The foundation of any successful marketing strategy is a thorough understanding of your own business and your target audience. This initial step is crucial as it shapes the direction and effectiveness of your entire marketing effort. But where do you start and what information to you need to collect and analyse? Lets take a look at some of the most important aspects:
In-depth analysis of your business
Begin by closely examining your business and what makes it tick. Identifying the features and benefits of your product or service and their unique selling points is essential, as this will form the core of your marketing message. Equally important is to have a clear understanding of your business goals and the challenges you face. What do you want to achieve? What does success look like? What are the barriers in your way? Think about why your company exists and does the work it does as well as aspirations for the future of your business and what you hope to achieve.
Understanding your target audience
A deep dive into understanding your ideal customer is non-negotiable. If you don’t know and understand your customers how can you talk to them about your products? You can use a variety of methods to do this, including conducting market research, surveys, focus groups, and detailed market analysis. However, the best source of information are your existing customers. Talk to them regularly about your products or services, as this can give you great insights into their preferences and expectations. From this research you can create buyer personas to check your messages and tactics against. These should include detailed profiles of your ideal customers, covering aspects like demographics, interests, pain points, and buying behaviours.
Mapping out the customer journey
The next step involves working out how you customers interact with you. This includes understanding the process your customers go through from the initial awareness of your product to the final purchase decision. Identifying key touchpoints during this journey is crucial. These interactions, whether they are through social media, your website, or in-person interactions, are opportunities to engage with and influence your customers. Where do your customers spend their time and attention? And what touchpoints are you missing out on?
Aligning strategy with business identity and audience needs
Once you have a clear understanding of both your business and your audience, the next step is to align your marketing strategy accordingly. Your marketing messages should not only resonate with your audience but clearly articulate your product or service, give compelling reasons to your customers and reflect your brand identity. Each marketing strategy is slightly different depending on the business type but you will probably want to include guidance on:
- Channel strategy: Which marketing channels (e.g., social media, email, events etc) you will use to reach your audience.
- Budget allocation: What you will spend, where and when
- Content Plan: Outline the types of content you’ll create (blogs, videos, social media posts), their schedule and how you will create them.
- Resource requirements: What support do you need to make the plan happen? Do you need a copywriter? A social media manager? A designer? What skills do you have in-house? Do you need to upskill or train existing staff?
Regular review and adaptation
The market is dynamic, your approach to understanding your business and audience should be as well. Staying informed about market changes, industry trends, and shifts in consumer behaviour is essential and a mandatory part of running a business or marketing team. Regularly updating the strategy in response to these changes, as well as ongoing customer feedback, is key to maintaining a successful and relevant marketing approach. It’s never one and done. It involves constant learning, adapting, and evolving. By starting with a solid foundation of business understanding and audience insight, you can develop marketing strategies that are not only effective but also are genuinely effective with the people you are trying to reach.
At Awemous, we’re dedicated to creating bespoke strategies that align with your business goals and resonate with your audience. We take pride in making complex marketing concepts simple and actionable.
Need help with your marketing strategy? Contact us today, and let’s start crafting a plan that drives your business forward.