Inside My Own Cornerstone Strategy: What It Really Takes to Build a Marketing Plan

This isn't a highlight reel of my business wins. This is what it actually looked like to run my own business through the Cornerstone Strategy, the same four to six week process I lead my clients through.

I thought I could knock this out in a day or two. I was wrong, and I'll tell you exactly why.

In this episode, I'm walking you through all five phases of the Cornerstone Framework using my own business as the case study. You'll hear how I settled my positioning after mapping competitors and ancillary brands, why a marketing budget starts with knowing your revenue ceiling and floor, how a 12 month campaign calendar surfaces the projects nobody plans for, and why relationships and referrals ended up outweighing social media in my own channel strategy.

If you've ever wondered what actually happens behind the scenes when a marketing strategy gets built the right way, this is that behind the curtain look. No shortcuts, no theory, just the real decisions.

Ready to go through this process for your own business?

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@ruthie.sterrett
@theconsistencycorner

Transcript

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Ruthie (00:02.094)

Welcome back to the Consistency Corner podcast. This week we're getting through an episode that has been a long time coming. So earlier this summer, I took my business through the exact process that I sell and exactly what I do for clients. And if you're a service provider, you know it is often so hard to do for yourself what you do for your clients. So six weeks.

Same five phases, same questions, same homework that I give to my clients. And to be totally honest, I thought, like, I can do this in like a day or two, like maybe a week, max. Yeah, okay, Ruthie. There's a reason we do we spend four to six weeks when we help a client through this cornerstone framework to build their marketing strategy. And yes, it's gonna take you just as long to go through it yourself. So I'm gonna walk you through all five phrase phases. I'm gonna give you the behind the scenes on this the decisions that were made for my business.

And talk a little bit about some of the things that we decide with clients and give you some examples of what those look like. So this is a real behind the curtains, what it looks like to work with us and exactly what we do during a cornerstone strategy.

Ruthie (01:17.762)

I want you to think about marketing strategy first for a second as a road trip. The whole framework in one breath is that the destination is like something that we have to figure out when we're going on a road trip. The timeline, when are we going? The starting point, like where are we starting? Because we're not gonna be able to create a road trip if we don't know where we start and we end, right? What roads and what vehicle are we taking?

And do we have the fuel to keep going and actually get there? And how do we know that we're on the right track? So those are the steps to a road trip and the steps to creating your marketing strategy are very similar. So phase one, this is that where are we going? Right? Wait, what is the destination? What are your business goals? What are the success metrics that we are trying to reach? And

The context. What's happening in the market as we travel towards this destination? What's happening on our road trip? Is there a storm outside? Is there traffic? is there road construction? We have we look at the context, meaning what are your competitors doing? What's been happening in your marketing? Like what's the current state of your vehicle? and where are we going? And what's happening even with the ideal client?

And the audience. And so we need to think about all of those things. So the phase one, we dive into a competitive analysis. And let me tell you, this is the part that for me, I was like, this is gonna take longer than 24 to 48 hours. I mapped out competitors, meaning people that my ideal client, likely you listening, could hire for marketing support instead of me.

I also looked at ancillary brands who serve my same client, meaning other service providers in the industry in a different industry. And as I compared all of them, what shaped my actual positioning was I am a marketing director and I help provide you consistent content plus the strategy that works behind the scenes to help you actually get to your business goal.

Ruthie (03:38.153)

And I've been circling that for months. Am I a fractional CMO? Am I a marketing director? Am I a marketing agency? Am I a social media agency? Am I a social media manager? I I know for sure, and this became really clear in the competitive analysis, is that I'm not an educator. I mean, yes, I'm going to teach you stuff and explain stuff to you, but I'm not a coach, I'm not a course creator, I'm not an educator, and I'm not even a consultant because I want to help you get it done.

Not just tell you what you should do and then be like, here you go, good luck to you. No, that's not what I am. I'm a marketing director that provides consistent content and the strategy behind it. And so it took some real introspective thinking. It took looking at the other people in the industry and thinking about, and this is people who I admire, people who I think do a great job at what they do, but thinking about what differentiates them.

