So, how do you decide that desired future state? Defin­ing what you want your busi­ness to be is a daunt­ing task! Luck­i­ly, Nolan Con­sult­ing Group has a struc­tured set of ques­tions they ask own­ers to answer before they attempt to write their vision. A few of the ques­tions to get you started:

• How big is your busi­ness? (How much rev­enue? How many employees?)

• What is your orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture like?

• Who is your pri­ma­ry cus­tomer, and have you expand­ed your ser­vice area?

• What are you, as the own­er, actu­al­ly doing day to day? This also forces you to ask: What have you let go of?

• What new lead­er­ship posi­tions have been filled? 

• How has the orga­ni­za­tion­al chart changed?

• What do your train­ing pro­grams look like?

• How are you track­ing results?

You’ll note that there is only one ques­tion that focus­es on rev­enue. Oth­ers are focused on the shape of the busi­ness and the own­er’s role with­in it. 

Impor­tant Advice

When writ­ing your vision, Nolan stress­es the impor­tance of reflect­ing on what you want vs. writ­ing down things that sound impres­sive. ​“We ask own­ers: Will you be hap­py when this vision becomes a real­i­ty?” To ensure that the future desired state of the orga­ni­za­tion aligns with the future desired state of the own­er, Nolan also does a Pri­ma­ry Aim exercise. 

In addi­tion, Nolan says: ​“Your vision has to be clear enough to guide your com­pa­ny, com­pelling enough that peo­ple want to fol­low it, and cred­i­ble enough that your team can actu­al­ly com­mit to it.”

That means not set­tling on a des­ti­na­tion that isn’t cred­i­ble, but also not being so cau­tious that it isn’t compelling. 

Final­ly, your vision is not a secret. It’s impor­tant to share ear­ly and often. ​“We say ​‘cas­cade down the vision’ to your man­age­ment team, your key hires, and your people.” 

Once you know where you are going, it becomes expo­nen­tial­ly eas­i­er to map your mar­ket­ing path. 

Need help cre­at­ing your vision? Reach out to our friends at Nolan Con­sult­ing Group.

Got your vision writ­ten and ready? Our vast mar­ket­ing expe­ri­ence and insights can help you map and exe­cute the mar­ket­ing plan that will get you to your vision. Sched­ule Your Free Con­sul­ta­tion Call today!