The Essence of Effective Marketing Strategy
The essence of an effective marketing strategy is a clearly defined set of goals and a method to prove that those goals are met or occurring.
How do you know you’ve accomplished what you set out to do without defining it beforehand? You can’t.
If you are confused like the dog is in the image, keep reading.
Compelling Marketing Strategy Requires Careful Planning
At the center of a compelling marketing strategy is the meticulous branding of a company with a clearly defined set of goals and target audience. One must be cognizant of what lifestyle they want their company’s products to portray and how that speaks to the individuals in one’s target audience. It’s important to study the psychology around effective marketing strategies in order to maximize the capability of influencing consumers to buy into your product’s lifestyle.
First, identify some of the key components that make up a valuable marketing strategy:
Targeting Potential Customers
Do you have a persona for your target audience? If not, look for answers to the following questions:
- What are their demographics?
- What are their interests and hobbies?
- What sort of lifestyle does your customer partake in?
Persona creation is an essential part of developing a marketing strategy. Personas will yield positive results by segmenting a population into a niche group of consumers you can target. For example, if you are marketing a children’s toy you generally follow a different set of expectations and guidelines in comparison to marketing to teens.
Brand Centered Experience
You want your customers to be loyal to your company and feel a sense of belonging to the lifestyle it’s portraying. What aesthetics do you want to use to market your product? Make it important for your customer to identify with the ideology of your company. What connotations does your brand evoke? How does buying sneakers from Nike differ from buying sneakers at Adidas? At the end of the day, the brands we buy into reveal a lot about how we want to express ourselves to the world.
Know The Competitors In Your Target Market
Why should I purchase your product instead of your competitor’s product? What are the value props and how to they address my pain points? It is important when developing a marketing strategy to keep your competitors in mind. Individuals today are constantly bombarded with a giant scope of diverse choices for different goods. For instance, when someone searches for shirts on Google they are shown tons and tons of different companies willing to sell them a profusion of clothes. So you must be aware of how vital it is for you to demonstrate to that individual that your product is worth buying over the competitor’s product. What makes your shirt different? Is it softer? More trendy? More cost-effective? Making yourself stand out against competitors also centers back to what demographic you are trying to target. The more data you can gather about your target audience, the better prepared you are to market to them.
Channel Selection: Narrow Down the “How’s”
So now that you know who to target, it is imperative to decide how you want to target to them. This question depends on who you aim to tailor your product to. If you are selling science lab equipment, would it make more sense to deliver printed catalogs to schools or to offer them a digital option to make their purchases? With the expansive rate of technology, marketers must constantly be searching for and learning new tools of how to market to their audiences. They must also be mindful of the pros and cons of traditional forms versus digital forms of marketing. What are the benefits of having printed forms of advertising opposed to websites that can deliver search results at the blink of an eye?
Do You Need To Utilize Social Media
Social media is a huge market within the attention economy and it will help you develop a strong marketing strategy to target customers. One of these platforms is Instagram. Instagram is a great marketing tool as the “Explore” page helps you to engage with users both inside and outside your demographics. By utilizing tools like hashtags and mentions, your posts can dramatically increase their reach. Every platform offers a unique set of tools to reach potential audiences. The key factor is the content. Content that is aesthetically pleasing and alluring to your audience. Remember, Social Media is a group of channels; by itself, Social is not a strategy. Just like “Likes” and “Shares” are not revenue for your company.
Would Influencers Give You The Brand Lift You Need
Influencers are great sources of promoting your product or company. It gets your audience’s attention and may persuade them to buy into your product. However, it’s not a ready, fire, aim technique. Make sure to pick wisely when choosing an influencer. Celebrities have carefully branded themselves and created a certain image that you may or may not want associated with your company. In fact, there are plenty of cases where influencers have negatively impacted a brand. Nevertheless, influencers help provide value because they can help solidify the lifestyle you want to highlight. But again, this is a tactic to achieve a goal, by itself, an influencer is not a strategy.
Marketing strategies are tremendously valuable in growing your business and having a lasting impression on your niche audience. Having a solid framework and foundation is what allows you to build, grow, and iterate as you move into the future. The key to a great marketing strategy is listening to your consumers and being able to evolve with them.
If you need to build a marketing strategy for your business, let’s connect and discuss your goals.