And how do I learn from that to figure out what differentiates me? So for me, in my cornerstone strategy, I knew what the business goals were. I knew how many clients I wanted to land, I knew how much revenue I wanted to bring in, I knew what sort of profit margin margins I was looking for, but it was that competitive contextual analysis that really was important for me in figuring out how we're gonna get to those business goals.

So I really had to pay attention to the traffic and the weather. Now, for one of my clients that we were doing a cornerstone strategy kind of right along the same time, we surfaced something even more foundational. We had to talk about marketing budget. I know, I know, I don't like that word either. But here's the thing, she couldn't give it to me. And once we dug in, it made total sense. Why she couldn't give me a marketing budget is because she hadn't even yet mapped.

Her revenue goals. So one of the things that I did with her is I sat down and I said, okay, based upon your offers, your capacity, what is the maximum amount of revenue that we could make if you sold everything out across the entire year? So now we've got a ceiling. We've got like this is the most we can make. And then we need to look at your expenses without marketing, your overhead, your operating expenses, and say, what do you need to break even?

Ruthie (06:02.892)

That's like our floor, right? So we this is we we need to hit at least this. Now, what is the marketing budget that we can allocate to hit the ceiling and to hit the floor? And that's gonna look different for every business owner. But this is why, you know, I think sometimes marketers, certain marketing agencies, don't serve their clients because they're like, well, we're not, we're not business consultants. We're not here to tell you how to run your business, we're not here to tell you how to price your

product. But all of those things impact how we market the business. So that phase one, understanding the revenue goals and understanding the market available or the budget available for marketing is important in creating a marketing strategy. It's just like, you guys, you know, you love, I know I you love, ugh, you know, I love an analogy. It's like going to the grocery store and knowing, hey, how much

Food do you need to cook for how many people and how much money do you have to buy the food? Like we need to know those things because we're not gonna create a menu for a 10-course Thanksgiving dinner when we're only gonna have three people at the table and we only have a hundred dollar budget, right? Or alternatively, sometimes we don't need to create a 10-person menu because

We're only, like I said, inviting three or four people, even if we have a lot of budget, because we wanna be responsible with that budget. Or alternatively, we might be like, okay, I'm gonna invite 50 people to this dinner party, but I actually only have enough money to serve food and drinks to 10 people. Okay, we we gotta think through those things. And while that is not marketing, it influences the marketing. And so it's important.

That the person who is helping you with your marketing understands all of that and has that context so that you can make revenue and strategy decisions together. And this is something that I say to my clients all the time, because I do have that context and we do work together on the numbers, is I would say if it was my money, this is what I would do. Because we have to make financial decisions about where we are spending our money. And not just spending money, but spending time and energy.

Ruthie (08:25.89)

Because as we'll we've talked about on this podcast, every single marketing strategy works. But every single one takes time, money, and energy. And I don't know one single person who has unlimited of those things. Maybe Jeff Bezos, but even probably not him, which we're not comparing ourselves to him. We're completely different business model here. Anyway, so we've we now know, okay, the messaging the or the the positioning, where we sit in the market.

What are the business goals? What are we heading towards? And what have we been doing in the past that has worked or not worked? So that's context. Now the next phase, and you might wonder why this comes second, but the next phase is the campaign calendar, where we are gonna look at a high-level overview the next 12 months. And this tells you three things. The reason that we look at the next 12 months is in terms of a campaign calendar and some different things that are not just campaign planning.

But we need to know number one, the rhythm of your life, your capacity. When are you going to have the capacity to do the things? Because even if you are outsourcing in terms of a done for you service provider to someone like myself, this is a collaboration and your input is still needed. And so we're not gonna plan campaigns during the busiest time of your year, whether that's back to school, whether that's the holidays.

If it doesn't make sense for your capacity. So we're gonna figure out the rhythm of your life. We're also gonna understand the rhythm of your ideal client's life, what's happening on the calendar that impacts them. And this honestly is it doesn't matter if you have a service based business, a product based business, what you business to business or business to consumer. There are things on the calendar in your ideal client's life andor industry.

That are going to impact what we talk about and when and our campaigns. So we need to get those things on the calendar. And the third thing that I think a lot of people forget when they are mapping out marketing strategy is the marketing projects. Now, when I say projects, I mean marketing activities that need to happen that maybe don't or that likely don't need to be ongoing. They're kind of a one and done thing. Let me give you an example.

