Why do I need a plan for marketing? – Is it just for fun? – Will I ever use it? This is the simple answer: just as your personal and professional lives involve planning, so should your business. A strong marketing strategy is essential to ensure your business succeeds.
Many prospects contact my team at Kobe Digital to ask if it’s worth investing in a marketing strategy and how it will help their business. My answer is always “Yes!”
We’ll discuss why you need a plan for marketing and how it can help your long-term goals.
Let’s get started with the basics.
What is a Marketing Strategy?
Marketing strategy can be described as a process that allows an organization to focus its resources on the most effective opportunities to increase lead generation and gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Your business’s unique value proposition, customer information, branding guidelines, SMART objectives, and many other details make up a marketing plan. We will discuss these things.
We focus on four pillars when creating a solid marketing plan. These are the pillars companies use to develop their marketing strategies. These are:
- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
Here are some reasons why you should have a marketing strategy.
- More leads
- Be different from your competitors
- Gain market share
- Profit from the chance to grow and develop
- Customer retention and engagement can be increased
- Smart execution of processes
Continue reading if you aren’t convinced.
1. Your marketing strategy will help you establish clear business guidelines
A strong marketing strategy must include SMART goals and objectives.
When setting SMART goals, there are some questions you should ask:
- What are some ways to increase your website’s traffic?
- Which sales funnels do you use currently?
- How can you help your business reach its goals by incorporating these methods into your daily workflow?
- What can you do to use your current branding to attract new clients? What do you use to build a loyal customer base?
- How do you define your unique value proposition?
- How can you stay ahead of your competition?
To answer the above questions you will need a marketing strategy. This will help you answer them. This will allow you to set SMART short-term and long-term goals.
2. Marketing can help you understand your target audience better
Marketing strategies should be focused on customers and target audiences. This will help you to better understand your target market. When it comes to creating a targeted audience for your products and services, market segmentation is crucial. Understanding your customers’ needs is key to making them happy.
Analytical tools are here to help. Analytics is all about numbers. They give you the technical side of the business. Google Analytics is our favorite way to consume analytics. This provides all the information you need about your website traffic including bounce rate, conversions, and time spent on the site.
Analytics are great, but they don’t show the emotional side. This is why you must get to know your target audience better. You need to understand their pain points.
These are steps to help you better understand your audience’s emotional side.
- Define your target audience – this is not only for the marketing plan but also helps with content marketing and social media.
- Segmenting your market means that you break down your audience into different segments, such as geographic, behavioral, and demographic.
- Marketing calendars can help you determine the best times to reach your target audience through various channels.
- Brand authenticity is key! Tell stories and be real. People value authenticity more than ever. It’s a great way for your brand to tell its story and sell propositions.
These are key factors in defining your target audience and creating a marketing plan.
3. Your Marketing Plan can help you assign tasks to your team and outsource efforts where necessary
We have encountered many companies that have a dedicated marketing team, but cannot achieve the results they want. We tell them that once their business has reached this stage, it is important to review their marketing strategy and make revisions.
A strong marketing plan will help you to divide your workload into manageable tasks. This marketing plan will allow you to delegate tasks to employees and, if necessary, hire a trusted marketing company in Miami.
A marketing plan, as we have already discussed, is composed of many roles. Here are some of the most important ones to pay attention to:
- The SEO team develops a strategy for your site
- The daily tasks and results of the social media marketing team
- How the content is created and scheduled by the content marketing team
- The advertising team will be responsible for running SEM/PPC ads
These are just a few of the many tasks required to create a strong marketing strategy. But once it is set up and coordinated among your team, it will be seamless.
4. A good marketing plan will help you decide which tools to invest in.
Marketing tools can be costly. This is why it is important to develop a marketing plan that will help you determine which tools and tech are best for your strategy.
Marketing tools are required for certain services, such as:
- SEO tools
- Paid ads
- Invest in influencers
- Analytical tools
- Schedule social media posts
- Online advertising
To determine which tools are worthwhile in the long term, you need to understand your business goals, marketing objectives, processes, and other details. This will allow you to make better decisions about the investments required.
5. Marketing is a great way to tell your business story
Your marketing strategy should include business storytelling. With a marketing plan, you have two goals: 1) To define your business storytelling strategies and 2) To communicate your business’ story on all the right platforms.
It is important to create a compelling brand story that is communicated correctly and market it. This will help you and your audience to understand your business story. It will also differentiate your brand from the rest.
6. Every professional business should have a marketing plan
Professional businesses understand the importance of reaching their target audience to succeed. You must have the right channels in place to keep your clients informed about your company. A top-notch strategy will keep your clients engaged and coming back for more.
7. We like to compare your marketing plan to a “Reality Check”.
Many companies fail due to a lack of a marketing strategy. Digital is constantly changing the world. This was evident with the pandemic that hit the world. While some businesses were able to adjust and adjust their marketing plans, others did not and suffered. It is important to have a marketing strategy in place and to be able to adjust and adapt as needed.
