Developing a smart marketing strategy

As 2020 draws to a close, many entrepreneurs and business leaders are coming to terms with the underperformance of marketing tactics for the year, most notably as a result of COVID-19. This has prompted many to rethink their marketing strategy and readjust their outcome expectations to increase revenue and performance. In alignment with the cardinal evolutionary practice of adapting in order to survive, companies must now make a choice: to continue as though it’s ‘business as usual,’ or to build a smart, reactive and realistic marketing strategy which responds to the current economic situation and corresponding buyer behavior.

Naturally, the only real solution for businesses who wish to stay afloat is the latter choice, which commands smart marketing strategies as a means of generating leads, increasing brand awareness and fast-tracking business growth.

First things first.

Steps required for a business to build a suitable marketing strategy

A good place to start is by readjusting expectations for performance in 2021 to increase revenue. The marketing strategy should necessarily keep pace with the times, and that means rethinking realistic business goals for the coming year.

Furthermore, maintaining discipline when it comes to the execution of your readjusted business plan and marketing strategy is key. As the holy grail of entrepreneurship has articulated, “Goals without routines are wishes; routines without goals are aimless”.

Based upon the testimonials of over 70,000 companies which successfully scaled up whilst reducing entrepreneurial contact hours, The Rockefeller Habits outline a clear path to success:

• Ensure that your management team is healthy and aligned.
• Set goals that are specific, measurable and attainable on what needs to be accomplished each quarter to achieve the year-end goal.
• Align management discussions and communication with the need to ensure that not only management is clear on the vision, but the people that make it happen are clear too.
• Use project management tools like ASANA to ensure that every facet of the organization has a person assigned with accountability for ensuring that goals are met.
• Collaborate with your marketing team and ensure that employee input is welcome and considered to identify obstacles and any opportunities as they arise.
• Collate customer feedback and analyze across data points, financial data and surveys.
• Bring your core values alive and ensure that everyone on the marketing team understands the purpose of your company.
• Continually provide platforms for employees to articulate the key components of the company’s strategy, to ensure that the message has not become diluted and off-track.
• Bring company culture to the forefront and ensure that employees are ‘heard and seen’ and that you know whether someone has had a good day or not.

1) Set short term and long term marketing goals as part of your marketing strategy.

Setting a specific goal within your marketing strategy clarifies what tactics are being implemented such as blog posts and what purpose they serve. To execute this, ensure that your marketing goals are S.M.A.R.T.: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. If your business sets a SMART measurable goal, it helps to  determine if it is successful.

According to CoSchedule research, setting many measurable goals can improve the likelihood of success by almost four times as much as those who do not.

2) Market research

While market research can be conducted in any number of ways, platforms like Robotic Marketer are a sure-fire way to efficiently produce comprehensive marketing strategies based upon in-depth collated data.

What can market research tell us about?

• The relationship between the economy and buyer behavior
• Competitor profiles
• The specifics of what consumers want
• Popular content marketing to share in social media and blog posts
• What factors increase the likelihood of purchases
• What trends and challenges are most pertinent in the industry
• Who industry stakeholders are

3) Conduct a S.W.O.T. analysis

A S.W.O.T. analysis helps businesses identify their Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Articulating a S.W.O.T. analysis is vital to ensuring that your company stays on track and seamlessly executives their marketing plans and marketing objectives.

While it is easy to think of, it is equally as important to write down and refer back to frequently as a means of tracking your progress and marketing plans. Constant reminders of the opportunities that lie ahead will keep you invested and inspired.

4) Identify customer profiles

It is the perfect time to hone in on customer profiles, investigating who customers are in order to best market to them. When building a customer profile, it is important to consider the following:

• The name of the profile
• What would incentivize this profile to buy from your business
• Profile demographics
• Buyer patterns
• Purchasing references

5) Do a competitor analysis

If you are serious about growing your business, achieving your goals, and taking market share from competitors, you will dedicate time to learning about your competition in order to ‘beat’ them and effectively achieve your marketing objectives. Below is a list of useful comparative platforms:

• Alexa
• SEM Rush
• Mozo
• Sprout Social
• Phlanx
• Social Blade
• Buzzsumo
• Similarweb

6) Develop strategies that support business and marketing goals

This is the fun part. Using your analysis of the market, customers and competitors, implementing the 7P’s of marketing is the key to achieving your goals:

1. Products/services: Use tactics for SEO, blog posts, social media, website, email lists, EDMs and lead generation.
2. Price: Ascertain the price point of your products and/or services, how big your database needs to be to achieve the sales and specific goals that you have set out for your business.
3. Place: Where you are marketing.
4. Promotion: How are you promoting your product or service? Through events, webinars, SEO, PPC?
5. Physical Evidence: How is your branding is working across all communications touchpoints. Is it consistent?
6. Processes: What does your sales model look like? How does your marketing structure work? What processes do you have in place to make sure that your marketing department works like a well-oiled machine? What technologies do you use for project management?
7. People: What people and marketing team do you need to accelerate your marketing programs?

Having a powerful marketing strategy is one thing, but executing it is another. The discipline you and your marketing team and setting smart marketing goals will determine whether or not your marketing strategy is successful in content marketing and all activities.

Testing ideas and campaigns are imperative to finding campaigns that have a higher chance of success and to help you increase revenue. Robotic Marketer to develop marketing strategies not only for our company but for our clients. It is an easy to use tool, or if you prefer, you can have a marketing manager from Robotic Marketer facilitate your marketing workshop with your team.

Now more than ever, it is important to ensure that you are setting smart marketing goals, allocating budget and resources to marketing, and optimising your content writing with SEO key words, especially with the way in which business has changed in the past 12 months and how economies recover.

If you need any help in achieving your goals, don’t be afraid to contact us.