A successful marketing strategy is key to consistent sales growth. Tactics like cold calling prospects and golf outings that are commonly used by many organizations as their primary sales tools are akin to fishing without a bait; you might catch something, but you don’t expect the results to be pleasant.
Successful marketing is more than doing simple things like making ads; it requires viable strategies, expertise, and consistency. As you embark on developing your marketing strategy, these 6 steps will ensure it is efficient and ultimately successful.
Understand your target
The first step in developing a viable marketing strategy is to thoroughly understand your customer. Here it is important to understand who your customers are and why you think you can provide a solution to their problems. This requires you to understand their;
- Demographic information
- Buying behavior
- Preferred communication method
You can create a buyer persona (basically a researched-based profile of a target or potential customer) to better understand them. Worth noting is you should have a different approach to the different types of customers, who are typically categorized into current and prospective customers.
You should also spend your time doing background research on them to understand their backgrounds, shopping preferences, sources of information, and their jobs and responsibilities. This will surely give you the upper hand and provide you just the information you need to design a killer marketing strategy.
Assess your goals and objectives
Assessing the position of your organization in the market place will help to give you a starting point when developing a marketing strategy.
Try to understand what your firm wants to accomplish, how much growth you are targeting, the valuable products you are offering, and how you want to enter or get hold of the market. These ideas give you the context for your marketing strategy and consequently improve your chances of succeeding.
Define your competitive advantage
Understanding your strong point is central to knowing what you can leverage to increase your sales. Here you ought to consider three key ideas; price of your product, customer experience, and product or service you offer. Moreover, you should conduct a competitive analysis to review your competitors’ position in the market and how you can offer something different or better from what they have.
With this information, you have the right tools to design a strategy that is suitable to the current market and one that puts into consideration the needs of your customers.
Assess your current resources
It goes without saying that your marketing strategy is wholly dependent on the resources you have at hand. Resources, in this case, can range from the talent you have on board, knowledge of marketing, marketing infrastructure, sales tools, and level of employee training.
Analyzing these points gives you an insight into what you can actually achieve. In any case, developing a marketing strategy without first knowing the resources you have at your disposal only leads to unfeasible and under-resourced strategies. To avoid these challenges, you can hire Reap and Sow to provide you with professional marketing services and fill any skills gap that might be hindering your progress.
Stick to personalization in marketing
In the current marketing world, it is paramount to personalize your approach at every touchpoint. This means harmonizing marketing, sales, and service delivery to have a clear understanding of what your customers need and when they need it. Strive to know how they perceive your product so you are able to create a marketing strategy that resonates with them. It also helps to align your message in a way that will appeal to them.
Further, try to leverage the channels you customers use most to make purchases; if most of them use emails, focus on using this medium as your main marketing channel. Marketing is all about knowing your customers and their preferences, so ensure that you are well informed about yours.
The only sure way of increasing sales and growing your business is having a viable marketing strategy. At Reap and Sow, we work to make your business successful by helping you in your marketing endeavors, from branding to inbound marketing. Contact us for a free marketing strategy consultation.