5 effective ways to improve your marketing strategy
Marketing takes work. The more you put in, the more you get out. Sadly, there isn’t a one size fits all approach. Every business is unique and will need a slightly bespoke approach.
However, there are some important principles to follow to be in with the best chance of success:
1. Good marketing always starts with a clear strategy
A marketing strategy gives direction and focus. The benefits of a planned strategy will help you define business goals and develop the right activities to achieve them. Marketers who document strategy are 538% more likely to report success than those who don’t. Marketing strategy does take time to develop, but is well worth the effort. There are free templates available to help. I like Marketing Donut.
A few days away from the day to day operations dedicated to business planning will be time well spent. You will save time and money in the long run as your budget should be invested in the right areas and align with your business priorities.
2. Building a brand that connects
You can only do so much with marketing and may struggle with converting leads if your brand doesn’t connect with your customer and you have a poor brand image. Many businesses fast track brand development by prioritising and designing their logo. There is an important piece of ‘brand positioning’ work to do before a brand identity can be developed. A brand is so much more than a logo. 45% of a brand’s image can be attributed to what it says and how it says it. Your brand is your promise, what you say you will do, how you say you will do it, and how it is done. A brand positioning will enable you to flesh this out and take a deep dive into your customer.
Creating personas on your target audience will help you to identify with your customer, so you know more about them and their buying needs. You can do this by painting a picture of your ideal customer – jot down who they are, what are they like, what is their lifestyle, what are their motivations, beliefs and barriers to purchase.
Try and support this with research. I thoroughly advise doing a competitor audit to identify trends and best practice as well as looking at market trends. If you have the time and resources, then back this up with customer research.
3. Set KPIs
KPIs or key performance indicators as they are known are vital to business success. Do you have KPIs for your business? Don’t worry if you don’t, it is never too late to put some in place. KPIs are the critical indicators of progress towards an intended result. They help decision making, track efficiency and quality, and monitor performance over time.
Dependent on your business, they can be categorised into inputs, outputs, processes and outcomes. They will be a combination of financial, customer and if you employ staff, people-based.
Many of my clients measure their business by a net promoter score or customer satisfaction rating but also revenue per customer, cost per lead and retention rates/repeat business. A simple excel spreadsheet capturing this information will suffice. You will probably need to set up simple processes to ensure you are capturing and receive this data every month.
4. Turn your strategy into an operational plan
There is no point having a beautiful strategy which is filed away. You’ve gone to the trouble of spending time and money on a marketing strategy, so now you need to act on it. You need to turn this strategy into a live activity plan for the year and document every action that has come out of it. Much of this may be internal processes that need to be put in place. I normally spend time going through every page of a strategy and turn this into a spreadsheet with ownable actions and timings.
5. Run monthly review meetings
Marketing is an ongoing process. You rarely get it 100% right from the beginning. You need to continually monitor, test and refine. My top tip would be to schedule meetings in the diary for the whole year. Agree on a format for these meetings and who should attend. KPIs should be looked at comparing actual figures against targets. I would then suggest that the operational plan is reviewed to ensure that no actions are dropped and everything stays on track.
Marketing helps to change attitudes and opinions over time. If you put the work in and have a clear plan, and your brand and product are strong, you’ll see the success and generate a return on investment. Perseverance and commitment are important. Every business and brand is unique, so there are no guarantees with what works with one business will work with another. The analytical part of marketing is so important and can’t be underestimated. You need to continually review the commercials to make informed decisions regularly to monitor performance and refine the plan accordingly.
About the author
Nat Sharp, is an experienced marketing consultant and the Founder of Sharp Thinking Marketing.