Do you own a giant company with a turnover of several million, or are you just starting a business and have a small company whose profits are barely enough to cover the necessary costs? In both cases, you cannot do without an essential process called a marketing plan.
This “marketing bible” should be part of any business, even the smallest company, where you are the seller and you have even just one customer. Because even though there are only two of you, you need to be 100% sure that you are following the rules of sales and heading in the right direction.
A typical example of the absence of a marketing strategy is as follows: you start a company, attract customers who are happy to buy your products, the company’s reputation grows, as do sales, and you are doing great. You reach a point where you want to promote the company even more and raise awareness among the general public, so you decide to launch an advertising campaign. And at that moment, you realize that you have no idea how to create such a campaign. And that is a huge mistake. Every company needs to know how to organize something like this when necessary, and if it doesn’t, it needs to have some kind of manual on hand to guide it. And that manual is precisely a marketing strategy and tactics.
Want to learn a few tricks for creating the perfect marketing plan? Then read the following paragraphs and find out how to develop the right marketing strategy.
What does a sophisticated marketing strategy look like?
Chaos isn’t always a bad thing, but in business, it can definitely hurt you. In serious business, there’s no time for phrases like “I’ll see how it goes,” “I’ll let it run its course,” or “I’ll decide on the fly.” These phrases spell the beginning of the end for any company. Marketers from all corners of the world advise thinking as far ahead as possible in business, anticipating, insuring against unpleasant surprises, and generally planning all company activities carefully, even the smallest ones.
Marketing experts agree on one thing: a detailed marketing plan not only saves the company money, but also allows it to effectively reach new customers. And that’s what business is all about. Attracting the largest possible group of potential customers who, if satisfied, will be happy to return, again and again
Business experts share a list of essential tasks that precede the actual process of creating a new marketing strategy. The list includes:
- Competitor analysis
- Market analysis
- Estimation of potential customers
- Definition of a marketing plan
When launching a product on the market, it is necessary to assess your own competitiveness. At the very beginning, it is important to analyze the competition, identify its strengths and weaknesses, and use them to your advantage as you see fit. Write down your own competitive advantages, your positives and negatives—this way, you will know right from the start what you need to work on, or where you are more interesting and better than your competitors.
Of course, analyzing the competition also involves proper market analysis. The types of marketing strategies will then give you a hint, and you will be able to intuitively choose between them until you finally select your winning model. However, at the beginning, it is necessary to carefully examine all corners of the market and find out whether your product is already being sold and whether the marketing market is literally oversaturated – in which case it would not make sense to try to break through with it, and you should rather focus on something else.
The third essential step in preparing a marketing strategy is to try to estimate the preferences of potential customers. Every client is unique, with their own specific needs and desires, and you, as a seller (and businessman), must be able to fulfill these wishes. Therefore, do not hesitate to define your ideal customer – their gender, age, interests, and preferences. Based on this, you will be able to narrow down the sales area in which you will operate, which has so far only been explained to you in theory by the definition of the marketing strategy. With knowledge of the customer comes knowledge of the relevant product, along with effective customer outreach, because now you know which “strings to pull.”
Once you have these three points figured out, it’s finally time to move on to creating the marketing plan itself. Every other book on marketing strategy talks specifically about the “marketing mix,” as it really is a mixture of smaller or larger steps, but don’t worry about it being too complicated. Marketing experts have written down the essential steps to creating an effective marketing plan.
Analysis of corporate communication
When asking yourself “How to develop a marketing strategy,” you must not forget to evaluate your company’s communication skills. New marketing strategies rely on metric analysis of external and internal communication, which are essential in the implementation of the company’s promotional activities.
Marketers and business experts advise basing communication on measurable figures, which are then easy to evaluate. Specifically, focus on:
- The current level of communication
- Project objectives and goals
- Target groups (those your campaign should reach)
- Effectiveness of the chosen strategy
- Evaluation of results
Once you ensure that communication is mutually beneficial, you can agree on the goals of the project. The key to effective marketing tactics is communicating important insights and sharing ideas and thoughts. If corporate communication is lacking in any way, it is impossible to create a good plan and increase customer awareness of your product, which will logically lead to a decline in sales.
Target group
The above logically leads to the definition of a target group – it is a cohort of people with common characteristics, desires, and needs who, based on your company’s advertising, will respond to your message with an interest in purchasing a given product or service. It is said that the more sophisticated the promotion, the larger the group of potential customers.
