Want Better Marketing Results? Focus On Your Marketing Strategy

Business Growth

Aug 23

If you want to improve your marketing, don’t jump right into launching more tactics. Don’t simply create more content, send more emails, or spend more on ads. Instead, take a step back and focus on your strategy. Create an updated marketing strategy to guide your next steps.

A recent survey shared by Marketing Charts showed that many brands are doing just that. Fifty-two percent (52%) of marketing executives and agencies reported that clients are requesting assistance with marketing strategy, more than any other need.

There’s a good reason why brands are focusing on marketing strategy. Let’s look at what a marketing strategy is and why it’s essential if you want to create real results from your marketing and advertising efforts.

What Is a Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy is a plan that outlines a brand’s goals, where the brand is in relation to those goals, and what steps the brand can take to reach those goals. It includes a research phase that uncovers factors that could have an impact on the brand’s ability to reach their goals such as:

Industry/market data
Competitive research
Audience research
Internal team feedback and audits
Third-party audits

With all these inputs as guidance, a 6 month+ roadmap tactical plan can be developed to execute.

Why Is a Marketing Strategy Important?

A marketing strategy is important because it tells a brand what steps to take to reach their goals. Without a strategy, a brand is just guessing what will work. There is no clear roadmap to success, and they can only guess at what will work, what is working, and what isn’t working.

A marketing strategy:

Drives positioning and targeting. A marketing strategy helps you get clear about where you fit in the market and who you are trying to reach by deeply understanding your audience personas/ buyer profiles. If you don’t know these two things, it will be difficult to create marketing that resonates with customers and prospects.
Helps with decision-making. There are a lot of directions you can take with marketing. The strategy guides the many decisions that need to be made when it comes to branding, advertising, content creation, and even product/service development and helps you focus on the greater impact initiatives.
Provides benchmarks and KPIs. Data is extremely important to overall success, from marketing campaigns to business decisions. A marketing strategy outlines key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure your goals and your progress toward those goals.
Confirms or disproves marketing intuition. There are certain business decisions that can be made based on experience and intuition, however, data is often the best indicator of success. With a plan and data, you can look at your efforts and clearly answer the question: Should we be doing this?

When To Create a Marketing Strategy

Of course, you want to create a marketing strategy when you begin marketing something new. Take time to craft your plan before you launch marketing tactics for a new business, product, service, idea, or offering.

At SpotOn, we always recommend 3-4 weeks of research before any marketing tactics get underway.

It’s also important to regularly revisit the existing marketing strategies you already have in place.

While your current marketing strategy may be sound, relying on past tried-and-true methods may not be enough. As time goes on, old techniques lose competitive advantage and become table stakes. New methods will help you implement your strategic goals in new, exciting ways.

Whether you're developing a new marketing plan or improving on an old one, it's important to consider new marketing techniques. There should be at least a big annual strategy exercise, if not monthly or quarterly.

How to Create a Marketing Strategy

Many brands put off regularly revisiting their marketing strategy because of the perceived work involved. But, it doesn’t have to be a daunting process. In a recent post, we outlined 5 Steps to Level Up Your Marketing Strategy. If you want to create a marketing strategy, follow this five-step process:

1. Research: As mentioned above, research is a foundational element of a marketing strategy. Start by reviewing industry trends, and conduct competitive, audience, and keyword research.

2. Audit: If you have launched past marketing initiatives and already have a visible brand footprint, research your own brand. Audit your existing brand presence to look for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

3. Strategy: Now, get to work on the strategy. Outline the ways your brand can stand out in your market and effectively reach your target customers. Detail your brand story, mission, vision, and values. Define your target audience and how to reach them. And, layout the tactics you will use to promote your brand.

4. Assign KPIs and Test Tactics: There is no guarantee that your strategy will work. The only way to know is to assign KPIs that measure performance and test tactics to see what works best.

5. Review and iterate. Once you start launching tactics, find out what works (and what doesn’t) by reviewing the results against your KPIs. Identify the successes and the failures, and continue to tweak your plans to generate better results with each interaction.

This five-step process is imperative for creating marketing results that will have an impact on your brand. Don’t skip it if you want to make real, measurable progress.

If the process feels like too much for your brand, you don’t have to go at it alone. Look for a partner who can help you plan, organize, and execute with actionable insights you can have confidence in.

Start Building a Better Marketing Strategy Today

Don’t put off working on your marketing strategy. If you don’t have one or are struggling to create one, SpotOn is here to help.

We love working with brands to help them build a marketing strategy to get clear on positioning, targeting, goals, objectives, KPIs, and tactical planning. Contact us today to see how we can help you create a custom marketing roadmap for your brand. Contact us today.

strategy

Amanda Sanz