A marketing strategy is essentially a plan for how a business will promote and sell its products or services. It is a pivotal part of any business plan and should be developed before launching a product or service.
Our marketing experts have made things a little easier for you, by outlining the first steps to creating a marketing strategy.
Step 1: Define your target market
The first step in creating a marketing strategy is to define your target market. This includes identifying the demographics, psychographics, and behaviour patterns of your ideal customer. This information will help you to understand their needs, wants, and buying habits, which will inform the rest of your marketing strategy.
Step 2: Conduct a SWOT analysis
Once you have defined your target market, the next step is to conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. This exercise will help you to identify the internal and external factors that could impact your business, both positively and negatively.
Step 3: Set marketing goals
Once you have completed your SWOT analysis, the next step is to set marketing goals. These goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Examples of marketing goals include increasing website traffic, increasing sales, and increasing brand awareness.
Step 4: Develop a marketing mix
Once you have set your marketing goals, the next step is to develop a marketing mix. The marketing mix is the combination of tactics that you will use to achieve your marketing goals. It includes the four Ps: Product, Price, Promotion, and Place.
Product: What are you selling and how does it meet the needs of your target market?
Price: How much will you charge for your product or service?
Promotion: How will you promote your product or service to your target market? This includes advertising, public relations, sales promotions, and personal selling.
Place: Where will you sell your product or service? This includes physical locations, online platforms, and distribution channels.
Step 5: Create an action plan
The final step in creating a marketing strategy is to create an action plan. This includes outlining the specific tasks, timelines, and resources needed to implement your marketing mix and achieve your marketing goals. It's important to regularly review and adjust your action plan as needed to ensure that you are on track to achieving your goals.
Step 6: Conduct market research
Conducting market research is an important step in developing a marketing strategy, it's a process of gathering, analysing and interpreting information about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market, and about the past, present and potential customers that would be interested in the product or service. This helps to understand the size of the market, the competition, and the customer needs, which in turn helps to inform the rest of the marketing strategy.
Step 7: Analyze the competition
Analysing the competition is an important step in developing a marketing strategy. It helps to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competition and how they are positioning themselves in the market. This can help inform your marketing mix and your unique selling proposition (USP).
Step 8: Measure and Analyse performance
Measuring and analysing the performance of your marketing strategy is an important step. It helps to understand the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and where improvements can be made. This can be done by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as website traffic, sales, and customer engagement.
These steps will provide you with the initial, basic guide to developing your marketing strategy.
However if this is all sounding a little too complicated, or perhaps you simply don't have the time, our marketing experts can create a marketing strategy tailored to your business for £800+VAT. Contact us today to enquire.