And the best marketing starts with a well thought out strategy. Steve Jobs liked to say that it’s not enough to kill bad ideas, you have to kill good ones too. That’s because the best marketing strategy is best because of awesome choices. And they take intelligence, instinct, and most of all discipline.
Marketing strategy is particularly difficult today because the new age is rapidly changing the rules. A generation ago, brands mostly strove to create a buzz or drive awareness; now they need to build compelling experiences that keep consumers engaged.
However, the old tasks have not gone away. We still need to run TV ads and in-store promotions, man conference booths, and hand out brochures, but now on top of that, we have a whole new world of algorithms, apps, and the internet social media channels to master. To meet the new challenges, we need a new strategic approach, a new mindset, and to create new thoughts and ideas.
Definition of a marketing strategy and its elements
Developing a marketing strategy is vital for any business. Without one, your efforts to attract customers are likely to be haphazard and inefficient.
The focus of your strategy should be making sure that your products and services meet customer needs and developing long-term and profitable relationships with those customers. To achieve this, you will need to create flexibility that can respond to changes in customer perceptions and demand. It may also help you identify a strategy for whole new markets that you can successfully target.
The purpose of your strategy should be to identify and then communicate the benefits of your business offering to your target markets.
It’s not uncommon for people to confuse the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan. I’ve found the easiest way to explain the difference is like this:
Your marketing strategy is an explanation of the goals you need to achieve with your marketing efforts. (What) Your marketing strategy is shaped by your business goals. Your business goals and your marketing strategy should go hand-in-hand.
On the other hand, your marketing plan is how you are going to achieve those marketing goals. (How) It’s the application of your strategy like a roadmap that will guide you from one point to another.
The issue is that most people try to set out to achieve the “how” without first knowing the “what.” This can end up wasting lots of resources, both time and money.
When it comes to marketing, we must always identify the what and then dig into the how. If you remember one sentence from this article, it’s this one:
The strategy is the thinking and planning is the doing.
If you are preparing your marketing strategy and your marketing plan to go into your business plan these are the components that must go into each section:
Components of Your Marketing Strategy
External Marketing Message
Internal Positioning Goal
Short Term Goals and Objectives
Long Term Goals and Objectives
First, we make our habits, then our habits make us.
Challenge
A brief description of products/services to be marketed and a recap of goals identified in your marketing strategy.
How many customers would you like to strive for? What type of customers are they? What are the values that drive them? What does their purchase process look like? Which customers will you focus on for the products or services that you offer and why?
Analysis of Your Competitors
What’s your marketing position relative to them? What are your comparative strengths? What are your weaknesses? What market share are you going after? What market share has each of your competitors already tapped?
Do what you do with passion and the rest will follow.
Creating your marketing messages
Your message strategy goal is to make it easier to deliver the same message in all your marketing communications. Consistent execution of the same message is a critical factor in successful marketing.
Messages that matter use a business process that helps you develop a unique message strategy; one that communicates concrete benefits and sets you apart from the competition.
The positioning statement
Your positioning statement becomes the central idea or theme for all your marketing activities. A positioning statement is a short, declarative sentence that states just one benefit, and addresses your target market’s No. 1 problem. It can be a conceptual statement and not necessarily a copy.
A good positioning statement easily adapts to all marketing communications such as product descriptions, websites, sales presentations, brochures, advertisements, public relations, and presentations to investors and industry analysts.
Your positioning statement needs to be unique, believable, and important or your target market will ignore it. In other words, they won’t get your message. Here is an example of a good positioning statement:
“Peoplesoft Financial Management Solutions make every employee financially accountable.”
In summary, a positioning statement is:
Short, simple, non-jargon language
Adaptable to various media
A compelling statement of one big benefit
Supported by three or four additional benefit claims
Satisfies four evaluation criteria (unique, believable, important, and usable)
Support points
Use support points to unfold your story in more detail. They help explain your positioning statement and answer questions like, “how do you deliver the benefit promised in the positioning statement?”
While the positioning statement articulates a high-level, abstract benefit, the claims made in the supporting statements should be readily demonstrable; that is, in just a few steps, you should be able to show how the product delivers concrete benefits.
Under each supporting statements, you can drill down into as much detail as needed to provide a platform for marketing communications.
Repeating your message strategy over and over is the most important factor in successful marketing. Remember you’ll get tired of your message strategy long before your target audience may even listen to it or notice it. Repetition is how you own a position, and your message strategy should remain unchanged for at least 18 months, and ideally longer, much longer.
Learn the customer’s pain points
To craft marketing messages that speak to an end user’s pain points, you obviously have to know what those pain points are. If you’re not working from firsthand experience, this requires some due diligence.
One research method is to search online discussion forums for your target industries or trades. These forums are booming with questions and solutions to consumers’ most common problems.
Through these forums, you can determine how your product or service will best serve a particular customer. Once those unique challenges are identified, you can write directly to those challenges in your messaging.
Know the information customers seek
Another way to find out what your target audience is thinking and seeking is to take a closer look at your website. What keywords are visitors typing into the internal website search engine?
This technique is not only a good indicator of what information is hard to find within your current navigation, but it also reveals what’s not immediately obvious in your current messaging. This is an effective way to learn the needs and expectations of existing customers, as well as those of potential buyers who have shown an interest in your services by visiting your site.
Use their language
Once you’ve identified your customers’ pain points and the specialized knowledge they seek, it’s time to tailor your marketing messages to your target audiences. How you say it depends on to whom you’re speaking.
Again, go back to your end user’s challenges and desired outcomes, and speak to those points in your messaging.
Give them a reason to talk about you
When crafting your messaging, be sure to add some incentive for people to spread the word about your services. However, don’t simply offer any incentive. Do some research to find out what types of incentives would resonate best with your target audience.
If you think of marketing message framing as filters for consumers, you can see how and why people come to different conclusions and make different choices — even when they’re exposed to the same data.
Spending time to frame your messages is worth your time.
The bottom line
The recipes for successful marketing campaigns are all around us. All we have to do is be open-minded in how we look.
Now it’s your turn. What are some of the recipes that you have found that improved your marketing success?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy improving your marketing, branding, and advertising?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way.
More reading on marketing strategy from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
