I’m 100% sure that you’re set for failure if you don’t have a marketing strategy in place. But, why 100%?
Read on to find out.
In this blog post, we walk you through some details of creating a winning marketing strategy.
But before answering the question of how to create a marketing strategy, let’s dig into certain nuances.
What is a Marketing Strategy?
Marketing Strategy is the logic by which a business unit expects to achieve its marketing objectives.
Philip Kotler
In simpler terms, a marketing strategy is a data-driven plan for the organisation that:
- Defines promotional and sales objectives.
- Determines the set of marketing activities (marketing mix) to accomplish them.
- Marks the expenditure required to achieve them.
Therefore, in a marketing strategy, you answer the why and how behind a set of activities to win at your marketing game.
What Would a Marketing Strategy Look Like?
A Google search for marketing plan templates would yield several thousand results. A truly helpful one must consist of the following topics:
- An overview of the business
- Business goals
- A situational analysis (the environment a business functions in, profile of existing customers)
- A competitive analysis
- SWOT analysis
- Marketing goals and objectives
- Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning
- Tactics
- Budget
- KPIs to measure results
Why is a Marketing Strategy Important?
Let me put the 100%, which I mentioned in the beginning, into context. Marketers who have a documented marketing plan in place celebrate a success rate of 331% over those who do not have one.
A business without a marketing plan is like a ship with a captain who has left his compass several nautical miles behind him on the shore.
When you create a marketing strategy, ensure that you:
- Identify your overall business goals and objectives.
- Possess data on your competitors, your existing customers and your business to inform your decisions.
- Assess your business’ current internal and external situation; know your strengths, correct your weaknesses, leverage economic, social and political opportunities, and nullify threats.
- Set achievable marketing objectives.
- Create the right content and creatives that offer value and pushes your prospects into successive stages of the marketing funnel.
- Ascertain the right channels to promote your products/services and their value proposition.
When Should You Create a Marketing Strategy?
Usually, a marketing strategy spans over several months or sometimes, even years.
You can set out your marketing strategy once you decide on the product you want to sell and your business model.
Sometimes, marketing processes can also help you develop a new product. Hence, marketing activities such as market research can begin even before you create a marketing strategy. However, we won’t be dwelling upon product development.
Now, let’s dive into how to create a marketing strategy – the enigma you came here to solve.
SWOT & Porter’s 5 forces: Know Thyself Better
Every marketing strategy begins with evaluating your internal and external conditions.
To do this, we use two powerful business tools: Porter’s 5 forces and SWOT.
Porter’s 5 Forces
Wise man Porter warns us of 5 forces over which organizations should constantly maintain vigilance. These 5 forces can either erode or enrich a business:
Competition: If you’re a software company operating out of an IT park, look at your neighbour. If not, Google your niche. All the results you see is probably your competitor.
Analysing them would help inform the decisions you make about your value proposition, acquisition opportunities, pricing etc.
The threat of substitute products: These threats are the ones that effect your customer in switching to an alternate option that’s easier and better for them to buy and use. You can subdue this threat by identifying the changing needs and desires of your customer and meeting them.
Bargaining power of buyers: How good is your relationship with your buyer? How far can they go in bringing down your prices (and you to your knees)?
Measuring this helps you inform your branding efforts in your marketing strategy. One of the ways to quench this threat is by becoming a more authoritative brand in your niche.
The threat of new entrants: As the ease of starting businesses is increasing thanks to the internet and the cloud, this is one threat you must continuously monitor. Business empires have crumbled in weeks and months due to new entrants riding along with a new trend.
Bargaining power of suppliers: The higher the number of suppliers, the lesser is their bargaining power. Understand how effectively your supplier can control their prices. More suppliers within your landscape make it easier and cheaper to switch to new suppliers.
SWOT Analysis
In a marketing plan, SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. You analyse these four aspects of a business to best inform your marketing activities.
Developed by Albert Humphrey in the early 1970s, SWOT is still used as a method to analyse a business’s strengths, shortcomings and opportunities.
They are also used for individuals to evaluate their performance and set benchmarks.