Ruthie (10:52.46)

Redoing or relaunching a website, launching a new podcast for the first time. A brand photo shoot.

Launching a new product and developing all the messaging and pricing and positioning for that product behind the scenes. Launching a new lead magnet, like creating it and getting it out there. So all of those things are projects. And I feel like in the world of marketing specialists, there are people out there who are gonna help you with your ongoing marketing activity like ads, like social media content, like blog writing, email writing.

And then there are people that are going to help you with projects like a website launch or a brand photo shoot or launching a podcast, like those projects that we talked about, right? But who is sitting in the chair that is looking at both of those things and saying, if we're doing these ongoing things, do we have the capacity to also do these projects? Or if we're doing all of these ongoing things, are there projects that need to happen?

To make sure that those ongoing strategies and tactics are able to work. Like is has the foundation been set up? And so because we are mapping your capacity first with your the rhythm of your life, we're mapping your clients' rhythm of their life. We're able to kind of see on the calendar where does it make sense to get things done? What are deadlines to get things done? And so when we think about those projects.

We can begin to pencil them in and then build ongoing channel strategies around those projects. So when I mapped my year, there were two kind of projects that came up that needed to be considered before I wrote a content calendar. Number one is the podcast. Does the podcast need a refresh? Obviously, I record this podcast every single week. You listen to it every single week.

Ruthie (13:02.21)

But how's my podcast website looking? What about the podcast description? What about the cover art? Do any of those things need to be refreshed to actually reflect the brand's current messaging and positioning offers an audience? Because I've had this podcast for four years now, five years almost, and things evolve over time. And I've given it some refreshes in the past, but it was time to look at does the podcast need a refresh?

Another project that I looked at was an SEO sprint. So again, looking at my website and saying how much organic traffic is being driven to my website? By what keywords? Are they the right keywords? Are there keywords that could potentially be driving more traffic? An SEO and an AI visibility strategy really go hand in hand. And so those are two things that like planning all of that out and then actually doing that work.

They're sprints. It's like we're gonna get this done, but they need time, they need energy, they need capacity. And let me tell you, because I'm a marketer and I love marketing projects, there's also things in there for me like a brand photo shoot, like reworking my CRM, which is like my customer relationship management tools, like how am I connecting with people, how am I following up, how am I keeping in contact? What's my strategy?

even around referrals and relationships and can I do that ongoing or is there some foundational work that needs to be done first? But all of that we gotta think about before we start thinking about how many times a week I'm gonna post on social media and how many emails I'm gonna send.

Ruthie (14:47.938)

So we've looked at business goals. Where are we going? We've looked at the campaign count, the campaign calendar, when are we going and considered all those little things that we just talked about. Now phase three is getting back to the starting point. And the reason I don't start with phase three is because a lot of that work that we do in phase one and phase two honestly informs what happens in phase three. So phase three is clarify and capture.

So from a road trip analogy, this is the starting point. Where are we starting in this marketing journey? Who is the ideal client? Because that's a big part of the starting point. What are the brand foundations, the mission, the vision, value, the history of the brand, the evolution, how we got to where we are today? What are all of those offers and how do they serve that ideal client?

What is our brand voice? What is our brand point of view? What is our message? How does my personal brand fit into the company brand and how do they work together? And all of those things live in my head right now, right? Or for my clients, they live in their head. And the reason it becomes difficult for someone else to help you with content, whether it's a team member or an AI tool, is because all that context lives in your brain.

And it might be clear in your brain, but it just hasn't been captured and put on paper so that somebody else can understand that context when they're creating your content. But sometimes it's not even clear in your brain. And so we've got to do the work to sift through those things. So when I write out the brand guide as part of this cornerstone strategy, it's an eight-part document. It ends up being over a hundred pages because that's all information and context.

Context that is living in my brain that is going to inform the type of content we create and the marketing strategy that we decide to execute. So, phase four. We've now done starting point. We've done when are we going? We've done where are we going. Phase four is the rub where the rubber meets the road. It is how are we getting there? What roads, and in what vehicles?

