What is a Marketing Strategy?
A Marketing Strategy covers off four simple areas…
Who
This is about identifying who your ideal client is. You may have also heard this being called your target market or your “tribe”. This means narrowing down the market to know exactly who your products and services are most suited to. Knowing your ideal client allows you to be more targeted and intentional with your marketing. You you can clearly work towards only attracting the people who need and are willing to pay for your products and services. Resulting in… more effective marketing.
What
Once you know who you are targeting, you need to work out what you are offering them specifically. Maybe it is some of your best-selling existing products and services, or it might be introducing a whole new offering to suit these clients. Ask yourself what product/service are you offering that meets their needs, or is going to be the solution to their problems? What messages do you need to send them about these offerings?
Why
It’s time to figure out why you are marketing your business, so that you can make effective decisions. Are you a new start up looking to get your name out there, or maybe you are wanting to grow your sales at a specific time, or expand into a new area, or reconnect with past customers? Each of these situations would require a unique approach, so it’s important to know why you are marketing your business at any given time. It is also important to understand why your customers are looking for a solution like yours and what their pain points are. What is your “why” and what is your clients “why”, then marry these two up to get even more effective marketing.
How
Now it’s time to work out the details on how you will go about your marketing. Will you use emails, social media, collaborations, sales funnels or networking? By understanding the above 3 elements, you will get a clearer picture of where you should be present and how. You will build a clearer picture to know the areas to be present and active in so you can be attracting the right people, at the right time.
Once you have these four points clear in your mind, you will have a marketing strategy that can be turned into an actionable marketing plan, which will enable you to grow your business.
Include Measurables in your Strategy
It is important that your marketing strategy fits in with your overarching business and marketing goals. Your marketing strategy facilitates your marketing activity achieving your goals. When you are compiling your marketing strategies and moving on to your marketing plan, it is important to make it easily implementable and measurable. This will enable you to stay on track with your progress, and continuously move forward towards your goals. Set realistic goals with actionable steps and a specific timeframe. For example, you might decide that you want to have 2 collaboration partners to work with within 3 months, this is more achievable because you know where you are aiming and what the time frame is to achieve it. Rather than leaving it open ended that want to have collaboration partners, without a time frame, you instead know exactly what to achieve and by when. You are more focused on specific activity to achieve these. If having big, bold goals for the year intimidates you into taking no action, starts with realistic goals. If that’s too easy, start pushing yourself further each time – every result is ensuring forward, positive action.
Only Take Purposeful Action
Often you can spend a lot of your time being “busy”, but not achieving anything of worth. Having a marketing strategy will help to keep your actions purposeful, focused, and continuously working towards your goals. Prioritise your time for the tasks that really matter, the tasks that will drive your business to succeed and achieve your goals. All the other “busy” tasks can be completed afterwards. You may even want to consider outsourcing some tasks that are necessary but do not serve you, or are better/faster for a specialist to implement.
A comprehensive marketing strategy will help you steer the ship in the right direction and keep your business on course. You will be able to keep yourself on task and work towards your end goals, if you have spent time establishing them, and clearly know what they are. You will avoid the trap of aimlessly trying things, just to see if they work. Randomly experimenting with marketing tactics is unproductive and a waste of your time, and money (Let’s not forget, time is also money!).
Putting together this all-important strategy can be a difficult task in itself, let alone a plan, and then implementing it. If you feel overwhelmed by trying to work out a marketing strategy that is going to be effective, then we the solution for you. We have services ranging from strategy, planning, and monthly coaching to keep you on track; right through to completing and implementing all your marketing for you. Get in touch with us today to see how we can help grow your business with effective marketing.