After all, advertising wars are often lost precisely because of the lack of a clear marketing strategy. As a result, there seems to be an advertising budget, and considerable effort is spent, but the final result in sales is not pleasing.
In this article, you will learn about the simple principles of developing a marketing strategy and why it is so important to follow them.
1. Why do you need a strategy?
Online business is the same constant struggle for the trust, attention and wallet of the buyer. In essence, it is a competition of marketing strategies of different businesses. The winner is the one who came up with a more successful scheme of work and succeeded in its implementation.
A business with a well-developed marketing strategy gains 3 advantages over competitors who advertise chaotically:
Saving time — each advertising channel and platform is chosen thoughtfully, taking into account the individual characteristics of the company. In most cases, this makes it possible to initially successfully set a general vector for further marketing efforts. Accordingly, the number of "reworks", approvals, "test runs" is noticeably reduced. The entrepreneur achieves his business goals faster.
Saving money - firstly, funds will not be lost on the same poorly selected advertising channels, secondly, you will not have to pay for those same “reworks” and “test runs”.
Simplification of control - when there is a clear work scheme before your eyes, it is easier to navigate the situation, determine at which stage mistakes were made. Accordingly, it is easier to identify the specialist responsible for this.
In other words, having a marketing strategy significantly increases a business's chances of success.
2. What to consider when creating a strategy
The marketing strategy is developed based on the results of the preliminary analysis. It is necessary to proceed from such factors as:
Business goals - you must clearly define what goals you want to achieve. Increasing the recognition of your brand in Russia and getting 1000 leads worth up to 500 rubles each in 3 months are different goals. It is not a fact that you will be able to combine their achievement.
That is why our sales manager always starts a conversation with the Customer with a clear question about what he wants to achieve with the help of Internet marketing. Based on the voiced business goals, transparent KPIs are selected , which will subsequently allow the Customer to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy we have developed and the quality of work on its implementation.
Competitor analysis - before you enthusiastically draw up a scheme of upcoming advertising achievements, you need to carefully study your competitors. It is important that they are in the same "weight category" with you. Upon closer examination, your additional competitive advantages may be revealed.
For example: you have an old trusted site with a blog that you rarely uk whatsapp numbers work on, and your key competitor is new to the market. In this case, you can, firstly, consolidate your advantage in search results, and secondly, start emphasizing in your advertising that you have a lot of experience.
Demand analysis — the presence or absence of formed demand implies the use of completely different advertising channels and platforms. If you have an inexpensive mono-product and at least several hundred people a month are specifically looking for it, it might be worth creating a landing page and launching contextual advertising on it for warm and hot queries.
In turn, if your product or service is not searched for on the Internet and you need to convey information to the target audience about the very possibility of solving their problems with the help of your offer, then you can consider advertising in publics, promotion in social networks, etc.
Segment is one thing if you are targeting B2C (business to end consumer) segment representatives and another if you are targeting B2B (business to business). Segment features determine the behavior of potential clients, and therefore the nature of advertising campaigns.
For example: the end consumer buys a sofa. Most likely, he will not even think about such a purchase in the next 5-10 years. The company that resells sofas can always remain open to offers from different suppliers if they are ready to offer a better price.
Geography - local features also need to be considered at the stage of developing a marketing strategy. Moreover, sometimes they can even determine the profitability of using a particular advertising channel.
For example, in some topics, young businesses have a chance to quickly break into the TOP of search results in small cities. We have verified this from our own experience, solving such marketing tasks as promoting cadastral services in a small city .
