1. Perform a situation assessment
You must first understand your present condition before you
can begin developing your marketing strategy.
What are your advantages, disadvantages, possibilities, and
threats? The first stage in developing a marketing strategy is to do a simple
SWOT analysis.
You should also have a good awareness of the present
market. How do you stack up against your rivals? This stage should be made
easier if you conduct a competitor analysis.
Consider how other items are superior to yours. Also, think
about the flaws in a competitor's strategy. What exactly are they missing out
on? What can you offer that will give you an edge over the competition?
Consider what distinguishes you.
Answering questions like this should help you figure out
what your customer wants, which brings us to step number two.
2. Determine who you want to target
Make sure you know who your target audience is once you
have a better understanding of the market and your company's condition.
If your organisation currently has buyer personas in place,
this phase may merely require you to refine them.
You should establish a buyer persona if you don't already
have one. You may need to perform market research to accomplish this.
Demographic data such as age, gender, and income should be
included in your buyer profile. It will, however, include psychographic
information such as pain locations and objectives. What motivates your target
audience? What are the issues that your product or service can help them with?
This information will help you clarify your goals once
you've written it down, which leads us to step three.
3. Set Smart Goals
"You can't get anywhere until you have a road
map," my mother used to say. That was literal advice for me, as someone
who is geographically handicapped.
It can, however, be used symbolically in marketing. You
can't improve your return on investment unless you know what your objectives
are.
You may start defining your Smart goals once you've
determined out your existing condition and identified your target audience.
Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound
goals are known as SMART goals. This means that all of your objectives should
be detailed and provide a time frame for completion.
For example, your objective could be to gain 15% more
Instagram followers in three months. This should be relevant and feasible,
depending on your overall marketing objectives. This aim is also specific,
measurable, and time-limited.
You should write down your objectives before you begin any
strategy. Then you can start thinking about which strategies will assist you
attain your objective. That brings us to the next point.
4. Analyze your strategies
You've written down your objectives depending on your
target audience and existing situation at this point.
Now you must determine which strategies will assist you in
achieving your objectives. What are the best channels and action items to
concentrate on?
If you want to boost your Instagram followers by 15% in
three months, you may offer a giveaway, answer to every remark, and post three
times per week.
It should be simple to come up with many approaches to
reach your objectives once you know what you want to achieve.
However, you must keep your budget in mind while designing
your tactics, which leads us to step number five.
5. Set your budget.
You must first determine your budget before you can begin
implementing any of the ideas you've generated in the preceding steps.
Social media advertising, for example, could be one of your
strategies. However, if you don't have the necessary funds, you may not be able
to attain your objectives.
Make a budget estimate as you're sketching out your
strategies. You can factor in the time it will take to finish each technique,
as well as any assets you may need to buy, such as ad space.
Now that you know how to make a marketing strategy, let's
look at the elements that should be included in a high-level marketing plan.