Nowadays, it is crucial for any business to have a marketing strategy and integrate it in its overall business model. This post will first present the most known marketing strategies and then describe the marketing process to implement and follow for a successful reach to your business goals.
Why marketing strategy is important?
There are many reasons to incorporate a marketing strategy in your business:
To better understand your market and identify your market share.
To better know and address your customers.
To orient your business strategy.
To develop and formulate a successful value proposition.
To avoid time and resource wasting.
The marketing strategies
Nowadays, various types of marketing strategies can be adopted depending on your distribution channels (B2B/B2C) and business model. Among the multiple existing strategies, some are cited below.
Content and inbound marketing (blog, posts, articles, info-graphics, etc.).
Social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.).
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to increase awareness about your website and increase traffic to your web-page.
Social network, earned media, and public relation (testimonials, word of mouth, participation to television or radio programs, articles in regional and national press, etc.).
Participation to industry and research events (congress, exhibitions, etc.).
Account based marketing.
Direct selling.
Affinity and cause marketing.
Publication in specialized journals.
How to implement your overall marketing strategy
A six-step guide was developed in an article published by Moz to help implement marketing into your overall business strategy.
Ask the right questions and realize how marketing fits into your organization. It is mandatory to orient your marketing strategy depending on your business type, and to specify the goals of your marketing strategy (brand, product, product-market fit, visibility, etc.).
Select and identify your significant objectives, the ones to address at first stage (increasing the number of leads, increase visibility, etc.).
Identify the appropriate marketing channels to invest in (email campaigns, social media, advertising, SEO, content marketing, referral/word of mouth, direct marketing, etc.).
Identify and express core objectives to be achieved for each of the marketing channel defined in the previous phase. This must be expressed with marketing and sales indicators/key performance indicators (KPI) with well established deadlines.
Formulate clear directions for the marketing strategy and campaign. This can be represented by a workflow and/or a Gantt chart and/or a summary of the marketing strategy. Anyways, the main information related to this strategy must be represented at this stage: marketing channels, market insights, objectives of the campaigns, the deliverables and the milestones, branding, etc.
Analyze the campaign and related results, prepare a report with the main steps, the results, and the data analysis. When the results are considered positive and for interest to your campaign, expand your actual strategy and double your effort in the same domain. If needed, review your strategy and reallocate your resources and develop/try a new marketing channel and/or campaign.
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