The making of a marketing strategy – part 1
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Having a plan of where you want to go and how you are going to get there is so important for businesses to have in place. Over the next three episodes, we are going to give you the lowdown on how to create your marketing strategy to help achieve your big business goals.
1. It starts with research
Before you get to the strategising, you need to know the lay of the land. First up, research yourself. Review what marketing you have in place currently and how well it is performing - what you like and what you hate, what needs updating and what should probably be dropped all together.
Discovering how your clients view your business is also a part of this research process. How do they find you and where are they looking? What is your client care process? For example, they find you on Google, go to your website, and submit an enquiry. What does that look like (is everything clear, up to date and easy to understand?) and how long does it take for you to get in contact?
Next, research your ideal customer. Look at your current client list and find who you love working with and why. This is going to help in targeting that ideal client to come and work with you.
Then, find your competitors and what marketing platforms they’re using. This includes refining who your competitors really are - if you’re an electrician, than not everyone who does electrical work is “really” your competitor. Look for the ones who have the same type of clients and offer similar services to you - what are they doing online, how are they positioning themselves, how do people react to them on socials etc?
Finally, what are the trends in your industry right now and what is upcoming in the market that could affect your business - either as a challenge or opportunity?
2. Go go goal setting
What are your overarching one to three business goals for the next three to five years? From this, you can work out what your marketing objectives will be - because your marketing should support your overall business goals.
3. On target (market)
Once you have your overall business goals and marketing objectives to support them, you need to find the people who will help you reach those goals. Customers and clients might be one target market, while current and prospective employees could be another - it all comes down to your goals. Your research will assist here, in identifying who those people are - and what they’re about.
4. Keyed up on messaging
We then need to bring those last two points together - what is it that we need to tell our target market/s to achieve our goal/s? Use your research to help you develop the key messages you want to communicate to your audience - make sure you have a point of difference from your competitors.
WRAP-UP TIP: Don’t make your strategy stuffy! Just because you’re doing all that thinking, doesn’t mean you have to get into corporate-mode - this is marketing, and it’s fun. Having an interesting sounding, personality-driven strategy will not only make the overall process more fun, it will also help to keep you engaged and on track with your strategy doc.
NEXT STEPS: Part 2 will be out on 5 August – so you have a 2-week deadline to get this first part done!