Let’s Get Strategic
Why Strategic Marketing Wins
Is your marketing dictated by a strategic plan, or do you take an ad-hoc approach? Great marketing can happen in a spontaneous way, but a strategy almost always drives the best marketing. That said, not all plans are created equal. The best marketing plans require an incredible amount of thought and insight, but there is a formula that will get you there. Your marketing strategy should encompass all online and offline channels, highlight priority audiences and where you'll find them, be analyzed often, and be broken down into intervals of time that align with your operations. With all these factors accomplished, your marketing will become more effective and efficient.
Key Terminology
Before we get into the thick of it, let’s start by defining some foundational pieces of every marketing strategy.
Goals
Definition • Changes or outcomes you want to see in your business
Why it’s Important • To ensure marketing strategy will align with business goals
Example • Increase awareness with young vegan females
Objectives
Definition • Definitive statements that assign tangible change to goals, broken down by channel
Why it’s Important • To define success and not leave goals open to interpretation
Example • Increase Facebook follows from millennial vegan females
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Definition • The metrics that can identified and tracked to quantify success over a period of time
Why it’s Important • To hold your strategy accountable and monitor success
Example • Grow Facebook follower base of female vegans aged 15 to 35 by 20% by end of Q3
Where to Start your Marketing Strategy
A good rule of thumb to follow is to evaluate your business strategy every five years, and develop a marketing plan every year that aligns. There is a great deal of upfront preparation and research that goes into a great marketing strategy. We recommend beginning with a SWOT analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. It is also important to relay pain points, lacklustre sales, and other difficulties that remain unresolved to your agency, so they can help to consult on solutions within the strategy. Basing your strategy implementation based on your fiscal year will make it easiest to match your marketing up with sales (quarterly and annually), as well as help to align the measurement of goal achievement.
Goals
Your business goals should always directly influence your marketing goals to ensure that marketing is helping with your overall success, and it should be measured regularly using predetermined KPIs. If your company’s marketing exists in a silo, you could be missing important opportunities for growth.
Audiences
Audiences should be approached based on their psychographic profile, and less so their demographic factors alone. When you understand an audience’s needs and desires, you can craft compelling messaging that will persuade them to choose your product or service. When determining audiences, keep in mind that one mistake that many make is that they don’t segment enough.
Creative
A huge part of a marketing strategy is to determine what creative personality will resonate with your audiences. Your marketing strategy should include recommendations around tone of voice, feel of the design, and other important factors that will impact the portrayal of your brand.
Media
When determining where your creative will live, try to meet your clients where they are. When determining what media to play on, it is valuable to take a step back and determine how traditional, online, social, and search advertising tactics will all work in tandem.
Website
A website is often one of the first places a customer gets to know you. The tone and feel of all communications developed should also be implemented into the website for a brand presence that is cohesive. Developing landing pages that align with products, campaigns, and services is a great way to ensure your website converts.
Metrics
Regular, ongoing monitoring is paramount to the success of any marketing strategy. This is arguably the most important step. When your marketing is understood and performance is quantified, those learnings can help to inform future campaigns, making your efforts more effective.
“”Your business goals should always directly influence your marketing goals to ensure that marketing is helping with your overall success, and it should be measured regularly using predetermined KPIs. If your company's marketing exists in a silo, you could be missing important opportunities for growth.
