Marketing Strategy
Providing the roadmap to achieve your commercial goals.
Marketing strategy is a fundamental part of your overall business strategy. You’ve set your business mission and goals, now it’s time to define how you achieve them.
Creating a marketing strategy can feel like a lot when you are already busy running all aspects of your business. That’s why I use a simple framework, designed for small businesses, to build a strategy in a cost and time-efficient way.
I create a marketing strategy as unique as the business it’s created for.
For many start-ups and small businesses, a documented marketing strategy guide how you develop your existing business strategy. For example, the research phase will provide clarity on who you target and how to stand out from competitors.
I’ve seen businesses of all sizes tempted to ‘sell everything to everyone’. While this may work for a period of time, it often ends up being inefficient at best and hugely damaging at worst.
A marketing strategy ensures you are completely clear on your:
- Target market(s) and customers
- Value compared to competitors
- Approach to reaching these customers and gaining loyalty
My mission is to help you build a brand, attract customers and grow through smart, sensible and sustainable marketing services that are accessible and affordable.
The following framework is a useful starting point which I adapt to each business. See for yourself with my free marketing assessment how I can help your business succeed.
Developing your marketing strategy
These are the fundamental steps you need to take when develop a marketing strategy. It may look like a lot, but that’s where I come in to simplify the process and provide focus with the time available. Trust me, we can achieve so much together in just a few hours.
Some information is better than nothing and will go a long way to helping you develop your marketing strategy. It’s a start that we can build on!
Step 1: Understanding what you offer
First, we go back to basics to understand the:
- Product or service that you provide
- Market(s) and customers you target
- Problems you solve for them
It’s the critical first step of moving away from selling ‘everything to everyone’, meaning you maximise your time on customers who offer the most revenue and profit.
Step 2: Defining your ideal customer
Second, not all customers are created equally. Those who look good on the surface may not have the desire or resources for your offer. Consequently, creating an ideal customer profile keeps you focused on where you’ll get most return from your activities.
Taking this a step further and identifying characteristics of the people actually doing the buying will really help when we look at:
- Value proposition
- Messages
- Where they look for information to help with decision making
Step 3: Identifying your competitors
Third, I can’t emphasise how much you need to know your competitors – both direct and indirect. Customers have many demands on their budgets, not just for the service or product you provide.
By doing this we’re aiming to identify true points of difference in the service you provide compared to your competitors. Subsequently, this clarity drives the strategies you employ as a business whether it’s differentiation, cost, market expansion or market focus.
Step 4: Positioning in the market
Now we’re at the point of seeing where you and your business ‘fit’ in the market you’re targeting. We will clearly state the value you offer and maintain a consistent brand identity and message to support this.
The price of your products or service is an important element of this positioning. Therefore, the work done in the previous steps will help guide you to what is right for the stage of your business.
Step 5: Reaching your customers
Finally, taking what we’ve learned about your customers and competitors etc we consider how to reach them. It’s not a marketing strategy if it fails to show you how to achieve your goals. Therefore, we will identify the strategies, channels and tactics that will make your strategy a reality.
I recommend keeping it simple for a small business otherwise your resources are stretched and disillusionment can set in. For example, focusing on brand, website, social media and content strategies, is more than enough to get started. Then we focus on core activities within these areas to ensure you not only sustain activity but also keep it within budget.
A simple way to make a start on developing your marketing strategy is to request a free 90-minute marketing assessment. I’ll provide a summary of your marketing and practical actions you can take to improve it.
Click the link below to find out more and register your interest.
Start your marketing strategy with a FREE marketing assessment
My 90 minute assessment is a no cost, no commitment way to understand where your marketing is now with suggestions on how to develop it for business growth.
