The great Vince Lombardi once said, “Hope is not a strategy.”
He was referring to football, of course, but his words are dynamic enough to be applied to most situations, including marketing.
If you’ve been in business for a while, you might’ve found yourself wanting more customers, or more work. When you were in that situation, what did you do? Did you start trying a million things just to see what happened? Or did put a plan together and act according to the plan?
It's tempting to jump into the first scenario. When you’re stuck movement feels good, but taking action without a strategic plan in place ultimately leaves you hoping things will work out.
So how do you move from hope to implementing a full-blown marketing strategy? Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
What is a Marketing Strategy and Why Should You Have One?
A marketing strategy is a plan to reach your prospects and turn them into customers. It's the long-term vision that defines how marketing will help you achieve your overall business goals. A marketing strategy will also help determine which marketing tactics you eventually use, and what resources you'll need to be successful.
Think about it this way, you wouldn’t build a house without a plan, right?
Of course, you wouldn’t.
The house plan is the overarching document that helps guide your day-to-day moves. Without one, you might miss a step or 5, and struggle to develop a coherent and quality building.
The same is true for a marketing strategy. So having a strategy in place will help you achieve the incremental steps toward your overarching goal.
How To Create a Marketing Strategy
Now that we know what it is and why we should have it, let's talk about how you create a marketing strategy. The exact steps you take are going to vary based on several factors, but here are a few things you should consider as you’re determining your strategy:
1. Define Your Goals
Every action you take should be a step towards achieving your ultimate business goals. Building your marketing strategy is no different, which is why you sneed to clearly define what you are trying to achieve before you set to work creating a strategy.
You’ve decided to do marketing for a reason. What is that reason?
Are you trying to reach more customers or new customers? Do you want to grow your business? Are you looking to build stronger relationships with the customers you currently have? Do you want to build a brand?
Define the “why” behind doing any marketing at all and figure out how that aligns with your overall business goals. Only once that’s done can you hope to move forward productively.
2.Understand Your Customers
Understanding your customers is very nearly as important as defining your goal. You can have all the goals and plans in the world, but if what you’re trying to accomplish doesn’t align with what customers want or need, you’re sunk.
All business consists of one person buying from another. It doesn't matter if you’re a B2B company or B2C or if you work in construction, law, or cosmetics. If you don’t understand the person and the human problem they are trying to solve by interacting with your business, you won’t succeed. That’s why understanding your customers is such a crucial piece of a marketing strategy.
3.Determine Your Value Proposition
Why should people buy from you and not one of your competitors? What makes you so special? Clearly defining why your offer is the better solution will have an underlying presence in the marketing campaigns you create after you’ve established your marketing strategy. Maybe you have a unique product that no one else can compare. Maybe you offer a warranty when your competitors don’t. Maybe you’ve invented a process that makes your service cheaper. Whatever it is, you need to identify why customers should buy from you instead of taking their business down the road. Without clearly communicating that you will leave a lot of potential on the table.
4. Determine Your Resources
You’ve figured out what your goals are, now you need to determine how you’re going to accomplish those goals. The first thing you need to do is think about what resources you have to dedicate to your marketing strategy.
Are you going to be able to do the work in-house? Do you need to hire an agency? Do you have time to do this yourself? Have you tried any forms of marketing that have been successful in the past?
These are all great questions to help you start thinking about the time and money requirements that you’ll need to reach your goals.
5. Establish Tactics
Once you have a good idea of your resources, you can start to think about the tactics you might want to use. Your tactics are the day-to-day things you’ll do to promote your business and help to reach our customers. For example, if you’ve got the budget for it, maybe you’ve decided that you’ll run paid ads through Google or a social media platform. Or maybe you’ve decided that being an industry authority is a good way to go and are focusing on producing high-quality content to help achieve that.
6. Evaluate Your Performance
The last step in creating your marketing strategy is to figure out how you want to measure success. There are about a million marketing metrics that you can focus on, so the challenge here is cutting through the noise and measuring the things that matter. It's going to be up to you to decide what matters, but we have some friendly advice.
Revenue and ROI absolutely matter when measuring the performance of your marketing strategy. After all, the reason you decided to sit down and work on creating a marketing strategy is probably because you wanted to drive more revenue. If your strategy isn’t helping you create more revenue, it's time to look at why and make some changes.
When you consider revenue, though, you need to consider your marketing ROI. If you’re making more sales that’s awesome, but if your marketing is costing more than the profit on your deals then you need to reassess.
Marketing is an iterative process. Companies that successfully market their businesses experiment, measure and make adjustments.
3 Examples of Marketing Strategies
I’m a visual learner, so as a bonus, I’ve put together 3 examples of companies that have developed and implemented successful marketing strategies. Study what they’ve done and see if you can adopt any of their secrets to fit your business.
1. Turner Construction Company:
Turner Construction Company is a leading construction management firm that leverages various marketing channels to promote its services. The company uses trade shows and events to showcase its capabilities, including sustainable building practices and project management expertise. Turner Construction also maintains a strong online presence, with a website that provides case studies and industry news. The company uses social media to engage with its audience and share content about its projects and initiatives. Additionally, Turner Construction employs direct mail campaigns, email marketing, and targeted advertising to reach potential clients.
2. Morgan & Morgan:
Morgan & Morgan is a personal injury law firm that employs a range of marketing channels to attract clients. The firm uses television and radio advertising to promote its services and reach a broad audience. Morgan & Morgan levaerages a website that provides information about its practice areas and legal resources. The firm uses social media to engage with potential clients and share content about legal topics. Additionally, Morgan & Morgan uses search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising to reach potential clients who are actively searching for legal representation.
3. Cleveland Clinic:
Cleveland Clinic is a healthcare organization that employs various marketing channels to promote its services and engage with patients. The organization uses television advertising and print media to build brand awareness and promote its various clinical specialties. Cleveland Clinic uses their website to provide health information, patient resources, and telehealth services. The organization uses social media to engage with patients and share content about health topics. Additionally, Cleveland Clinic uses email marketing and targeted advertising to reach potential patients and promote its services.
Conclusion
We opened this article with a quote from Vince Lombardi, “Hope isn’t a strategy”. Don’t just hope your marketing will help you achieve your business goals, develop a strategy and put it to work to supercharge your marketing efforts.
And, if you need a little help, reach out to us here to learn more.
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