‘Why do I need a marketing strategy?’ is a question we hear often, so in this blog we will explain why every business needs a marketing strategy and provide a guide to creating one for your business.
In short, a marketing strategy sets out your intention. Part of your overall business strategy, it’s the cornerstone for marketing and sales activities.
Without one, you’re winging it and hoping for the best. What’s more, you’re not concentrating marketing efforts where they will deliver ROI, meaning you’ll waste money on activities that don’t work!
At Rebus Creative, we think that this is a risky way to run a business.
The first step in creating a marketing strategy is to analyse present performance. If your company is based in Sheffield or South Yorkshire, why not book our FREE Marketing Audit, which provides an assessment of where your business is now, including:
- Marketing strategy review
- Brand consistency across all touchpoints
- Competitor performance insights
- Assess KPIs against business goals
Whether you are a small business or an established South Yorkshire company, our FREE Marketing Audit gives you clear direction and recommendations for building a marketing plan to deliver results.
The reasons why every business needs a marketing strategy
Here are the reasons why you need a marketing strategy and our guide to creating one.
1. Direction
Without clear goals and steps to reach them, your business is rudderless!
A marketing strategy will make sure you stay on track by setting out where you are going (goal) and why (purpose/mission), and how you are going to get there (marketing plan).
The first step is to make sure your overall aim is clearly defined so all marketing efforts are focused on achieving that goal.
For example, do you want to grow brand awareness, increase sales, break into a new market?
Be specific, so your team knows exactly what to focus on, e.g., increase web traffic by 25%; grow online sales by 20%; reach a new audience of middle-aged, buyers of luxury products.
2. Who is your target audience?
Why every business needs a marketing strategy is to make sure they communicate with the right people. You simply cannot afford to market to everyone!
To maximise ROI, marketing activities should be concentrated on reaching a ‘target audience’, rather than trying to communicate with everyone.
How do you do that?
- Do your research. Who are your current customers? Get a clear picture of the demographics (age, location, gender), and their likes/dislikes, behaviour.
- Analyse your products or services and whether anything has changed recently
- Research your competitors and how they market their products
This research is vital to understand who your ideal customer might be. There may be more than one, from different customer groups or segments, for example:
- Returning customers, who bought from you in the past
- Business clients
- Individual consumers
- Big spenders
- Those who only buy discounted products
- Loyal customers, who have been buying consistently over a period of time
Bring together all these insights to build a detailed customer persona (profile of your ideal customer.)
Discover where they hang out online, so you can tailor messages to speak directly to them and concentrate digital marketing activities in the channels that will reach them.
3. Tactics
This is the part of the marketing strategy that will outline your marketing activities, e.g.:
- Social media channels
- Content
- Events
- Advertising
- Email campaigns
- Landing pages
Having a marketing plan will ensure that marketing activities are concentrated in areas that reach customers.
By focusing on clearly defined goals, and using the right marketing tools and activities, you ensure your messages are reaching the right people to maximise marketing spend. You do this by:
- Targeting the right audience = higher conversion rates
- Focusing on the right channels – concentrate spend where your audience hangs out
- Using tools e.g. scheduling software, email automation, CRM systems – to save resources
- Repurposing content e.g. one blog = six social media posts and an email
Being strategic means using your budget, time and resources more effectively to get results you are looking for.
4. Branding
By setting clear goals, defining your audience and establishing how you are going to reach them, you have created a clear marketing plan.
But how can you be sure your brand stands out in the marketplace?
The key to successful branding is consistency. In a competitive market, it is not always about the best product or the cheapest! It is about customers recognising, associating and trusting a brand to deliver what they need.
Consistency builds that trust.
Why every business needs a marketing strategy is to define the brand voice and make sure the messages you convey are aligned with brand values and mission, so customers recognise and identify with you, wherever they see your company.
If your brand voice or messages keep changing, diluting your brand, it leads to audience confusion and a loss of confidence.
To be successful you need to be consistent in what you say, how you say it and how you look!
A marketing strategy determines how you communicate:
- Brand voice/messaging and regular posting
- Brand visuals – logo, colours, photos etc.
- Content plan for consistency
- Alignment across all communication channels
5. Continuous improvement
Why every business needs a marketing strategy is to provide a framework for tracking performance across channels to gain an understanding of what works and what doesn’t.
This takes the guesswork out of making an impact on your audience.
Include a starting point, so you can plot growth from there and make sure KPIs are aligned with business goals.
Vary your approach by channel to see what offers the best results. For emails, divide your audience into groups and try different headlines, subjects or calls to action to find out how customers are engaging with your business.
On social media platforms, try tweaking images or messages slightly to see whether engagement increases.
Tracking and refining marketing activities results in greater effectiveness, reducing costs by eliminating what isn’t working and getting more value from the marketing budget.
You can plot your growth from the starting point to where you are now and judge the effectiveness of minor tweaks and changes.
Schedule regular reviews (monthly or quarterly) to make sure your marketing strategy stays on track with your business goals and that your team is 100% focused on reaching that goal.
Why every business needs a marketing strategy
We hope that this article has helped you to understand why every business needs a marketing strategy.
However, if you are still uncertain where to start or you want to see a better return on your marketing activities for your Sheffield-based business, schedule a marketing strategy session with the Rebus Creative team or book our FREE marketing audit to get the ball rolling.
