Since the start of the pandemic, we have seen considerable shifts in trends, the rise and fall of different platforms, and new consumer behaviours. We have seen how e-commerce businesses have increased their numbers like never before. For example, now, ““, while before the pandemic hardly reached 50%. Moreover, we have seen a shift to short-form video content and the rise of new platforms such as TikTok and the fall of old ones like Facebook. With this rapid shift, updating our marketing strategy to be on top of every trend is a must.
It is essential to stay ahead of the curve to stay relevant.
This blog will outline the best tips to create a marketing strategy the way a would do, so you leave nothing to chance.
Build a marketing plan
Planning is the first step to success. Before starting anything, it is essential to have a solid plan. While a marketing strategy will look at the macro with the goals you set yourself and the resources required, the marketing plan looks at the micro. This plan will dive into the exact actions you’ll undertake to achieve your strategy.
The marketing plan will outline your year’s budget, initiatives, the marketing must tackle for your organisation and the channels you will use for the initiatives.
Select your target audience
Before selling, you need to have a clearer picture of the type of customers you intend to sell to. This is where setting a target audience will help you understand better the kind of content you will create or the strategy you will follow. You should think about their demographics which include their ages and occupations. But even more than that, you should think about:
Dive further into your target audience with psychographics. This is looking at the psychological aspects of your potential customers. What are their aspirations and attitudes, and other psychological criteria?
Identify your goals
Goal setting is a crucial step in the planning process. What do you want to accomplish? Boost brand awareness? Add followers to social media? Grow email list? Increase conversions?
The most popular goal-setting method is SMART. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. In any case, there are many different ways of setting goals, so any way you choose, it will need to be backed up by data and information.
If your goal is to increase sales, your setup should look something like this:
Goal: Increase sales
Metric: 100 sales by the end of Q2 2022
Tactics:
Select the appropriate tools
Once you have identified your goals, you need to make sure you have the correct tools to measure the strategy’s success.
Software such as social media schedulers like Hootsuite or Content Cal will show analytics that can help keep you on track and see what content your followers like and dislike. Moreover, you should use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to help measure your website and keep track of the KPIs.
Review your Media
Look over everything you have on hand that can help you create your strategy. Group your assets into three categories- owned, earned and paid media. This will help to streamline the creation of your plan.
Owned media is any media you or your marketing team must create. This involves pictures, podcasts, videos, infographics, etc.
Earned media is user-generated content. So any content created by customers and shared on social media profiles while mentioning your brand are all forms of earned media.
Finally, paid media. This is any channel you spend money on in order to attract your target audience. Offline channels are also included, so television and billboards to online advertising such as Facebook/Google ads are all forms of paid media.
Collect your media into one place, organising them by media type so you can have a clear vision of what you have at the moment and how you can use them to get the most out of your strategy.
Plan your content
No matter what your marketing strategy involves, it will always have content.
Owned media is your best friend, and you can create it in many different shapes: pictures, videos, podcasts, ebooks, infographics, etc., that your team must create.
Create a content creation plan. This should be based on the growing objectives you have set. Topic clusters, format, goals and channels are all things to keep in mind when creating a content creation plan.
While creating a content creation plan, keep in mind that it will include tasking out the creation of assets and being specific about what is needed and what platforms you will use.
Bring it to fruition
Finally, it’s time to put everything together and action your plans. Those mentioned above should have helped you visualise how to achieve your strategy and when.
A roadmap should be created outlining all the steps needed to execute your campaign. A roadmap should be 12-months of planning, so be sure to think about it in the long term. This should be the primary document used as a reference point for all your marketing efforts.
To conclude, like Rome, marketing strategies cannot be created in a day. It will take honesty, hard work and time to make sure that you reach your ideal customer.
Planning is the first step in ensuring success but planning without outlined goals or time-frames is a sure way not to see it. Take your time refining the strategy to ensure you have everything outlined, always thinking of the bigger picture while creating aspirational yet achievable goals. Make sure to keep the persona of your ideal customer in your mind at all times throughout the whole process. They are the ones who will be purchasing from you, after all.
Leave a Reply