To grow your business, you must have an effective marketing strategy. Having a successful marketing strategy is vital to your business’s overall success. For example, if you want to grow your customer base by generating new leads and increasing sales and traffic, you need a good marketing strategy for your business. To help, we’ve put together this list of components of an effective marketing strategy.
But what goes into an effective marketing strategy? We’ve got answers.
Here are nine key components of an effective marketing strategy:
1) Stakeholder interviews
The first step to creating an effective marketing strategy for your business is to have a good understanding of your factors, needs and goals. Internal factors include budgetary limitations, performance analysis, and a good understanding of your marketing mix (place, price, product, people and promotion). External perceptions to understand are socio-economic factors, customer experience, competitor analysis, legal restraints, and more.
You’ll also want to look at your needs and goals as a business. You can only expect to build a successful marketing strategy if there is a means to measure that success. So set goals and objectives as part of your marketing strategy!
You can use the SMART acronym to set goals for your marketing strategy. Under this acronym, your goals should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant/realistic
- Time-bound
2) Web presence audit
The next component of your strategy will be to complete an audit to map out your business’s web presence and key competitors. A competitive web presence analysis will allow you to determine your position in the market, identify market opportunities, and set a benchmark for competing. Some helpful thoughts to ask after completing this analysis include:
- What types of marketing practices to avoid.
- What are the seemingly most effective marketing types in your industry?
- Where are competitors lacking? And how can you fill this void?
3) Keyword research
You’ll want to identify opportunities to own terms online and identify gaps the competition leaves open.
A significant component of your marketing strategy is going to be digital marketing. But there should be a search marketing strategy within this digital marketing strategy. Search marketing is a powerful tool for attracting organic, high-value traffic.
Put yourself at an advantage by doing keyword research. Identify which keywords to use to fill gaps the competition has left open for you to own.
4) Infrastructure audit
It’s essential to understand which elements are in place to measure performance. From Google, you’ll need to evaluate Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Google Tag Manager. You’ll also need to ensure you have access to analytics from each social network that will be in the plan. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business, LinkedIn, Pinterest and others.
At 10|20 marketing, when we first onboard a new digital marketing client, we do an infrastructure audit to see which channels the client has set up and ensure that we can access proper marketing analytics.
It would be best if you had measurable goals and a means to measure them.
5) Audience Evaluation
One of the most important steps is understanding whom you are trying to reach and what you can learn about them. You need to know your target audience to launch an effective marketing strategy. Period.
Your target audience will be your intended customer – the people you want to reach and influence with your marketing message. So first, research what they like, how they spend their time, where they spend their time, their budget, and whatever else you can learn.
Once you know your target audience, you can begin crafting a strategy that caters to that audience.
6) Evaluate advertising spending
To launch a marketing strategy, you will need a marketing budget. However, creating a budget that works for your business can take trial and error. This article can give you an idea of a small business marketing budget.
7) Branding and creative campaign audit
You must have a clear brand image and voice to execute a successful strategy. Branding is essential to any marketing strategy. Complete a branding and creative campaign audit, looking for opportunities to streamline and improve the brand presentation and overall messaging.
8) Present findings, get feedback, make adjustments
Once you’ve completed steps 1-7, it’s time to combine them. From your audits to research to plans, compile it into one cohesive strategy. Your strategy should take each of those seven components into account. This way, you’ll get the most out of your marketing strategy.
9) Execution!
Once you have your strategy, it’s time to make the magic happen and bring your marketing strategy to life! Always measure your results so you can learn and make adjustments.
Need help putting together and executing a marketing strategy for your business? We can help with all the components of an effective marketing strategy. Take them all into account and if the process seems too tedious to you, we’re happy to lend you a hand. So if you need a hand getting your marketing strategy up and running, 10|20 Marketing can help! We’re committed to delivering real results.
So get started and contact us for a free consultation today!