How GIGI Marketing Builds a Strategy

"Everything starts with the brand and its goal. Without that, we can't do anything. It's like setting off on a road trip without putting a postcode in the satnav. Sure, sometimes it's fun to be carefree and see where you end up, but when you're trying to achieve something, you'll take a lot of wrong turns and end up somewhere you never meant to go. The right plan is knowing your destination and then planning the route."
Katelyn Fouladgar, Marketing Director, Gigi Marketing

That's why, when a business asks us for a marketing strategy, the first thing we do is ask them what they actually want it to achieve. Usually it's sales or enquiries, sometimes it's just getting their name out in a new area. Whatever it is, it shapes everything that follows, including how we'll know if it's working. Alongside that, we look at where the business already shows up, online and offline, from their website and socials to reviews, events and word of mouth. We look at what's going well, what isn't landing, and where the opportunities are that they haven't picked up on yet.

Then comes the big question: who are they trying to reach and draw in? It sounds obvious, but it's the step that gets skipped most often (this one comes up a lot). Marketing has moved on from the days when whoever shouted loudest won. Now it's about finding your core audience and talking to them properly.

A lot of businesses think they know what their customers want, but they haven't really checked. The feedback is usually already there in the data, in which posts get saved, which pages people leave straight away, what people ask in the DMs and what sells versus what doesn't.

How we measure a strategy depends on the goal. If it's sales, we track sales. If it's engagement or awareness, we track that instead.

And it never really stays still. We're always A/B testing, trying a different hook, format or posting time and learning from what comes back. We'd much rather a business be out there trying things and adjusting as they go than sitting on a plan waiting for it to be perfect, because you learn far more from what you put out than from what you don't.

One of our clients is a software platform that, on paper, had everything sorted. A great website, a solid setup, a product that worked. But they weren't active on social media at all, so they weren't showing up where their audience was spending time. Software can also feel quite faceless, and it's hard to trust a platform when you can't see who's behind it. So we focused on humanising the brand with video and photo content of real people, getting the founder in front of the camera and showing how the platform actually works. It made them feel much more legitimate to people coming across them for the first time.

We set up their social channels from scratch with clear, consistent branding. In the first two months their content reached 16K views, from a starting point of no social presence at all. Where before there was nothing for people to find, there's now a space where potential users can see the faces behind the platform and get to know the founder. They're still in their early days, but they now have a proper base to grow from.

Honestly, the businesses we see grow fastest aren't the ones with the fanciest plan. They're the ones willing to try things and keep tweaking. If you'd like help building a strategy for your business, get in touch with Katelyn Fouladgar at katelyn@gigimarketingltd.com.