Writing a Marketing Strategy to Grow Your Business
A marketing strategy will help your business to grow and ensure long-term sustainability. Despite this many businesses struggle to write and implement a formal marketing strategy. Here are some key aspects to consider when writing a marketing strategy for your business.
1. Differentiate between a marketing strategy and marketing plan
It is important to recognise the difference between your business marketing strategy and marketing plan. It is easy to get them confused however the difference is easy to remember, especially if you think of them like the sat nav in your car. When you start a car journey and type into your sat nav the destination of where you want to go you receive step by step directions of how to get there. Your marketing strategy represents the destination of where you want to go. It consists of the objectives, and measurable goals for your business based on the unique selling proposition (USP) you’ve identified that your customers want. Your marketing plan is like the directions you receive from your sat nav. It is the tactics you must take to execute the strategy that you’ve identified. In summary, the marketing strategy sets the direction of where you want to go, and the marketing plan contains the specific actions or directions you must take to execute the strategy.
2. Research your target audience
To create a marketing strategy, you should first undertake research into your target audience to determine what they need and want. Many businesses fall into the trap of providing a product or service based on what they think customers want or indeed based on what they see competitors offering. The problem with this is that you may hit it lucky for a short time and gain a few sales but ultimately customers will not be loyal and move on very easily. Worse still, you won’t really know what made them buy from you in the first place as you’ve done no research.
It is worth spending time to really get to know who your customers are and what they really want from you. This can be done in several ways including developing a buyer persona which is a representation of what your ideal customer looks like for a specific product or service you offer. It should answer questions such as, how old are they? Where they live? What they do for a living? What their hobbies are? Where they buy now? What would make them buy from you? What benefits they are looking for? What you can offer that is different?
Another sure-fire way of finding out what customers want is to simply ask them. The essential part is to listen, engage and then act on what you find out to formulate your strategy.
3. Develop your USP
From the market research you undertake into your target audience the aim is to determine your unique selling proposition (USP). In other words what is the core benefit that customers are looking for that you can provide. Don’t be afraid of not getting it right immediately. The best USP’s are found by product testing, obtaining feedback, and then refining the offer to exactly what your customers want.
Once you’ve defined your USP it should be used to form the strategic goals that make up your marketing strategy. It is also important to detail in your marketing plan how you will communicate your USP to your target audience via the marketing methods you select such as, website, social media, promotional leaflets etc.
4. Set strategic goals
Setting realistic and measurable goals is an essential part of your marketing strategy. If you wander aimlessly day to day with no direction of where you are going then you’ll end up letting the business run you and waste time and money along the way. To avoid this, it is necessary to set specific and actionable goals that you can measure and review. This will help keep a focus on exactly what you want to achieve.
The goals you set don’t have to be pages and pages long, in fact it’s better to have a handful of goals that you can easily recall and focus on. It is, however, important to make your goals specific, measurable and give them a timeframe. For example, one goal could be ‘to increase sales’. This is not ideal because it is vague and it does not allow you to measure it in any meaningful way.
This goal could be developed so that instead of just ‘to increase sales’ the aim is ‘to increase profits by £20,000 in the next 12 months by increasing the sales of product X by 10% to customer group X that has been identified from market research.’ A goal like this is specific, measurable, and timely. It is also linked to the initial research carried out into your target audience.
When setting your business goals, it is good to have four or five that are measurable and realistic, after all if you can’t achieve any goals that you set, you’ll be extremely disappointed. It is also worth including one or two really ambitious goals that might even seem unreachable.
The best way to set ambitious goals is to ask yourself, ‘what do you want?” and “why are you in business?” in other words what drives you to do what you do. It could be to get the house or car of your dreams or to create a legacy for your family. Whatever it is identify something that you really want, even though it may not seem possible and include it as one of your goals. The key to business success is not to be afraid of failing. These ambitious goals will stretch you and help drive you forward while also assisting you achieve your overall business objectives.
5. Effective implementation
Once you know your target audience, have identified your USP and set your strategic goals you are ready to implement your marketing strategy by creating a marketing plan detailing the specific tactics you will take to achieve your goals.
The marketing plan will expand on defining your customer groups in greater detail, identify your competitors strengths and weaknesses and define the market that you are operating in. The marketing plan will outline your market niche, explaining why customers will buy from you. The plan will then detail what your marketing message is and how you will communicate it to your target audience. This involves a breakdown of all the marketing mediums you will use, such as website, email campaign, social media, leaflets etc.
The marketing plan will then set specific sales and marketing targets that will help you achieve your strategy. So, if one of the goals in your strategy is to ‘increase profits by £20,000 by selling a certain product’ as mentioned previously, then the plan should include targets that will achieve this. For example, a target of how many enquiries, conversions and website traffic is needed to achieve this goal.
Finally, the marketing plan should include a budget and timetable for the implementation of all the activities identified with a process to monitor and review progress. This helps ensure you can see what methods are working and can adapt accordingly. The key thing is that it is a plan and should be reviewed periodically to keep things on track.
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