Determine your ideal target group based on two criteria in particular:
- Market research
- Marketing goals
It depends on what goods you offer, how saturated the market is with them, or whether it is a scarce product. A specific group of products attracts a specific type of customer – think about whether you want to appeal to women, men, or both genders, what age range your target group should be in, and realize one crucial thing: those who want more end up with nothing. If you try to put together a marketing plan with the aim of reaching everyone, you will not succeed. You will never be able to reach everyone, so it is a good idea to target a strictly defined group of potential customers right from the start.
Primary goals
Do you already know your company’s main goal? Do you want to penetrate new markets, implement digital advertising, or simply increase the company’s profit, say by 10%? You don’t know? That’s a huge mistake. The essential point in developing a marketing strategy is to think about your main goals and create a suitable campaign accordingly.
Once you have your primary goal in mind, it’s time to share it with the public. This is not as easy as it sounds. You might be surprised at how difficult it is to create understandable and memorable advertising. Marketing experts recommend that beginners turn to companies that help businesses with advertising—they should be able to quickly conjure up a message that is:
- Easy to understand
- Original and apt
- Highly interesting and fresh
- Easy to remember
A great advertisement must grab the viewer’s attention and hold it. Don’t try to bore them with technicalities; focus on a down-to-earth and human approach. This will appeal to the masses, and if you add a dash of humor, they will literally flock to you.
The right way to communicate
The digital world has slightly changed the way businesspeople get their advertising to customers. Once upon a time, an ad column in a newspaper or a mention on the radio was enough, but that’s a thing of the past now. If you want to thrive, it’s essential to learn at least the basics of social media promotion.
Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube may not suit you personally or as a user, but the truth is that today they bring together a large part of the planet in one place (or rather one social space), giving you a real chance that your advertising podcast will reach a large number of people.
If you are not a complete beginner, you will realize that another great way to communicate with customers can be product placement in specific broadcasts, or good old billboards and megaboards. There are really many possibilities.
Ongoing evaluation
Once you launch your campaign, your work is far from over. Now you need to closely monitor ad display statistics, the number of clicks on ads in videos, or on other internet portals or on television.
For small advertising campaigns, these measurements are relatively easy, as various online metrics are constantly available for you to monitor. For multi-million dollar campaigns run by huge companies, the ongoing evaluation of results and campaign success is a long-term process, employing a large number of people who, incidentally, also need to be constantly coordinated. Work in business therefore generates more work, and so on ad infinitum.
It’s time to be SMART
One thing should be clear from the above: there is a small but significant difference between a marketing strategy and a plan. While a strategy is a slightly abstract list of goals and larger or smaller tasks that need to be done, a marketing plan is a roughly outlined procedure for achieving them, or even the initial small steps towards fulfilling the goals.
According to business experts, the success of a marketing strategy is measured by the term “SMART,” which does not necessarily mean “smart,” although an advertising campaign should certainly be so. This word is a kind of correction when a company mistakenly chooses “We want to be the best” as its main goal. SMART is an acronym for five English words that point to a poor definition of the basic goal:
- Specific: Everyone wants to be the best. What specifically makes you the best?
- Measurable: What statistical method will you use to measure that you are the best?
- Achievable: It is good to be goal-oriented and ambitious. However, your goals should be realistic enough to actually be achievable.
- Relevant: Ask yourself, is “being the very best” really the most important thing for you?
- Time-bound: How many years do you want to achieve this within?
The SMART technique should correctly show you that you are choosing your business goals poorly and that it is time to adjust them a little. Hopefully, you realized from the previous paragraph that choosing “being the best” as a goal is exaggerated and unattainable. It is the equivalent of Mount Everest when you have only climbed Milešovka so far.
An experienced and conscious entrepreneur chooses far more relevant goals, such as “By the end of 2022, I want to improve company sales by 10%.” This is much more achievable, strikingly specific, definable in time, and perfectly measurable. It is safe to go in this direction.
Still don’t know where to start? As part of your MBA studies, you can focus on creating a marketing plan and marketing strategy for your company, either as part of a seminar paper for the Marketing Management course or by developing everything in more detail in your thesis under the guidance of our experienced experts. We will also show you interesting marketing tools such as SWOT analysis.
