The benefits of being more strategic with your marketing.
Simply put, an effective marketing strategy will help you focus your marketing efforts on your goals and how you can best achieve them. A strategic marketing plan can also save a lot of time and money, and make the crucial difference to your bottom line.
Here we’ve put together a few questions that you should ask when looking to be more strategic with your company’s marketing.
What are you selling?
A good start to your marketing strategy is to take a fresh look at what you’re selling. Have you made any changes or improvements to your products and/or services since your last marketing plan? Are the descriptions and content you use in your marketing campaigns up to date? Do they communicate value to your audience through relevant, creative and intelligent messages geared to generating the results you want?
Who is your target audience?
Buyer personas reveal unique demographic information such as age, profession, income, locations, interests and aspirations, where your potential customers shop, and what competing products they use. With an effective marketing strategy that considers these factors when defining the target market, you can develop more incisive marketing messages that appeal to your audience and make all the difference to your ROI.
What channels should you be using to reach them?
This should be informed not only by who your target audience is, but by your brand and your specific goals, your markets, your budget, and what makes you different and unique. Taking all of these factors into consideration will help your marketing team create the right tone of voice, in media where it’s likely to achieve maximum impact to suit the specific industry your brand lives in.
What differentiates you from the competition?
An important step in creating a good strategic marketing plan is to know your competitors. What are their strengths and weaknesses, and how should you position yourself against them to capture more market share? A SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) of the competition can help you compete more effectively – when you know how to use it properly.
What are your business goals?
A strategic marketing plan should be based on what your company is trying to achieve, then designed to deliver on your business goals. This means deciding what specific objectives your marketing needs to meet in order to achieve those goals. You might simply want to increase awareness of your brand, or to successfully introduce a new product. Whatever your goals, a well thought out marketing plan will outline the actions your marketing team need to take to achieve these goals.
Are you using the right measurement tools?
Online software, like Google Analytics and HubSpot, are essential tools to manage customer data and relations. HubSpot, for instance, consolidates all of your marketing tools into one centralised platform so you know exactly what’s driving leads to your business. Google Analytics gives you a complete view of the customer lifecycle, with measurements not fragmented by platform or organised into independent sessions. It also works with other Google products, such as Google Ads, to show how different marketing activities influence conversions.
How do you set a realistic marketing budget?
So, you understand your target market and your competitors. You know how you intend to reach that market. You know what differentiates you from your competition. Fine. Now what your strategic marketing plan needs is a realistic marketing budget, and a time-frame for implementing the plan by your marketing team. But how do you allocate your budget to ensure your marketing activities contribute towards the business’s overall goal?
If you’re struggling with any of the above questions, a Brand Workshop with Harrison Carloss will make everything crystal clear. As an award-winning full-service marketing agency, we understand the importance of a sound strategy to help inform your marketing campaigns, so why not get in touch to see how we can help?