If you’re looking for guidance on how to create a marketing strategy for your business, this post should answer your questions.
First, a marketing strategy ultimately focuses on an outcome and what information/steps/actions are involved in achieving that outcome.
Some examples of outcomes:
- Increased sales
- Attracting new customers
- Cultivating more sales from existing customers
- Launching a new product or service
- Raising Brand awareness
- Increased market share
You get the idea…
So, let’s go through the steps of creating your marketing strategy.
Identify your target market.
Identifying your ideal customer is usually dealt with as part of a businesses market research which I have covered in another post.
However, here are three essential areas to cover.
Customer demographic
Diving deep into who your customer is including:
- Age
- Sex
- type of job
- single, married or other
Top 10% of repeat purchases
If you are an established business, a great place to understand your customers is to look at your sales.
Especially check the top ten per cent of customers.
What you’re looking for is the type of individual or company that is giving you this level of business. This information can steer you toward what kind of individual or company you want to target with your marketing strategy.
After all, if you target more of those customers, then you have a higher chance of efficiently increasing sales.
Top 10% by profit
Following on from investigating the top 10% of customers by spend, it’s also recommended to look at the top 10% by profit margin. In most cases, the two are not the same.
As a business, you tend to feel pressured to give more favourable/reduced pricing to the people who purchase the most.
However, this exercise can identify the type of individual or business that are prepared to pay for the quality of the product/service you provide. Now you can also target this type of customer.
We have all heard of the 80/20 rule, where 20% of your customers give you 80% of your business/profit (the Pareto principle). In general, this appears to be correct, but a word of warning use this principle wisely.
The benefits of your product/service.
Don’t be critical at this stage with your list of benefits. It’s more of a brain dump of visible and less apparent data.
Your list of benefits
Understanding the real benefits of your product/service is vital when it comes to delivering the right message to customers.
This exercise is about defining every conceivable benefit that you can showcase.
To make sure that you capture all the benefits that apply to your product /service. You also need to know all of the reasons/problems/issues why customers buy from you.
For instance: customers who want to purchase puppy training would face a list of reasons.
- They have never had a puppy or dog before
- They are having difficulty with certain aspects of owning a puppy
- The puppy hasn’t been toilet trained
- The puppy does not get on well with children or other animals
And so on…
Defining all of the issues allows you to identify the benefits of your training service.
Spelling out each of the puppy owners issues resonates with the owner and shows a clear understanding. Providing them with specific solutions (i.e. benefits) that you provide shows why they should hire you.
Product/ Service Positioning.
Positioning your product/service is also essential in how to create a marketing strategy when it comes to stacking the odds in your favour.
For many years there has been a battle for customers with Apple and Samsung over mobile phones and tablets. Each of them selling the same type of products in different technology categories.
Both Apple and Samsung sell at different price points in the same marketplace. Ultimately, this has led to varying approaches to the positioning by each company.
Apple positioned their products as “best in class technology.” Samsung placed its products as a “lower-cost technology”.
The battleground had some focus on different customers with a massive crossover area. So Apple positioned its products as ‘pro user” technology/software and Samsung positioned as “products for everyone.”
This positioning created two camps of customers who are almost evangelical in their belief that there manufacturer is the best.
Your Unique Selling Point.
Your unique selling point or USP is personal to your business. Your USP differentiates your product/service from your competitors.
Remember, there is nothing unique about being friendly people and giving excellent service; customers expect that today.
An example of a unique selling point is, for instance, when you have several cafes in a town. The cafes sell the same produce, give the same level of service. And, have the same pricing, parking.
The only thing they have to compete on is price, which is detrimental to everyone’s margins.
So one of the cafes introduces locally sourced, sustainable, organic produce.
This change is now their differentiator, their USP.
They still have access to the complete customer base in the town. However, they have sole access to customers interested in those values.
Side note; People buy benefits not features
There is a big difference between benefits and features when it comes to marketing and sales. Benefits are transformational and usually create a solution. Features are data and specification.
That’s not to say that features are not necessary; they support the benefits.
To show the difference between the two when it comes to marketing, we can use the following example.
A company manufactures and markets a laptop, for instance.
The benefits (solutions) could be:
- A battery life that lasts all-day
- 50% charged within 30 minutes
- Powerful enough to easily handle every task fast
The features (facts) could be:
- 8GB of ram
- 15′ screen
- 2.4Ghz processor
You see why people buy benefits; it’s tangible, it’s emotive, it describes solving a problem. Whereas, features are cold facts that give you information that you need, but won’t connect with you emotionally.
Know your figures and dates.
Part of completing a thorough marketing strategy is to know the financial aspect of achieving your goals. Also, how much it will cost to achieve those goals.
Creating a deadline also focuses on when you would like to achieve the result.
Your financial goals
There are many reasons to market your business. However, let’s be honest; most of them end with a financial goal.
This part of the process needs honesty and a dose of reality. If your monthly turnover has averaged, let’s say $/£1000 per month.
It’s highly unlikely that you will achieve $/£10000 per month with a 6-month marketing strategy unless you have deep pockets.
So the reality check has to come into play here. It may be your bigger picture is to achieve $/£10k per month. However, your next step is to double your sales to $/£2k per month.
So, your marketing strategy should reflect this.
Your marketing budget
Marketing will always costs either money, time or both. You have to be clear on whether you have either or both.
Your marketing strategy needs to identify whether you have the funds to pay for the implementation. If not, whether you have the time to commit to implementing the actions yourself.
The cost is going to be coming out of your bank account or your time working in your business.
Your deadlines
If it has taken six months to increase sales by 10%, then unless you take massive action, you’re unlikely to increase sales by 100% in the next three months.
So, a clear marketing strategy needs to have a deadline that is achievable by the combination of action, implementation and outcome.
Marketing Strategy Summary
In summary, I would like to stress the difference between following a marketing strategy and “winging it with plans in your head. It’s the difference between consistent growth and peaks and troughs in growth…that’s a fact!
Earlier in this post, I listed some of the many outcomes that require a marketing strategy.
The time you invest in creating a marketing strategy will pay you back tenfold.
Finish reading this post, immediately block out some time to create your strategy…seriously, do it now!
You can thank me later. 🙂
