A Basic Guide to Improving Your Marketing Strategy

For businesses both big and small, developing an effective marketing strategy that would boost their growth and attract potential customers is vital to ensure a business’s long-term success and longevity. That is why businesses must always look towards establishing a marketing strategy or develop and improve their existing one to see what tactics work best at helping them achieve their goals and objectives. However, doing so is, by no means, an easy feat.

There are many factors and intricacies that go into creating an effective marketing strategy, such as determining what tools to use, what the best way to determine KPIs is, and how to set manageable goals for your company. That is why we have created a guide to help you develop and further improve your own marketing strategy to help your business reach new heights.

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy is, at its most basic level, a plan. It is the plan of a brand or a business to attract their target audience in hopes of turning them into customers who will patronize their products and services. In order to create a marketing strategy, a brand must first narrow down their goals and objectives. What is it they want their marketing strategy to achieve? After all, an effective marketing strategy may just be the key to persuading consumers to continually choose one brand over another. As such, marketing strategies typically have four main objectives:

1. Market Share
   This objective determines the percentage of the market a brand wishes to take over. It is a key indicator of how competitive a market is, and it allows brands to assess the growth and decline of the market. It also allows for brands to see rising trends in the behavior of consumers, which is important in realizing market potential and identifying opportunities in the market.
2. Promotion
   This particular objective indicates the desired level of brand and product or service awareness. This is the objective of brands that want to generate sales and foster customers’ loyalty towards the brand. Promotion is important because it is what helps the customer learn more about the brand and find out how it can add value to their daily lives. It is also what encourages consumers to patronize one brand over the other when it comes to closing a sale.
   
3. Profit
   This objective pertains to how much income a brand plans to make from the marketing strategy that they implement. This can be measured by analyzing how much is earned throughout the duration of a particular campaign.
4. Growth
   This objective pertains to how much a brand wants to grow and expand. This can typically be analyzed by studying the level of engagement on a brand’s social media platforms and studying how much reach it is getting online.

The Importance of a Marketing Strategy

As mentioned above, marketing is an incredibly important part of any good business. It is through marketing that a brand is able to reach out to potential customers, and it determines the business’s success in the long run. Marketing is important because it lets businesses be seen. Without it, businesses risk losing their customers to competitors, and they will not be able to engage and connect with their customers on a deeper level. Without marketing, a business does not have anywhere to go. However, a strategy is important because marketing without one is like a chicken running without its head. It could lead to a lot of precious time and resources lost. That is why marketing strategies need to be well-planned and well thought out.

Top Tips for Businesses to Improve Their Marketing Strategies

1. Place your focus on your target market
   The most important thing for marketing a brand is to ensure that it is reaching the right people—quality trumps quantity. You want to make sure that all your efforts are focused on consumers who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer and are more likely to patronize your product or service. An important question to ask is this: who are you trying to reach? Create a buyer persona for your brand and research what consumers with that persona want and need. Study your target market’s pain points and find a way for your brand to be able to address these with your marketing efforts.
   
2. Set time frames for evaluating marketing efforts
   Success does not happen overnight, and that is certainly true when it comes to marketing. Much like a fitness plan that shows gradual results, a marketing strategy needs time to become effective. Allow for a marketing plan to run its course for a while before assessing it and studying what could be done differently.If you will be utilizing different platforms in executing your big marketing plan, give each individual strategy in your marketing plan a specific timeframe for assessment. Use a calendaring tool to set specific dates in which you would be evaluating a particular aspect of your overall marketing plan, and identify what it is that would indicate the strategy’s success.
3. Define and analyze KPIs
   Speaking of indicating the strategy’s success, this can be done by defining and analyzing KPIs. A KPI or a key performance indicator is a quantifiable value that indicates the effectiveness of a company in achieving its objectives. It measures success by zeroing in on specific business outcomes and putting it side by side with a brand’s desired result. By analyzing KPIs, brands and businesses will be able to more clearly assess the marketing methods that they put into practice and adjust where it is necessary. Some good questions to ask when defining a KPI are:

1. • How will progress be measured?
   • What specific outcome will mean that the campaign is a success?
   • What is the desired outcome for this particular campaign?
   • Why does a particular outcome matter to achieving a particular objective?

Asking these questions is the best way to set your KPIs and help a brand effectively measure their performance. By defining and analyzing KPIs, brands could more easily find the methods that work best for them and implement them in their future marketing strategies.

With this guide, we are certain that you will be able to further improve your own marketing strategy and establish what is best for your brand and for your customers. After all, marketing is all about offering value to your target audience.