Many business owners haven’t yet discovered the importance of a marketing strategy. Having such a strategy is so useful that it is no different from having a cheat sheet or road map leading the way to business success. Basically, it guides businesses in every decision that has to be made. But the real question here is what does a marketing strategy exactly entail?
Simply put, a marketing strategy will highlight a path to achieve a specific goal or objective. It is as complicated as it sounds — there’s no point in investing so much into a business if there are no customers to buy its products/services. This alone should explain why businesses invest a lot in creating a marketing strategy.
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Impact on Businesses Due to Lack of Marketing Strategy
Most small businesses fail, with at least 50% of companies failing after 5 years due to a lack of planning a marketing strategy. Businesses and companies that do not give marketing strategy its due importance suffer from the following consequences:
- They lose marketing share to start up and existing competitors
- They are unable to gain and retain customers. Even if they do, the number is not as much as it should be
- They miss out on important opportunities for optimization and targeting
- Due to a lack of planning they suffer from suboptimal execution. This gives competitors the edge they need to fill in the gaps
Despite the effectiveness of digital marketing, businesses fail to allocate the required resources to get the best possible results.
That being said, if you still have your doubts about the importance of a marketing strategy, and how you can go about creating the right one, then this post will be of great value to you.
Determining the Right Marketing Strategy
When creating a marketing strategy, the most common challenge faced by business owners is determining where to start. And just like other things in life, the right way to go about it is by dividing the task into smaller pieces.
The scale and scope of digital marketing is larger than ever before. Plan a couple of doable digital marketing activities that will cover the customer journey entirely. While doing so, you will discover some useful tools to beat the competition and increase sales and profits too.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at how your business can benefit from embracing marketing strategy.
1. Find Your Target Audience
It is common knowledge to create marketing strategies that are focused on a specific target audience to service their needs. This is only possible if you know who your target audience is in the first place.
Based on your target audience, you will be able to determine what social media marketing strategy you should opt for. So if you are targeting seniors, then social media platforms like Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram will not work for you.
If you do not know who your target audience is, then do the following:
- Review orders placed for your products
- Assess your social media followers
- Use social media to build a buyer’s persona
You may think Google Analytics may be enough to target your audience demographics, but you will get nothing more than raw data to work with.
To create your marketing strategy, you will need to identify your target audience. The reason being you will need to be as specific as possible for your marketing strategy.
You will need to ask yourself the following questions:
If you want sales, how many are enough?
What demographics are you targeting?
What is your ETA?
Why do you want to target that particular demographic?
If you do not know your demographics, you will not know your online target audience. Additionally, you will not be able to determine your market share either.
2. Take Advantage of SMART Strategy
Without a SMART marketing strategy, you will not have any direction. Without an actionable plan to follow, it will be impossible to gain new customers, let alone maintain existing ones.
For your marketing initiatives, your goals must be translated taking SMART into account. Failing to do so will not let you put in enough resources to reach your goals, or worse, you will put those resources in the wrong stuff. This is what happens when you don’t set your goals right and measure your success via analytics.
For SMART to work, you will need to be honest. Once you are sure you are up for the task at hand, incorporate the following SMART goals into your marketing strategy:
3. Make Sure Everyone is on the Same Page
One of the key part of a marketing strategy is keeping everyone on the same page. This means everyone in your organization should understand the marketing strategy.
No matter who is in charge, everyone has to be consistent with the message that is being delivered to the target audience. Your content and SEO strategies must be aligned to each other towards the end goal.
Your content team must create high-quality content using long-tail keywords. SEO strategies including White label SEO should also be incorporated into the marketing campaigns to generate higher leads and traffic to your webpage. This will increase your business revenues.
Choosing the Right Marketing Strategy
When it comes to marketing strategies, there is plenty to sink your teeth into. Not all strategies are going to work for your business in particular. The real question you need to ask yourself is whether or not you are using the right tools. Your marketing strategy depends on factors like target audiences, budget, location, marketing goals, and more.
To figure out what will work for you, here are some tips to take into consideration:
1. Determine Your Marketing Goal
As long as you have a well-defined goal, you can create an effective marketing strategy. You need to ask yourself questions like why are you marketing, do you want to improve lead generation, or boost sales? By answering these questions, you will be able to decide what techniques will work for your business.
2. Decide Your Target Audience
You always need to keep your target audience in mind to make any progress. Who do you wish to communicate with? With that in mind, you can determine some effective ways to connect with them, which also includes covering their preferred communication channels.
No matter what strategy you opt for, it should complement the where and when of your target audiences.
3. Create a Marketing Budget
A massive organization will have a considerably larger marketing budget than a company of two. But in both instances, a budget needs to be decided to spread the word. With a budget in mind, you will be able to carefully select strategies that will offer the best possible results, since you are on a leash after all.
As you grow, you will need to increase your marketing budget as well.
4. Consider Your Industry
Dentists and lawyers still rely on direct mail to reach their customers. This strategy works well for them, but it will not necessarily work at all for you. Based on the industry you are operating out of, you need to choose your strategies wisely.
Of course, you can implement as many marketing strategies as you want, but that is not a wise decision. Even if you can afford it, it will do more harm than good in the long run.
Marketing, by nature, must be executed more than once and it has to be updated every now and then to ensure it remains effective. If you play your cards right, and choose the right marketing activities, you will be able to increase brand awareness and sales with ease.
Featured image source: Freepik