Ruthie (17:13.158)

So roads are like channels. And back to the road trip, this is every single road or route you could potentially take to get to that destination. And there's a lot of them in marketing. Channels are every place you could show up: social media, email, website content, blogs, podcasts, being guests on other people's podcasts, relationships and referrals.

networking events, guest speaking at events or being a featured speaker, TED Talks, PR mentions in other articles, advertising, whether that's Google Ads or Meta ads or even just a ad directory, like an ad listing in a local directory for your industry. Those are all channels. And so we inventory all of those channels and we give them a score.

And the way we give them that score is we think about a couple of different things. Number one, how long does it take to get this channel set up for success? Right? Number two, how long does it take of my time andor energy and capacity to sustain this channel, to keep feeding it what it needs to do its job? Number three, how fast can this channel start working?

And number four, how much does this channel compound over time? And then finally, which phase of the customer journey attract, nurture, or convert does this channel serve best? And what all other phases could it also serve if it can serve more than one? Because a lot of them can. Then we look at those scores and we look back at your budget, both time, money, and energy.

And we choose a primary channel for each funnel stage that is unique to you and your situation. And then we build the content plan those channels need. And so when I say roads than vehicles, we're not going to start writing a content calendar if we don't know which channels we're putting content in. And we don't know the most intentional channels to put content in until we go through those strategic.

Ruthie (19:39.929)

questions. So the decision really forced on me discernment because there's a lot of time and energy and things that you could do and places that you could spend your time on marketing. You know, for me the big question was LinkedIn versus Instagram, ads versus networking. You know, those were questions that I was asking. And sometimes the decisions that we make

Are I'm going to test this. I'm going to experiment with this. I have a hypothesis of what could happen if I put the time and energy and content and strategy into this particular channel. And if I have the capacity to actually do that, what are the results that I would hope to get? Right. So that's where we start to really put the marketing strategy together. And so

As I looked at my channel's surface map, I mean where am I gonna show up? What continued to emerge is that relationships and referrals are what drive my business. And so I thought, okay, the amount of time that I could be spending creating social media content, what if I spent more of that time just reaching out and having conversations with people or showing up in networking rooms? Would that serve me better?

Than posting five or six or seven times a week. So again, we're going back to what is each channel's job? What is social media's job in this business? I'm not trying to compare my business model to an influencer's because I'm not an influencer. I'm not a professional content creator who makes money based upon views, right? So

What are the channels' jobs? And then once I've defined those jobs, I know which channels are primary, secondary, and ancillary, what's the target volume? And to really figure out the target volume, it's like, well, what's the maximum iner intensity to in order to get results that I could potentially sprint in? And what's the floor of like

Ruthie (21:58.809)

This is the non-negotiable. This is we're gonna at least do this every single time. Because consistent doesn't have to mean constant. So what's that not constant volume that I know I can hit consistently? And then we're probably gonna fit something somewhere in the middle.

Ruthie (22:17.986)

So choosing the channels is a big piece of this. And that has to happen before we write the content strategy and the content calendar for each of those channels. And so once we've chosen the channels and we've figured out the intensity and consistency that we're going to commit to those channels, if they're particularly if they're ongoing, but also if it's like a sprint type channel, then we write the content plan.

Then we're doing the keyword research, we're looking at trends, we're looking at types of content, real versus carousel, heavy text versus visual, video versus you know copy heavy. and then also mapping in again those those messages, those content pillars, those topics, and getting that on a calendar so that we have a framework, a recipe to follow when it's time to sit down and create content every single month.

But the biggest question that I ask myself when it comes to creating content and choosing channels to put content into, whether it's for me or it's for a client, is the juice worth the squeeze? Because all of this takes work. All of it. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes work. Whether that's you doing the work or a done for you team like mine doing the work, which means then you're spending money on it. It doesn't happen.

Magically wait and hope for this cool content strategy that you mapped out to magically create itself is not a thing. So is investing in the thing, whether it's the time, the money, the energy, going to get us any results? And I don't mean like magical unicorn results. Like we have to be realistic about what can actually happen. But is it going to get us the results that are going to move the needle forward?

And if it's not

Ruthie (24:21.43)

Maybe we put it back on the shelf. If we're not sure, we commit to an experiment. We pick a window of time that we are going to test this out and work through it. And that brings us to phase five, which is consistency and capacity. So really saying, okay, this is the channel strategy. This is the type of content that we're going to put into those channels. Now, who is doing what? When, with what processes?

