We all strive to create long-term successful marketing strategies, that offer the best possible results, while, at the same time, take a minimum amount of effort. Before talking about the steps of a successful strategy, it’s important to define what a marketing strategy is and how to develop it.
The marketing strategy represents an action plan, based on an initial marketing analysis, which has the role of contributing to the growth of the business. For it to be attained, the products or services offered must meet the needs of the consumers, being desirable and relevant in the market. In addition, they must be constantly adapted to the market requirements.
The benefits of a marketing strategy:
- You gain an overview of the actions you are going to undertake;
- You can regularly check your current situation and make decisions based on it;
- You take into account form an early stage the advantages and disadvantages of your actions and their results.’
For a well-developed marketing strategy, focused on results and performance, you can follow these next steps:
1. The campaign goals and objectives
From the very beginning, it’s necessary to establish what is the main goal of our campaign, respectively what are its objectives. For a better management of results, it’s necessary to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound) objectives.
2. Market analysis
You never start a “fight” without knowing your field and competition, which is why market analysis is essential for the development of marketing strategies.
Firstly, a detailed analysis is made of the field in which the activation is desired. Given the current context, the focus should be on digitalizing businesses and migrating them to the online environment. Once we test that waters in which the company swims, we proceed to analyze the online and offline competitors. From the external analysis we slowly transition to the internal one, namely the client analysis, followed by the SWOT and target audience analyses. Once the conclusions are drawn and the necessary recommendations are launched, we can move on to the client’s avatar.
3. Customer avatar
Our target customer must be known in the smallest detail. Who he is, what he does, how he spends his time. What drives his purchasing decisions and what’s his budget for those purchases. Once our customer is precisely defined, it will be much easier to communicate with him, understand his needs and meet them, thus generating our desired results.
4. The medium in which we operate
Having identified all of the above, we can move our focus to the environment in which we want to carry out our activities. More specifically, we need to identify and analyze the channels where we want to promote our products or services. Thus, the main communication channels are:
- Google Adwords
- SEO
- Video marketing – Facebook and YouTube
- Referral marketing
- Google Display
- Email marketing
- Content marketing
- Influencer marketing
Each channel is designed for a different type of content, but you can opt to encompass more at the same time in order to cover more areas.
5. The action plan
A successful marketing strategy is based on a well-defined marketing plan. Thus, we must clearly establish the messages we run with, the tone of voice, how we address the target audience and where exactly do we find it. The action plan is usually made in two directions. For the short term, in which we specify exactly what needs to be done: launch campaigns, individual campaigns, posts on social networks, subjects for articles and others. On the other hand, the long-term plan encompasses all of the above, only at a higher level, plus campaigns and strategies for longer periods of time.
6. Strategy implementation and constant monitoring
The implementation of the marketing strategy is an important step, which directly impacts the performance of the campaigns. For the most favorable results, it’s recommended to solicit the help of a specialized marketing agency, which can deal with the strategy and the previous steps. Once the strategy is implemented, its constant monitorization its recommended, in order to make real-time decisions that can drastically improve the results.
7. Conclusions and strategy performance
Finally, constant reporting is required in order to get a better image of the evolution of the strategy and its results. Based on this reports, future decisions can be made that can influence the long-term strategy and contribute to its improvement.
A marketing strategy is incomplete without these final conclusions, because its purpose is to improve the company’s performance and results. Thus, future decisions are based on results and the performance of the following strategies will increase.
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