Creating your marketing strategy is not an easy task, nor does it occur quickly. It takes time to assess what works and doesn’t work for you and your business, and then figuring out how to use that information in order to achieve your goal.
That’s the hard part! The easier part is deciding on your goal. What do you want to happen? More traffic to your site? More sales?
Once you have determined this, you can move onto the next step which is choosing your market. Who are you targeting with your message and content?
There is no wrong way to approach this as long as you know who your audience is and if their messages influence you or not. Once you have determined that, you can start creating and implementing your strategies.
Create a marketing strategy
A marketing strategy is usually described as a way to market your business or product. It can be done at any time, but it is most effective during the early stages of an organization’s growth.
A good marketing strategy has three parts: where you will spend your money, what messages you will use to convey your message, and how you will measure success.
It is very important to know that not every tactic in these three areas is considered budget-friendly. Some may cost lots of money, while others may require investing more heavily into some than others.
That is why it is so crucial to do research and determine which strategies are working for your competitor’s products and brands!
By doing this, you can find out what types of tactics work and don’t work, and then you can make sure to stay within budget while still getting results.
Establish your company’s website
Now that you have done some research into finding new clients, it is time to establish your own business’s site!
If you are reading this article now, then you already know what kind of marketing strategies work for you. You probably start at least half-hour before the computer each day. You spend those minutes doing things like looking up products, creating lists, and gathering information. All of these activities help you develop your business and brand.
With that said, developing your business’s site isn’t very different from other types of advertising. It just takes more than just having a nice looking page. A well designed site makes a good first impression and keeps people coming back to see what you have to offer.
It is important to remember that your audience will not connect with your business if you do not put in any effort. If you love what you do, you will put in extra effort to make sure others understand it.
Create a marketing campaign
Creating a successful marketable product does not happen overnight. It takes time, effort, and lots of testing to find what works for your company and your brand.
Just because something worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you! What may work for them could hurt your business in many ways.
You would be throwing money away by investing in that strategy if it isn’t working for your company. Or worse, it could make things bad enough that you haveto shut down completely.
That wouldn’t be good!
There are several different types of campaigns you can create for your business. Some are more expensive than others, but all bring in some type of revenue. Many people mix and match strategies to see which ones work for their business at this stage.
Some use social media to spread their message while other’s focus more on direct advertisements or flyers.
Choose a marketing approach
Choosing between different marketing strategies is like choosing what flavor of yogurt to eat for breakfast- you know it will make your stomach feel good, but there are so many brands!
Just because something worked well for someone else does not mean it will work well for you. You have to test out each one yourself by putting in some effort.
That means gathering information about the product or service, finding out who uses them and how they work, and then incorporating those things into your own strategy.
It also means investing time in testing out the products and seeing results. And remember, no matter which technique works, none of them work perfectly forever. So try several ones out and see what changes happen to your business.
At the end of this article, I linked to a free online tool that can help you evaluate your marketability. Try that out first and then add some strength to your advertising efforts.
Develop your marketing plan
After you have determined what areas of the market you are targeting, what messages you will use to convey these messages, and who you will target with those messages, it is time to develop your actual marketing strategy.
What we mean by this is deciding how you will reach out to people about your product or service. For example, if your business is offering accounting services, then you would choose your mediums (print ads, phone calls, etc.) and strategies (direct mail, social media advertising, etc) to promote your services.
There are many ways to advertise, so do not feel that just because something has worked for someone else that it cannot work for you.
Test your marketing strategy
A few years ago, you could spend all day trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t in marketing. You would find yourself surfing around different sites, listening to podcasts, reading articles – and still be left feeling confused!
It was hard to know which strategies worked for other companies that are not quite like yours. You would read an article about how Starbucks made a certain poster that promoted their new drinks, but it wouldn’t work for you because you don’t sell beverages.
You needed to test each tactic to see if it worked for you or not, and there were no easy ways of doing this. You either had to do it manually, writing down notes and comparing results between treatments, or use free tools to test them.
With the amount of content available online, now is a great time to experiment with marketing strategies. There are plenty of resources to learn from and tests you can run.
Measure your results
After you have done all of the other steps, what really matters is figuring out how well your marketing strategies are working for you. You can do this by measuring the effectiveness of each one.
There are several ways to measure the success of your marketing efforts. The most common way is to track return on investment (ROI). This means looking at the cost of the campaign in relation to the outcome it produced.
For example, if your company spent $1,000 on advertising then expected a rise in sales that was not achieved, calculate the ROI as follows:
$1,000 advertisement/increase in sales = ROI – dollars per sale
The numerator or first part of the equation ($1,000) is the cost of the advertisement, and the denominator or second part of the equation (sale increase) is what it would have had to be to get a meaningful result.
In this case, the denominator could be adjusted up depending on whether we assume the advertisements were seen before the increase in sales took place or after. More likely though, they were both during the same time period which makes the calculation easier.
Usually, the best indicator of effectiveness is just calculating the ratio of the two parts. In our example, the ratio would be $1000 divided by the increased number of sales which equals the ROI.
You can also compare your ROI from one period to another or against similar campaigns.
Make changes to your marketing strategy
Changing your marketing strategies is an easy way to refresh your business. There are many ways to do this, from changing how you market yourself to switching products or services that you offer.
As we have seen in this article, research can help you determine what works and doesn’t work for your business.
