A marketing strategy is essentially a framework that outlines your company’s long-term direction and marketing objectives – typically leading to an ultimate gain in consumer conversions. It is a comprehensive plan that breaks down the whole process of the customer journey into northern mariana island business email list how to effectively engage the customer at each stage, keeping budget and resources within an appropriate range.
Why are marketing strategies crucial to success?
Marketing strategies do not have to be rigid; they can change into whatever the company deems fit as trends change, consumers profiles change, and business goals change. What is important is that there is a solid framework and vision behind every marketing operation.
Without a marketing strategy, it is easy to lose focus on marketing goals and quantify marketing progress. Without vision, employees may have differing ideas of their company’s objectives. When multiple people try to achieve different things, it’s unsurprising that your company will be unsuccessful. A marketing strategy will increase clarity and help achieve a more cohesive vision.
A marketing strategy with specified goals and outlined activities decreases the chances of overshooting the budget. Consistent and routine marketing is often more successful than sporadically throwing money into different forms of marketing. A concise marketing strategy ensures that your money isn’t being wasted and that the allotted amount is being used efficiently and effectively.
Through setting clear objectives, the most relevant KPIs are chosen to measure performance and provide stepping stones to guide the performance of marketing tactics. Without successful measurement of results, the company lacks learning since valuable consumer data isn’t being properly leveraged nor comprehended by the marketing team.
Marketing strategies can also allow companies to understand their own customers better. Through identifying their product offerings, pricing, and target consumer segment, the company can create a target consumer profile and better service offering. A proactive marketing strategy will see you learn more about the customer and their interactions with your company, identifying issues with your service offering before they are even addressed as critical issues and ultimately assisting in the future development of your business.
How do you make an effective marketing strategy?
Before a company can launch an effective marketing strategy, they need to research their marketing landscape and understand who they are and what they are as a business.
It is important to have a clear idea of:
Value prepositions (using the 4P’s)
Competitors
Strengths and weaknesses, as well as threats and opportunities.
Your target market and their needs
With these in mind, you can begin developing a marketing strategy.
What are the objectives of your marketing strategy?
Your goals for your marketing strategy are key to achieving your overall business goals. Thereby your marketing goals should be used as a method of achieving your business goals. Perhaps a business goal is to achieve greater market share. Therefore, your marketing strategy would be to expand through greater brand awareness. At this point, it is helpful to follow a SMART goal guideline to ensure you have the greatest chance at achieving your goals.
SMART is an acronym for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. A specific goal ensures the What? Who? Why? – of a goal is answerable and prevents a goal from being too broad. A measurable goal is crucial to seeing results, allowing for the tracking of progress, consequently allowing you to stay on task. Is the goal achievable? Is it reasonable? Sometimes, biting off more than you can chew can simply be setting yourself up to fail. Ensuring your goal is relevant to your business, and your economic environment ensures only worthwhile and achievable goals are pursued. And finally, time-bound goals that answer where you envision your business in 6 months foster focus and motivation.
1. Scope out the current marketing trends and landscape
Is there a current observable market trend? Trends are opportunities, and by successfully leveraging trends, business growth can be exponential. Perhaps, consumers are more frequently engaging through online transactions due to Covid-19 restrictions, or perhaps there’s a new trend on social media providing huge growth in gardening or baking. Capitalizing on trends and even trying to predict trend directions can prove fruitful since consumers are more likely to engage.