How to do a SWOT analysis?
A SWOT analysis is a four-pronged approach.
Capitalise on your strengths – by identifying your strengths, you identify processes, assets and resources which you can leverage to outperform your competitors.
A few areas where your strengths may lie include:
- The qualities that separate you from your competitors
- The experience, authority, industry connections of your employees
- Intellectual property
- Content assets
- Cost advantages
- Business location
- Financial resources
Correct your weaknesses: every business will have a few elements that hinder their progress. A few places where you can identify your weaknesses are:
- Budget allocation
- Inefficient or inexperienced business units
- Declining market share
Plan for opportunities and threats: Opportunities and threats can be identified by researching the social, economic and political conditions of your target market.
Opportunities can be recognised by:
- Researching untapped markets and niches where there are fewer competitors, and emerging needs from your market
- Socio-political climate
Threats to your company include:
- Merging competitors
- Changing regulatory environments
- Changing customer attitudes towards companies
- Political scenarios
The ultimate aim of a SWOT analysis is to benchmark your existing growth and identify areas to improve and scale.
By doing so, you will find yourself well-positioned for the next step.
Identify Your Business Goals and Objectives
As mentioned earlier, a marketing strategy explains the why behind what you do.
The ‘what’ is your goals and objectives.
When drawing a marketing plan, businesses often fail to distinguish between marketing objectives and business objectives.
Your business goals and objectives are the ones you define for the company as a whole.
Your marketing objectives are the ones that your marketing unit must achieve to reach your overall business goals.
Remember, all your marketing activities should be designed to fulfil your business goals.
Market Research
Market research is usually carried out by surveys, interviews, focus groups etc. Surveys help you detect patterns in consumer needs, shopping and usage behaviour. Interviews and focus groups help you uncover pain points, frustrations, desires and goals.
You can even try to emulate the words your customers use in interviews to explain their frustrations in your advertisements. This makes your ad relevant to them, and humanises your brand.
Although surveys and interviews provide you with the most authoritative data, they are time-consuming. You can offload this task to an experienced digital marketing agency.
There are some other ways to perform market research yourself, such as:
- Keyword research
- Social listening
- Developing a buyer persona
Keyword Research
One effective way to gauge customer demand is keyword research. Keywords are the search queries that users enter to search for solutions, services and products on search engines. Since users conduct informational and product research on search engines, keywords manifest as an unadulterated reflection of your customer’s needs and want.
Read also: The Beginner’s Guide to SEO
Keyword research involves analysing and segmenting keywords according to search volume, seasonal trends and the user’s intention behind their search. Researching keywords can help you:
- Understand product demand
- Detect seasonal consumer trends
- Create new products and product categories
- Gauge existing demand
- Modify your existing product to cater to your customers’ demands
Social Listening
In social listening, you interpret the online conversations happening around your products, your competition, your brand, and your industry.
Social listening is done by tracking:
- Brand mentions
- Reviews
- Comments on your blogs and social media handles
- Online forums
- Tweets that carry your brand
This uncovers insights into what troubles existing customers. You can also track customers who are unhappy with your competition, and design offers that cater to their needs.
Develop a Buyer Persona
Upon completing your research, you will have the necessary data to develop a buyer persona.
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer.
Read also: In-Market Audience Targeting
It furthers your understanding of your customer by consolidating details such as their lifestyles, their beliefs and sentiments – even their work schedules.
Your research will help you detect semantic patterns in the way your customer describes their pains and frustrations. You can add these insights to your buyer persona. This enables you to speak their language in your content and all promotional material.
Set Realistic Goals – Be SMART
Why Should you have SMART Goals in your Marketing Strategy?
One of the common mistakes businesses tend to make while drafting their marketing plan is setting unrealistic and abstract goals.
An example of a bad goal would be: “I want to generate new leads”.
A goal as abstract as this would be a shot in the dark. You won’t know if you’ve met success, nor will you know if you’ve given up too soon.
Successful marketing teams all around the world frame goals that are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely.
- Specific – Mention exactly what you want to achieve. You have to explain to your C-suite what you are trying to prove or improve.
