A Marketing Strategy in 6 Easy Steps
Any business that wants to succeed is going to need a marketing strategy. Getting a marketing strategy set up can be tricky though. It is definitely a good idea to get some professional help doing it, but if you want to get ahead a little and prepare for your marketing strategy meeting I have a little food for thought for you.
Objectives
For a marketing strategy to be successful you need to know what you hope to achieve. It is a good idea to set up these objectives before you decide what strategies you are actually going to use. Not all methods are suitable for all objectives.
Some examples of possible objectives include:
- Generating leads through a contact form on your website
- Generating sales via your ecommerce website
- Improving your brand recognition
- Promoting a new product, service or a special
Budget
Each business will have different financial circumstances and different amounts that they can put towards a marketing strategy. It is important to know what the budget is before planning what you are going to do. A low budget may limit the number of channels or techniques you use. A high budget may mean more leeway for creative and unusual routes of promotion. Ideally you want to settle on a start-up budget and a monthly maintenance budget.
The start-up budget will be used to get all the campaigns set up and launched. This should cover any creative work that is required and any channel creation and setup.
The monthly budget will then be used to maintain the campaign. If new creative is required, then this can either be taken from the monthly budget or more funds can be appropriated when required.
Channels
There are many different channels for a marketing strategy to utilise. There are channels like search engine optimisation which are long term investments and there are shorter term options like pay per click.
Social media profiles are an excellent investment in your brand’s online image and should definitely be chosen wisely. The channels used should be based on whether the brand is a consumer or business serving brand and where the majority of the potential market for the products and services spend most of their time.
The channels that are chosen will also need to take the budget and objectives into account since certain channels are more effective at achieving certain objectives than others.
Targets
One of the most important parts of a marketing strategy is the return on investment potential. There is no point in investing in marketing if you are not going to make more money out of it than you put into it. For this reason, it is important to set targets for your objectives.
You may decide that you are willing to spend $400 in order to get 20 leads. This would be a cost of $20 per lead. As long as you are confident that you can convert those leads into sales which will total more than $400, you will see a positive return on investment.
The targets that you set should be based on your historic conversion statistics and average sale amounts and the potential revenue should be weighted against the cost of acquiring these leads.
It is also important to make sure that your targets are realistic. You cannot really expect a marketing strategy to get 300 new followers on Facebook for only $50, for example.
Timelines
When you are setting up your marketing strategy it is important to set deadlines and timelines. This will help to ensure that your strategy and staff stay on track and get the strategy rolled out when it will be most effective.
If there are any deadlines, like a product launch date, that will affect the effectiveness of the marketing strategy you need to ensure that the marketing team is made aware of these deadlines. Sometimes losing a day or two will not matter but missing a product launch is potentially catastrophic.
Measurement
Figuring out if you have achieved your objectives and met your targets cannot be done if you do not measure your results. There are plenty of tools available for each potential marketing channel. Make sure that you leverage these and track the results of your marketing strategy. Install the tracking codes and measurements on your website and get your baseline measurements before you get started on implementing the marketing strategy. This is the only way to actually know if you have been successful or not.
These are the six basic sections of a marketing strategy and each one is very important. They determine what you want to do and how you are going to do it using the resources that you have available. Knowing all of these things and ensuring that they are realistic are the key to any successful marketing strategy.