How to scale a marketing strategy that works

Marketers are experimenters. We must be. Some marketing strategies simply don’t work because of poor audience targeting, excessive competition, cost-reward imbalances, or other issues. It’s our job to find out what works and what doesn’t.

When we find out that a strategy just isn’t working, our job is simple: change the variables to try to make it work or ditch it altogether. But what happens when we find out that a strategy works?

Related: Being a better marketer is all about embracing failure

The simplest option is to maintain the status quo and repeat the process as consistently as possible to keep seeing the benefits. But if you want to keep pushing for better outcomes and better results for your business, it’s important to somehow scale that marketing strategy, increase its effectiveness, and give it more clout.

How can you effectively scale a marketing strategy?

Scale options

Let’s start by looking at some of the core options you have for scaling and marketing strategy.

• Invest more money. First, you might want to consider spending more money on the strategy itself. This can manifest itself in different ways depending on the type of marketing you are pursuing. For example, if you spent $1,000 to print 2,000 copies of a flyer and that flyer was highly effective, you could spend $5,000 on the next round of printing to get 20,000 copies of that flyer. With SEO, you may spend more money on link building or content development. With PPC advertising, you can increase your bids and your overall budget.
• Conquer new territory. Another option is to conquer new territory – compete with some of your biggest competitors, change your geographic location or place your ads in new areas. For example, if you’re used to competing only with businesses in your current city, you can expand to advertise statewide. If your ad only appeared on one podcast, consider showing it on multiple other related podcasts.
• Expand to new audiences. Some marketers are expanding their strategy by targeting new audiences. Chances are your strategy worked in part because it was designed to be highly relevant to a specific niche. Can you make adjustments so that your strategy is fully applicable to new niches?

Effective scaling of the marketing strategy

Regardless of whether you follow one of these routes, all of them, or another route you’ve created for yourself, here are the key strategies you have to make your marketing scale effective:

• Scale up gradually (if possible). For the most part, it’s better to scale up gradually. You’re not sure if your results will continue, and venturing into unfamiliar marketing territory is always a risk. Don’t waste all your marketing dollars on an uncertain strategy; increase your efforts step by step.
• Do your market and competition research beforehand. If you’re trying to reach a new geographic location or audience, it’s important to know what you’re getting into. Do all your market research and competitive research up front so that you have a much better understanding of the contextual environment you are about to enter.
• Keep your processes consistent. It’s easy for marketing strategies to become loose and uncoordinated when more people are working on them or when you apply them to new contexts. Don’t lose sight of the principles that made this strategy successful in the first place. Keep all your processes consistent and formally documented.
• Enlist professional help where possible. If you have a small to medium-sized business, you may not have the internal resources necessary to effectively scale this strategy. Therefore, consider hiring outside professional help. Hiring a professional marketing agency, a team of contractors or new members of your marketing team may be just what you need to see ideal results.
• Be careful with repetition. Seeing excellent results from an ad or new piece of marketing material can motivate you to exactly repeat your approach. But you also have to be careful with repetition. Repeating your message is a great way to make it stick, but it’s also a great way to annoy people if you’re not careful. Don’t overwhelm your customers.
• Keep a close eye on your ROI. Throughout the scaling process, keep a close eye on your return on investment (ROI) and see if there are any changes. Are you getting as much value as you expected? If not, why? This is usually a sign that something crucial has changed as your strategy started to expand; see if you can find the discrepancy and eliminate it in the future.

Related: How to Reduce What You Spend on Marketing (Without Losing Results)

Scaling up a marketing strategy is not always easy and not always guaranteed to work. But if you recognize the key challenges and remain cautious but ambitious, you have a much higher chance of success.