- Measurable – Make sure you can track your goal by adding numeric details.
- Attainable – Be ambitious. Nevertheless, bear in mind that your goal should be achievable by your team.
- Realistic – Understand what you have and what you don’t, and map them to how much you can achieve.
- Timely – Set a deadline by when you would like to realise your goal.
This is what a SMART goal looks like:
“Since we generate 100 new leads every month and convert 5 of them, we aim to leverage our content marketing team and PPC team to generate 30% more leads every month and increase conversion 3x by the end of 6 months.”
Choose your Channels
There are three channels for any marketing strategy: owned, earned and paid.
Regardless of which channel you wish to develop, you first have to identify which channels will help you reach your customers.
Channels offer context.
Your research on your customer has to include where and how they would like to hear it. Prepare your marketing copy and content in such a way that they adhere to the enhancements and limitations of these channels.
To choose the right channels, look at your direct and indirect competitors. Simply emulate them until you find out what works.
Build A Sales Funnel Using AIDA
Without articulating how a sales funnel works, nobody can completely answer the question “how to create a marketing strategy”.
While optimising your sales funnel, all the work above, ranging from SWOT to research, will fall into place.
What Is A Sales Funnel And AIDA?
A sales funnel is a model that helps you understand the stages of purchase a buyer goes through to find the right product.
There are 4 stages a buyer goes through: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Hence, the term AIDA is used.
Using AIDA, you map content and copy to the right contexts and the appropriate buyer persona. This helps you to move your prospect from one buying stage to another. You do this by:
- Grabbing the customer’s attention.
- Developing an interesting relationship with them.
- Creating a desire for your products.
- Persuading your customer to act, such as making a purchase.
Stage 1: Attention
At this stage, the buyer isn’t ready to purchase yet. However, they have an unfulfilled need, and they are looking around for products or services that will satisfy it.
You can use eye-catching copy and sensational videos to flash what you offer.
By this stage, you should have identified the appropriate media channels, so here is where you use your research to precisely place your ads.
Using the research you did through social listening, leverage the same words your customers use to create relevant ads that catch the attention of your buyer.
Your aim here should be to firmly introduce your brand and your product.
Stage 2: Interest
In this stage, any online consumer would have identified a set of products (including yours) that would satisfy their need. They are actively searching for more information.
Here, you would have to come up with content that creates interest. Communicate the benefits (emotional, functional, social) through your ads or your content.
Use the strengths and unique selling points you have identified in your SWOT analysis. Bring out those stats you might have identified while researching opportunities and threats.
Stage 3: Desire
At this stage of your buyer’s journey, your buyer is actively considering your product.
Under these circumstances, persuade with your social proof and bring out the juicy discounts. Use testimonials and positive tweets you have dug out from social listening. Design landing pages that use persuasive marketing techniques such as the Decoy Effect, urgency and scarcity. Promote your case studies and white papers that paint a powerful picture of how good you are in your industry.
Stage 4: Action
Your customer has surrendered to the power of persuasion. Hence, make them act by creating a strong call to action, reminding them of abandoned carts and using your sales team to make demo calls.
Conclusion
To sum up, all the tips to create a marketing strategy presented above help in better understanding customers and craft great communication and purchase experiences.
57% of companies have a documented content marketing strategy (source). Therefore, successful businesses do not consider strategy as an afterthought. They allocate both human and financial resources to carry out the necessary activities to have a documented marketing plan in place.
A marketing strategy helps brands occupy a desirable, trustworthy space in their customers’ minds. For this to happen, your customers should have a smooth communication and purchase experience. Thus, a marketing plan, which assesses strengths and shortcomings and leverages communication channels to promote personalised persuasive messages, is crucial.
How Can SEO Impact Help Your Business?
Notably, about 22% of startups fail because of their non-cohesive marketing strategies (source).
There are tons of marketing plan templates across the web which you can emulate. But are you finding it difficult to come up with a marketing plan on your own?
We have ushered companies through tough, stormy markets and rained down sales. For more powerful tips to create your marketing strategy, get in touch with us today!
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