Marketing: What is a Good Marketing Strategy?
Marketing: What is a Good Marketing Strategy?
What is a marketing strategy?
A marketing strategy is a plan to increase awareness and visibility of your products or services to customers. It usually involves analyzing current and potential customers, analyzing competitor activity, setting goals and objectives, and identifying methods to reach the desired goal. The goal of a marketing strategy is to increase sales and create loyal customers who will continue to purchase the products or services in the future.
Several sources confirm that less than 40% of B2B companies have a documented marketing strategy; 33% have a strategy, but it is not documented, and 27% have no strategy whatsoever. Taking the time to write out and organize your marketing initiatives and spending into a single well-organized document, is important for many reasons. It helps provide direction and focus for your company, sets clear and achievable goals, and encourages innovation and creative problem solving. A well-written and documented marketing strategy also allows for greater efficiency and better returns on investment.
By setting clear objectives and having an understanding of customer needs, companies can effectively develop and implement effective marketing plans that ensure customer satisfaction. Having a well-documented marketing strategy also provides insight into the business’s current and future operations, helping it better position itself in the market.
Here are a few areas you want to outline:
- Target customers
- Company strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
- Buyer’s journey
- Goals and KPIs
- Yearly content
- Budget
- Distribution and promotion
- Tracking and reporting
How do you develop a marketing strategy?
To develop a successful marketing strategy, there are several steps to take.
First, research your target market and industry to understand the trends, current products and services, and who the key players are. Next, determine your target audience by assessing their needs and wants, understanding how your product or service will meet those needs and wants, and deciding the most effective ways to reach that target audience. Once your target market is identified, set marketing objectives to reach them, and then identify the key channels you can use to reach them. From there, design a marketing plan that outlines the budget, timeline, and actions to take in order to successfully implement your strategy. Lastly, monitor the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, as well as changes in the market, so that you can continually adjust and adapt it to keep up with changing needs.
With these steps, you will be well on your way to creating a comprehensive and successful marketing strategy, and over time you will be able to see what marketing channels are working for you and which ones are not. This will help you use your budget to maximize your investment and reallocate your non-functioning campaign dollars towards other activities. From this, you will see the best return from your efforts. You will not be spending money for vague results, and instead, know precisely that your money is spent towards efforts which are directly impacting your success.
Related: Marketing Trends (2023)
Related: Multi-channel Marketing