Tartalomjegyzék

Marketing strategy: a playbook for success

08 March 2023

Getting people's attention has never been more difficult than it is today, in the 21st century. As a result, the role of marketing strategy has become even more important. Companies target potential customers and clients with a series of marketing shots. As a result, people are confronted with so many messages every day that they can no longer absorb and process them. In such a noisy environment, only those who aim with pinpoint accuracy and, not least, ensure that the lasso is not a harness but an umbilical cord, can lure people in with their imaginary lasso. Let's see how this can be achieved with a modern marketing strategy!

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy is a guideline that summarises what you want your marketing activities to achieve, where you want to go. As well as your objectives, it also includes who you are targeting, what groups you are targeting, what messages you are using and what tools you are using to get your marketing messages across.

Like most strategies, it is worth reviewing from time to time. Since businesses most often plan marketing activities for a year in advance, you might need to revise over time, based on the current situation. It is therefore essential that a marketing strategy should not be taken as a set-in-stone scripture. It should be followed, but it can be deviated from when justified.

It is important to note that the marketing strategy and the marketing plan are not the same, even though they exist in close cooperation. The former describes the way in which marketing can help to achieve the stated business objectives, while the marketing action plan summarises how the steps in the marketing strategy would be implemented. There is, of course, a lot of overlap between strategy and marketing plan and, in fact there is little practical possibility of the existence of one without the other.

Why is it necessary?

Basically the purpose of a marketing strategy is to steer a business towards achieving its business objectives. It has many advantages that make it indispensable in conscious business building. Why is it necessary?

YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE WHO YOU ARE TALKING TO AND WHY

The biggest benefit of a marketing strategy is that it gives you the opportunity to think through some of the key points that are crucial to building your business. You can identify who you want to reach, who your target audience is, what their needs are and which of these needs the product will address. It is the most important thing to be aware of if you want to build a successful business.

IT CREATES A SYSTEM

A strategic plan helps you avoid getting lost in the details. If you go step by step through the mandatory elements of a marketing strategy, you will build a complete picture, a marketing system. You'll be able to think in terms of a unit, but you'll know exactly what parts make up that unit.

A UNIFIED AND CONSISTENT PRESENCE

Blindly shot marketing messages, inconsistent advertising, and inconsistent appearances can be avoided with a well-thought-out strategy. Marketing communications will be consistent and cohesive, creating a sense of professionalism among target audience members.

COSTS WILL BE PREDICTABLE

Intuitively sequenced marketing campaigns have been shown to lead to nothing more than a company burning a lot of money and not getting the expected results. This is because the campaigns are not sequenced, not cost-optimised and not weighted. Budgeting is an important part of marketing planning, it allows you to ensure that the budget for each campaign is exactly what you need, no less and no more.

Mandatory elements of a marketing strategy

Before developing a marketing strategy, there are a few things to think about and include in the document. Let's take a look at the elements that should not be missing from a well-designed marketing strategy.

OBJECTIVES

The first and most important thing is to define the purpose of your marketing strategy. The most common marketing objectives are brand building and revenue growth. In other words, to get as many people as possible to know your product/service and to be the ones who choose your offerings from the market offer. But objectives could also be generating leads, increasing traffic to different platforms, or even how best to reduce existing marketing costs.

It is worth choosing one main direction of impact and following it. If there are too many marketing objectives, resources will be spread too thinly and efficiency will fall sharply. Of course, this does not mean that it is not possible to kill two birds with one stone, for example by running a competition to collect new leads and increase awareness. The key is to have one main focus that runs through the whole strategy.

RESULTS

Once you have your goals, you need to define what will count as an outcome. What is it that, when completed, you can sit back and say, we did it, we did it well. If the company is no longer making a loss? When you need to expand because you and your staff can't cope with the rush? When your company is hosting three sold-out events in a row?

These are the quantified and refined counterparts of KPIs, or metrics that show you in numbers what counts as results. Here, it's worth defining metrics that really tell you something, such as how much time users spend reading a particular blog post, how many people use the paid section of an app, click-throughs, and so on.

OBJECTIVES

One of the most important elements of the whole marketing strategy is to know who you want to target. In whose shopping basket will land the product/service that you are offering. In defining your target group, you need to be very specific about who they are, how old they are, where they live, what their personality is like, what they like, what problems they have, what it is that will get their attention. Don't forget to outline what messages you can target for each of your target groups. Thinking this through will produce very specific personality profiles that can help you in your further planning.

However, it is essential that you do not target too narrow a group of people, as the chances of success will be much lower, just as they will be if your target audience is enthusiastic but not really willing to pay money for your product or service.

Getting to know your target audience thoroughly is not something you can get around, at least not something you should circumvent. If you have been in business for a long time, you can use the data and experience you have gathered in the past, but if you are new to the business, it is worth doing market research.

Once you know who your target group is, you should also find out what kind of problem you are solving for them, i.e. what is the situation or life situation you are offering a solution to.

COMPETITORS AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

Your business fits into a market environment that unfortunately includes not only your suppliers and customers, but also your competitors. Take a look at how the market is structured, who the big and small players are, and which companies are really competing. You can also use the situation analysis to find out where your company is positioned on the "map". You can use various tools to do this, for example SimilarWeb provides a wealth of data on competitor sites.

During the competitor analysis follow your competitors and analyse their activities, because you can learn a lot from this, and finally you will be able to formulate what makes you different, i.e. what is your USP, your unique value proposition that only you can offer.

THE SYSTEM

When it comes to your marketing strategy, you need to think about the tools you will use and how they will form a common system. Instead of looking at the parts, you need to look at the whole and see your purchase as a process. An outline of the customer journey is perfect for this, from the awareness phase through to the post-purchase contact, you can describe what you want the customer to do and what path they should take.

You can assign a different set of tools to the different phases: social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, content marketing, influencer marketing, advertising, and more.

It is essential that the marketing strategy does not describe the actions in more detail than this, as the description is in the marketing plan.

THE COSTS

Once you have a rough idea of the marketing campaigns you want to run in the year, you can allocate your budget. If you have limited financial resources, it's worth weighting them and focusing on those that are most likely to work towards the goals you've set out earlier.

THE RESOURCES

Last but not least, consider the resources you can devote to marketing activities. How many people and how many man-hours can you devote to implementing your plans? At the same time, think about the timing of your campaigns. Setting a timetable is very useful as it will give you a rhythm of work later on.

Marketing plays different roles in the different life cycles of a business, but there is no one role that can be without it. Careful planning is essential to ensure that it is not just a money-burning activity, but one that delivers results.

Choose a goal, choose a tool, and allocate resources. If your goal is success and the tool is marketing, we provide the resource and the knowledge!

reading time: perc

08 March 2023