If you are starting a new business or launching a new product or service you need to think about your marketing strategy. A marketing strategy gives you knowledge, understanding and confirmation of the steps needed to be successful. Or you can think of it as your game plan to attracting more customers and increase sales!
This post covers just some of the topics that fall into your marketing strategy. I’ve added some theory and understanding behind each section plus some great exercises that you can put into practice straight away for your marketing strategy.
Understanding your brand
Branding is a huge area and is far more than logos and a colour scheme as some people may think. A brand is the who, what where and when questions. It helps to build a connection with your customers and trust. Here are some of the key elements to understand.
• Purpose – why does your business exist?
• Vision – what do you aim to achieve, who you are, what do you provide?
• Mission – this breaks down the vision and helps understand how you will get there.
• Values – what do you stand for and what will you deliver?
• Positioning – what makes you stand out / unique / why would people buy from you?
Understanding the key elements of your brand helps you deliver a consistent message and consistency is key in marketing. Ensure you refer back to these points from time to time.
Here are a couple more exercises for you to complete to help you develop your brand.
Exercise - brand introduction
We started developing our service because…
Our customers tell us…
This means the world to us because…
Our vision for the future includes…
Which means…
Exercise – the power of four
Use four words you would like your customers to experience...
These four words will help identify your brand personality.
Once you understand these key elements of the brand its time to set some goals to help you achieve this. Think of the short, medium and long term goals, this will make the tasks more manageable and easier to follow.
Utilise tools to help you plan ahead what marketing tasks you want to perform or people you want to reach. Email calendars and Kanban boards (such as Trello) are useful for setting tasks and ensuring you don’t miss anything.
Marketing doesn’t have to take all of your time up schedule specific days to do your marketing. Utilise scheduling tools to automatically post social media content. Social media scheduling platforms such as Buffer or Hootsuite are free and allow you to schedule posts in advance.
Audience
One of the most important tasks before you start your marketing is to understand your audience. Understanding who your audience is enables you to target them better and delivery a message that is much more attractive.
When you think of your audience remember this one phrase - You can’t target everyone, but you can sell to everyone. You need to be able to put your audience into groups. Not everyone thinks the same way so although two groups of people may buy your product they will both need a different approach to be attracted to it.
If you think about a supermarket they have a wide audience from cradle to grave. Supermarkets have to breakdown this audience into groups and target each group with a slightly different message. They may promote their meal deals for people on the go, who are time poor. Alternatively writing healthy lunchbox recipes targeting families.
You can’t target everyone, but you can sell to everyone.
Always test your audience groups and ensure you are getting the desired reaction, you may need to tweak them slightly over time as things change.
Exercise – how to understand your audience
How do you help your customers? What problems do you solve?
How would you like your customer to feel during and after your sales process?
What does your ideal customer look like?
• Demographics – age, gender, location, income
• B2B - industry they work in and job roles
• Interests / likes / dislikes / challenges
Utilising the right social channels
Social media can help your marketing to reach the right audience, grow awareness, engagement and ultimately sales. Now you understand what you are selling and who to you need to ensure you have the right online channels to deliver this.
Before you start creating accounts on all social platforms stop and do your research. One channel will not fit all and just because the channel is popular doesn’t mean it’s right for you to be on.
Take a look at where your audience is and what platforms they seem to be engaging on. Your audience may have many social media accounts but you want to look at where they are active. Look at competitor profiles to give you an idea of the interaction they get.
As an example, if you are selling business to business you might want to start looking at Twitter and LinkedIn. For more visual content say travel or eCommerce you might be best on Instagram or Pinterest.
When you have picked the right channels for your business ensure you fully utilise these. Fill in all of the profile details so it is easy for people to see who you are, contact you and find your physical location (if required). Your page needs to have clear content and eye-catching profile and header images.
Summary
I hope this has given you some good ideas on creating your marketing strategy and key elements to look out for. Remember a marketing strategy doesn’t have to be a painful essay writing experience, its about understanding and capturing what you want from your business and where you want it to go. It’s a document you can refer back to and keep your business on track.
If you need help creating your marketing strategy, completing the day to day marketing activities or just want some free advice don’t forget we can help with this. Get in touch via the contact us page today.
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