Tame the Marketing Madness
A marketing plan achieves a cohesive result driven strategy that attracts your buyer. It organizes your entire marketing strategy keeping you or your team on track and focused. But the biggest benefit is your ability to track marketing goals and adjust your advertising for the biggest bang for your buck. Design your marketing strategy based on market research and a focus on providing the right product mix to achieve maximum profit.
There are 7 components every marketing plan should address: Brand Identity, Define who you serve, Set Goals, Advertising, Company Website, List Building, and Content Strategy.
What’s in a Marketing Plan?
Depending on your company and industry the components of your Marketing Strategy may vary. The following 7 sections should apply to most industries.
Brand Identity
It’s important to know how your business will show up in the world. Crafting the perfect logo, selecting signature colors, fonts and textures all help you tell your story. Part of that story is your customer experience. Give your company a go to voice, are you sassy, professional, or adventurous. Everything your consumer experiences from your company should all be a part of a cohesive strategic storyline that connects with your ideal customer. Defining your brand will provide you and your team a base to approach any situation and decision.
Customer Identities
It’s important to have a very clear vision of who you will serve. There are many methods of identifying your customer, building an avatar is the most common. When building your customer profiles identify reasons for buying, their purchase behavior, where you can connect with them, and what will attract them to your brand. Most businesses have 3 or 4 consumer types. The differences in each archetype are usually found among the purchase triggers (motivations to make the purchase).
Set Goals
There is more to goal setting than your sales goals. Although most of the goals we set are financially based there are other metrics we should be striving to improve. In our digital world, we can dig so much deeper into our marketing campaigns. Tracking web traffic, most visited pages, web traffic referrals, geographic information, and mobile vs desktops the list is almost endless.
Set your Marketing Strategy goals so that you gain insight where you need to improve for better targeting and customer experience.
Customer Acquisition Strategy
Deciding where and when you will advertise is an important part of raising brand awareness and obtaining new customers.
Traditional Advertising
Local magazines, billboards, radio, and tv may all be a great part of your marketing mix.
Digital Advertising
If you haven’t already started finding your customers online it’s time. There are many options that could be right for your company. Social Media, directories, and retargeting strategies might be some of the ways you can connect with your consumer online.
Website
It’s almost shocking when you search for a company and find out they don’t have a website. It’s even more frustrating when the site isn’t mobile friendly.
Your website is where you control the consumer’s experience. There are a number of options available in the market today for bringing your web presence to life. WordPress is a favorite, but companies like Wix and Squarespace may fit your needs.
Developing your marketing strategy for your website be mindful of content silos, navigation, purchase sequences, images, SEO, landing pages, and opt-ins.
Email List Building
You’ve probably heard the phrase “the money is in the list”. List building is among the highest of priorities for most marketers. Successful strategies for building your list may include contests, sneak peeks for subscribers only, High-value content behind an opt-in, as well as special discounts and webinars.
Don’t focus on the number of sign-ups, focus on getting quality targeted sign-ups.
This is one of the most important pieces of your marketing.
Content Strategy
It’s impossible to research marketing strategies and not find Content is “King”. Designing your content strategy can be challenging. Start by researching key topics in your industry and frequently asked questions from your customers. Once you have decided what content you need to produce find a content strategy tool or utilize Excel to build your Content Strategy Calendar.
Some industries will have a library of content to create and organize. If you’re working with a team it’s important to find the perfect tool to keep everything organized and prioritize.
If you’re just beginning your content strategy start SMALL. Put together an eBook or write a blog post once a month. It’s far more important to have a few valuable pieces of content than 25 poorly written blog posts with little thought of end user strategy and content silos.
As business owners, it can seem impossible to cover all your bases and keep all the balls in the air. Creating your marketing strategy allows you to keep yourself and your team on track to grow your company and create a cohesive understanding of how your company intends to show up and win over customers.
Having a marketing strategy allows you to easily outsource or transfer ownership to key employees. It allows you to truly understand how your marketing is affecting your bottom line as well as track consumer behavior and give you the advantage to change and adapt with your consumer.
