For my birthday, I learnt how to make woodfired pizza.

The experience was a gift from my partner (a truly perfect one, based on how much of the stuff I scoff on a regular basis).

What I expected was an afternoon of throwing pizzas into screaming hot ovens and swallowing the spoils.

It turns out: pizza is way more complicated than I ever imagined.

In fact, it’s somewhere in between a science and an art. Here are some lessons I took away:

• Adjusting the balance of water to yeast, flour, and salt by a fraction can result in an entirely different pizza.
• Forgetting to factor in the temperature of your hands or machine while you’re combining/kneading the dough can ruin it.
• Yeast is almost infinite. It’s on our skin and in the air (sourdough starter magically forms by catching and developing it using water and flour).

Pizza-making is complex. But do it right, and you can create something beautifully light, crispy, and delicious – a lot like bespoke marketing.

Let me explain.

Prep is important

In pizza-making, it’s all about the prep work – the more time you spend planning, the better the result will be.

This means choosing the right type of flour with the right protein content and deciding between factory-made and naturally occurring yeast. It also means knowing how long to knead the dough for, and ensuring your oven has time to get up to temperature.

Prep is equally important in bespoke marketing. You can’t rush a marketing strategy; it’s about creating a plan with purpose and direction, backed up by comprehensive market research and insights.

The right strategy means you can create a clear roadmap, knowing what you’re aiming to achieve and when, so you set realistic expectations and measure the results against them.

Make it personal

Technically, there are almost infinite ways to make pizza.

As I’ve said, altering the balance between water, yeast, flour, and salt can produce entirely different pizzas. Add a higher ratio of water, and you create a puffy Neapolitan. Add less, and you get a thinner, crispier Romana base.

Likewise, the combination of toppings you use can tickle different elements of your palate. Nduja for spice. Butternut squash for sweetness. Salami for savoury.

You can put your personality on a pizza, just like in your branding.

Introduce your unique company philosophy through your online presence. This helps your clients connect with your business in a meaningful way, rather than being subject to cookie-cutter marketing everyone’s seen a thousand times.

Make your identity unique through the copy and style of your company homepage, or in the language and tone you use for your regular newsletters.

Get launch-ready

The pizza launch is the most critical and daunting stage of the process. If done incorrectly, you could split the pizza or drop the toppings, making all your hard work for nought.

Launch with purpose and precision. Overthinking it could be the death of your dough.

Your marketing should also be launched with the same level of care.

The medium you use to market your services should be aligned with your client base and objectives for the business.

Likewise, if you produce a regular newsletter as part of a content marketing strategy, it’s also important that you send it out at the right time and on the right day so that more individuals are likely to read it.

For example, if your newsletters are sent out to your clients’ personal emails, Saturday morning is ideal. If it’s their work emails, try first thing Tuesday morning instead.

Be patient

Good pizza isn’t just as simple as whacking together a dough and throwing it in the oven. It takes practice and patience to take your pizza to the next level.

Marketing also takes time to develop. If you’re feeling impatient that your strategy isn’t giving you fast, immediate results, remember that marketing can be a long game. Provided you have done the right prep, you will be rewarded in time.

Keep it simple

It’s easy to overthink a tomato sauce base. Do you add sugar for sweetness? Herbs for aroma? Parmesan for a richer flavour?

This complexity, I learnt, is unnecessary. In truth, you can’t go wrong with tinned tomato and a pinch of salt. The results are simple, deliciously fresh, and timeless.

When you’re marketing an advice business, it’s not always about creating an ingenious, original strategy. It’s about doing practised methods consistently to produce results. Simplicity can save you time and energy while helping you achieve your business goals.

If you want a real-world example, read Phil’s blog about how one simple newsletter trick can boost your newsletter engagement by 18%.

Work with the best

Throughout the sessions, we were guided by our instructor, Finn: master pizzaiolo.

He knew more about pizza than the entire class could ever hope to learn, guiding us through ingredients, techniques, and methods for making perfect pizza.

At the start of the session, my pizzas were crusty heaps. By the end, they were perfectly puffy, crispy, evenly baked, and with just the right number of toppings. And, as my partner can attest, what I brought home tasted “gooooood”.

As a financial adviser/planner, you will know that expert advice makes the difference between “fine” and “excellent”. The Yardstick team knows this too – we have years of experience helping financial planners and advisers achieve their marketing goals.

We work with you from the very start, guiding you through strategy to execution and well beyond.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help your company create “gooooood” marketing (or better pizza), email hi@theyardstickagency.co.uk or call 0115 8965 300 today.