And how are we measuring success? Because this five-phase framework that we've used to create a marketing strategy does nobody any good if it just sits in a Google Doc and collects digital dust. We need to know week in and week out who's creating content, who's researching, who's posting, who's following up.

Who's checking in on the trends? Who's looking at the customer feedback or audience feedback to guide whether or not this is working? Because the thing about navigating on a road trip is, and I'm gonna maybe take this more of an as an airplane if I'm flying, but you might get off course by a degree or two because of wind, because of weather, because of air traffic. But you gotta course correct and get back. The po the pilot can't just put it on autopilot and be like, okay.

We're gonna get there when we get there. And then suddenly we've wound up 500 miles off course and now we're not gonna get there when we get there. We're not going to the right direction at all. We have to have a process to keep checking in and to actually get there. If we're on a road trip, we have to know, well, when do I need to stop for gas? Well, do I have enough snacks to sustain me, the driver? Do I have a a playlist going to make this fun? Or a co-pilot or people to go with me to keep me going on this drive.

So those are all decisions that we have to make. And here we kind of go back to that campaign calendar and those projects. So here we're really saying, what's the project plan to get this thing done, to get this road trip actually on the road and into the destination? Who's doing it? When? What processes are we using? And how are we holding ourselves accountable with metrics so that we can truly make data-driven decisions along the way?

Ruthie (26:44.864)

So that those decisions, thinking through all of that, it takes four to six weeks. It really does. And I know everybody wants to jump into, well, just start posting, just get some content up. And we can do that. In fact, my client that we worked with this summer, we kind of had a two-path process where we were writing her cornerstone strategy to map out the next 12 months.

Plus, we were doing like an SOS plan. We got to get some clients into your business. We got to get some registrations into your events right now. And so we did a parallel path. But both are important and both do deserve the time and energy. And sometimes as a business owner, trying to think through both of those at the same time is a lot by yourself. And that's why you need a marketing director in your corner.

You need someone to lighten that mental load and think about those things with you. You are an expert at what you do. And that doesn't mean you have to also be an expert at marketing. And thinking through all of this stuff, these just strategic decisions, this project planning, these intentional calls on where your time, money, and energy are going to go, that's a skill. And

Not trying to like toot my own horn over here, but it's a skill I'm pretty good at. And if you need somebody in your corner who is good at it, I just want to tell you: like, I'm already rooting you on. I'm cheering for you. And I want to be that collaboration partner and that trusted team member in your corner that is directing that strategy with a done-for-you team that can get it done. So we talked through the five phases, we talked through the dozens of decisions that get made.

We talked about the calendar that holds the plan that these decisions produce and the project plan to keep it moving forward, and who is sitting in the director's seat or the pilot seat or even the co-pilot seat to keep it moving. That cornerstone strat strategy is a structured process that I have developed from years of being a corporate marketing director and then a marketing support director or social media strategy partner.

Ruthie (29:04.568)

For dozens of clients across a dozen different industries. And I can tell you when I sat down to do it for myself, that making those decisions is humbling, but it's worth it. Because once you're moving forward and you know, okay, I have a plan and I'm executing on the plan and I'm using data to determine whether or not the plan is working, that mental load it's it's lightened. I promise it is. So

If you're like, okay, I am ready. I am ready for that type of strategy. There's a link in the show notes to book a call with us, a marketing con a marketing consult, just to decide if working together is the next right step, whether that's starting with the corner office, the cornerstone strategy, and then taking that and letting your team run with it, or stepping into a retainer with the corner office. So we execute that strategy that we come up with together. And next week,

Come back because we're gonna talk about the different types of support that you can bring on once you have the strategy all mapped out. And we're gonna talk about social media management, a full service marketing agency, fractional marketing direction, your own internal team, whether that's a VA or internal team members that do some marketing, some other things, or even an in-house marketer plus AI.

We're going to talk about the honest trade-offs and some of the things that nobody selling each of those options might say out loud, because I have opinions. So definitely come back for that. And like I said, if you're ready for a marketing director like me in your corner, book a call. The link is in the show notes, and I will see you next week.