It’s that time when you’ll be taking time to plan a marketing strategy for the new year. How do you know what marketing strategy to create? Well, you should start thinking about the areas where putting resources can bring the best result. Many business owners rely on intuitions to make key decisions, but a documented marketing strategy keeps the risks away. A marketing strategy will not only help you define business goals, but it will also help you learn about the need for resources, actions, and ways to achieve them.
In this article, you’ll find a 5-step plan to develop a successful marketing strategy for 2018.
Marketing Strategy
Know where you are
Before you take a single step forward or backward, you must know where you are. You can go into any direction, but not all of them can take you closer to your business goals. So before making any changes to your current strategy, analyze what worked for you and what didn’t. Analyze your business growth and see how much your business has done in terms of marketing and how much profit you’ve got.
If you’re the one who’s starting a business next year or want to focus on marketing strategy, the best thing you can do is understanding your business in depth. If you know what your business is all about, think about what makes it stand out. Think about the unique selling proposition (USP). If you just started a business because many others are successful with the same idea, stop and think of ways you can make a difference. If you are unable to make a difference, not even in 2018, you’ll regret later.
Today, almost anyone can create online and offline marketing campaigns, but what matters the most is how effectively a campaign is planned and designed. Learning about the key factors that affect ROI is a crucial step. You should have strong reasons to invest in marketing. It can be your content, website, material and everything else, but what matters the most is answering the big question – What makes you stand out?
Filter, filter, filter
Thanks to the digital marketing strategies that help you target the right audience at the right time. Now when your marketing message can be delivered to the people who need it, you must know who they are. Almost every popular online marketing channel allows companies to filter their target audience on the basis of different parameters such as age, gender, location, occupation, interest, educational qualification, relationship status etc. So, when you have the opportunity, you should look at your offerings and define the right target audience for your business.
The best way to know your target audience is creating a dummy profile of your ideal customer. Are you going to sell your product to both men and women? Is your product designed for people who belong to a particular area? Do you want to sell your products to a group of people who share the same interest in certain things? Divide your customer base into groups and keep your marketing material targeted on such individuals. The more targeted your marketing campaigns are, the better ROI you can expect.
Care like no one else
People care about marketing campaigns when they see direct benefits of a service or product. When you clearly tell them how the features of your product will positively impact your audience, everyone pays attention. If your brand message is compelling enough, people won’t mind sharing it with others and they will take necessary actions. Sell benefits, not just a product.
“Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Damon Richards.
Companies must ensure a matchless buying journey for customers. At every point within the marketing and sales funnel, unique brand experience must be delivered. The resources should be utilized in all the areas of the business so that your team can make sure delivering the right brand message to the customer and at the same time, you can make sure providing the best possible experience to your customers. When you show that you care, you can easily develop great connections with clients. The number of your loyal clientele can be increased as long as you care like no one else.
Focus on your positioning
Positioning is how people find you and what they talk about your business. Fortunately, companies can decide what they want people to say about their business. The types of offers, the brand messages, the types of marketing, and the prices tell a story that lets companies position their business. You must be in a position where you can tell which activities are going to bring positive results.
Locate your qualified leads and deliver relevant content with the right message through context-driven ideas. Going where your customers are is a great way to cut down your marketing cost and generate more sales.
Your team must focus on building the appeal in your industry. While utilizing the resources, you must focus on your budget. Remember that marketing is an investment, and a marketing budget will ensure that your expenses, expectations, strategies, and activities are in control and measurable. To reach your business goals, you must have a clear budget for marketing.
Never ignore the data
Numbers don’t lie unless they are written on the basis of intuitions. If you are planning a marketing strategy for the new year, you must know how to use the power of the data-driven approach. Your business decisions must be driven by accurate information about the current status of your business, available resources and your plans for future. At the same time, you should also not ignore the information you can collect by performing a competitor analysis. To identify the gaps between a business and customers, competitor analysis is a great strategy.
Planning a successful marketing strategy doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to start doing something new. You can, in fact, fix your existing system to see positive results. Every business has systems. Some of the companies pay attention to the systems, while many others ignore. A part of your strategy should focus on optimizing your internal systems. When you make the work smoother in your business operations, the need of making some of the new efforts will automatically disappear.
Image Credits To: Geralt
