A marketing strategy is the most important component of promotional activities, as it sets out a direction for enterprise development. Being aware of where the brand heads to significantly facilitates conducting marketing activities and their analysis. What to consider when planning a marketing strategy?
Goal is not a marketing strategy
We should not confuse the goal with the means. A marketing strategy answers a question how we are going to reach our goal. An appropriately developed marketing strategy is able to show how to achieve the adopted objectives while using a budget and available resources. Without a well-planned and specific strategy, a road to our goal will definitely be longer and more costly.
Marketing strategy – market analysis
Planning a marketing strategy should comprise multiple stages. First of all, it requires analysing the market and collected information. The way it is used can affect further stages of the entire strategy. The analysis helps understand factors that can contribute to achieving a success, namely implementation of the business plan. It is worth looking at competitors, checking what segments of recipients are and what a current demand is for. Entering the segment of affluent customers requires a different strategy than reaching a mass client. If a company has been present in the market for some time it is possible to make an audit of to-date marketing activities. This way one can understand if the activities have been appropriately selected.
Marketing strategy vs target group
Defining a target group is another component that a marketing strategy should take into consideration. Simply speaking, these are potential customers who might be interested in what we are offering. In order to get to know them better, we should think who they are, e.g. women aged 25-35 years, mothers of school children. The more precise information we gather, the better. The next important step will involve creating personas. This is just how we imagine our potential customer, which will help us develop advertising communications.
Use innovative marketing tools
Every marketing strategy should include carefully considered tools and channels of marketing communication. Depending on a target group they can be digital or offline. Nowadays a good marketing strategy won’t be complete without online activities such as e.g. social media, Google Ads, email marketing, push notifications, chatbots, SMS marketing, marketing automation or content marketing. Is it, in that case, worth being present in every communication channel? Absolutely not! The best solution is conducting marketing activities in several channels, but in a fully engaged and professional way. Otherwise the brand is threatened with “burning on the budget”.
It is worth analysing where our recipients are present. There are universal communication channels which a marketing strategy should include. This is obviously a website. It is also worth investing in a company blog, email marketing, social media and push notifications. It is push notifications themselves that are the most state-of-the-art technology facilitating acquiring and managing the recipients’ base. Notifications give a possibility of combining users into groups and sending messages without collecting email addresses and phone numbers. These concise, customised communications generate the highest conversion rate in the media and help increase sales by recovering abandoned carts.
