So you've worked out why you want to do some marketing and have thought about how it may impact on your business. You're probably quite excited to get started now and can't wait to get some groovy new business cards or a great new Web site. Hold on a second. Before starting any marketing projects, you need to make sure your strategy is rock solid.
Remember, the marketing strategy absolutely must be aligned with the overall business plan - and the business plan must come first. Don't try to do it the other way around.
What exactly is a marketing strategy?
Basically, a good marketing strategy is a plan that helps a business to utilise its marketing budget as optimally as possible - in order to meet marketing goals.
Unless you have a strong background in marketing, don't be tempted to do this on your own.
Jo Duxbury is a marketing consultant and founder of Freelancentral.
That's why it's so important to identify upfront what you want the marketing to achieve. The strategy will be a blueprint for how to achieve these goals, taking into account products, target market, competition and resources.
Once it is in place, it will be a reference point for all the marketing work that you do going forward. Importantly, it's not a once-off document that gets filed away - rather, it should be reviewed quarterly and updated as the company, target market and external media landscape changes.
What does it cover?
Put simply, the marketing strategy will crystallise the following:
* What you do. Your offering - products and/or services - and what makes them better than the competition's. The top-level value proposition should be included as well as a rough positioning statement (a couple of sentences that clearly and succinctly describe what you do - from a client's perspective).
* Who you want to sell to. Identify the target market and be specific as possible. Saying you want to sell to 'everyone in Gauteng' is not specific enough. Consider socio-economic and demographic factors, as well as geography, technology, niches and more. Where possible, include information about the target market's habits, interests and behaviour. If you don't know this, invest in some customer research.
* How you're going to sell your services to that audience. Work out the best 'marketing mix' - ie, the best combination of various marketing media to get the messages to the target audience - to achieve your goals. This will be heavily influenced by your budget.
Why is this all so important?
You wouldn't start building a house without first getting an architect to draw up plans, would you? Imagine what would happen: you might contravene council requirements and have to amend the building down the line. Or discover you'd forgotten to make provision for enough electrical sockets. Or realise the size or layout of a bedroom doesn't actually accommodate a bed. You don't want to discover these things once the house is actually built - you want to plan it properly and make sure you spend your money wisely.
In the same way, without a marketing strategy and plan in place, you can end up wasting a lot of time, effort and money on Web sites, marketing collateral or advertising that just doesn't do the job properly. Your messages will be all over the place and will confuse customers. And the last thing you want to do is damage your brand. Skip the strategy and you'll miss out on getting strong, engaging and memorable messages out to the right potential customers.
Take time to plan and really think through your marketing before leaping into that Web site redesign, new corporate ID or brochure. It is such a worthwhile investment.
How do you put a marketing strategy together?
Get help. Unless you have a strong background in marketing, don't be tempted to do this on your own.
Not only will you probably inadvertently miss out some very important elements, but having an outside perspective on the business can be extremely valuable. An outside marketing consultant can look at your business objectively and help spot strengths and weaknesses that you perhaps can't see. Plus, he or she does this for a living and should be in touch with the latest trends in the marketing industry, so can advise you on these too.
Next month:
Planning marketing for the year. How to structure an implementation plan that's achievable and effective.
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