Overview: What is a marketing strategy?
A marketing strategy is a long-term plan with a quantifiable goal and actionable steps toward raising awareness of a brand or product in the marketplace and securing a competitive edge by appealing to consumers. Essentially, it’s the “how-to” of putting marketing techniques into action.
What to consider when selecting the best marketing strategy for your business
Small and medium-sized businesses especially need to keep a few things in mind when embarking on a marketing plan.
Small and medium-sized businesses especially need to keep a few things in mind when embarking on a marketing plan.
- Target market demographics
The most crucial part of any marketing implementation plan is its intended audience. After all, it is the consumer’s attention (and wallets) that you want to capture.
You should have a good understanding of the demographics of your core audience: What ages are you targeting? Genders? Income? Interests? Relationships? Stages of life?
You’ll want to consider everything from basic data to the type of social media pages and personalities they are likely to engage with, where they hang out online, shopping habits, and more.
By understanding this and your audience’s journey as a whole, you can best figure out how to get in front of your prospects and engage them with tailored marketing strategies.
- Pricing and budget
Money makes the world go round, and pricing does determine marketing recommendations. There are two types of financials you should consider: your customer price point and your budget for marketing and ad spend.
You will want to create a pricing structure that covers your profit margins but is still attractive to customers and competitive in the market, with business marketing strategies built to match.
You also want to determine your marketing budget. What can you afford for marketing and advertising? Determine your CAC (customer acquisition cost) in addition to any fixed marketing costs, so you can have a monthly budget set up for advertising that still protects your margins.
- Long-term goals
What exactly do you want out of marketing? The best marketing strategy for, say, building brand awareness is not the same as a strategy for increasing web traffic. It will also be different from campaigns geared toward purchase conversion.
Make sure you are clear on the goal of your company’s marketing strategy.
The biggest question remains: How will marketing change after the death of the cookie?
I am sure you heard Google announced that it would end support for third-party cookies in their Chrome browser in 2022. It is a big deal, given that Chrome is the most popular browser, accounting for almost 70% of all market share.
Nevertheless, the pandemic had a tremendous impact on shaping our habits, and digital has become a new norm to do many things. Even when the pandemic is over, consumer habits will remain.
I am sure about certain things though.
- Digital marketing will become even more critical.
- Content marketing will become more important.
- Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) marketing will take the lead.
- Brands will need to learn about their consumers without relying on second or third-party data.
Businesses should also start looking at customer retention more proactively. Currently, most are still looking at new acquisitions; however, with the competition in the digital space becoming more and more fierce, customer retention has never been more important.
