The best Marketing Strategy for your business
We’d all like to be the brains behind an incredible marketing strategy that moves your business from strength to strength. The reality is, creating the best marketing strategy means understanding many different factors. Throw into the mix an ever-changing landscape and goalposts that continue to be moved, and this can be a difficult task. But the right marketing strategy will help keep you focused and on track to deliver your business goals.
So, what is a marketing strategy?
Essentially, it’s a plan for reaching a specific marketing related goal. Here are three basic elements to think about:
• What do you want to achieve?
• How are you going to achieve it?
• What actions are you going to take?
To create a marketing strategy you are going to have to be clear about each of the above. To create the best marketing strategy, here are some additional areas to consider, to make sure you reach your goals.
Who are you going to be marketing to?
In other words, who are your target audiences? The more information you have, the more accurate you can be. Is it B2B or B2C? Considerations like age, location, job, income, and also interests and motivations, can reveal a great deal about your target audience. This information needs to be based on real data. Assumptions could cost you dearly.
Who are you going to be marketing to?
Set out your goals clearly. Make sure they are well defined and link back to the overall marketing strategy and wider goals of your business. Be clear what success looks like and know how you will measure it.
Take a look at your current activity
Audit everything that you do and ask yourself questions like: what do we do currently? what are the costs? is it working? and, most importantly… what’s missing and which areas could be improved? Sound like a big job? It often is. But by creating a database and mapping out all of your activity and findings, the information should stay well organised. The idea is to reveal everything that will contribute towards achieving your goals, and also expose what might not.
Create your marketing strategy
So, you now have the information you need to create your marketing strategy. No strategy is complete without a timeline of activity. It will help you achieve your goals and set out what needs to happen now, and what’s coming up in the next 6 – 12 months. The best marketing strategy will be straightforward to understand, justifiable and will demonstrate how you are going to deliver your marketing and achieve business success.
