The Importance of Strategic Planning
I thought it would be important to elaborate a bit more about strategic planning, particularly about the purpose it serves and the associated results that can be achieved. In working on projects it always amazes me how well our process works to deliver the results that a client is looking for. One client project that I’d like to focus on for the purpose of proving my point that “strategy first” is the universal law of success in marketing is Consumer Portfolio Services (CPS). CPS is a “bad credit” auto loan financing company that works directly with dealers. They came to Rhythm Interactive with a goal of developing an online marketing channel that would enable them to market directly to the consumer.
Being that CPS had never reached out directly to consumers before, we worked to thoroughly understand the individual that is challenged with bad credit and in need of a car loan. After we conducted exhaustive research that included competitor research, borrower surveys and a great deal of fact gathering, we created the Strategic Design Plan. The plan identified the brand, website, search marketing and engineering strategies that would be followed to develop the solution to achieve CPS’s goal of direct lending.
We followed the Strategic Design Plan to the “T” and the outcome was shocking. Not only did we create a new brand known as New Roads Auto Loans, we also developed an online conversion tool that was integrated with CPS’s internal loan approval processing system. The system was marketed through a Pay-Per-Click program that achieved tremendous results.
After two months of the launch of the New Roads’ website, the number of visitors to the site far exceeded the team’s expectations and the average number of unique visitors that completed a loan application on the site topped an astonishing 45%. We attribute this overwhelming response to our strategy first approach that addresses client business goals while putting the user at the center of the process which helped achieve competitive advantage.