How to Create a Marketing Strategy

Introduction

The pandemic of covid-19 year and worldwide lockdown have changed the landscape of many businesses and companies. Now, it’s time to focus our energy on how to create a marketing strategy for the upcoming years. We have to analyze what strategy worked out and what hasn’t and what new strategies we should be looking into.

Developing an effective marketing strategy is a step-by-step process. Follow the below-mentioned steps carefully and learn how to create a marketing strategy;

Current Situation

First of all, you have to look at your current market position where you are right now. You should also look at your goals and objectives of last year, and check whether they were achieved or not. Most importantly, you should also look into the implemented marketing strategies and tactics, and look at their results.

Target Audience

You should clearly define your target customer market while devising your content marketing strategy. However, you should have a clear idea about who you’re approaching, and you should ask these question while defining your target audience;

How would they receive the news?
What channel and application do they use?
What is the best way to connect with them?
Could you use a better and improve channel to reach them?

Set New Objectives

After a thorough analysis of the previous year, you should now look into this and upcoming years. You should know what you want to achieve this year. Therefore, you should follow the SMART approach/marketing strategy to set your goals;

Specific
Measurable
Attainable/Achievable
Relevancy
Timely

Brainstorm Creative Ways to Achieve Goals

After defining and setting your goals, you should now find ways to meet your goals and objectives. You should note down all the possible activities that could help you to reach your goals for every goal. For instance, if you’re planning to amplify the traffic on your blog, then you should follow these steps;

Best SEO (search engine optimization) practices
Organic updates on social media like sharing
A paid social media ad campaign with your website link as a landing page

Time & Resources

It’s highly probable that you would have remarkable ideas, but your marketing strategy won’t succeed if you don’t add a specific budget. The allocation of the budget won’t permit you to do everything that you wanted by keeping in mind your target audience. However, a specific budget, SMART goals and objectives, allocation of resources, and availability of time allow you to narrow down your focus on realistic marketing tactics for your business.

Marketing Strategy

You should create a list and write down all the marketing tactics and strategies that you’re planning to employ monthly. It would help you to visualize various marketing activities. However, after finalizing your marketing strategy, you should now write it down in monthly order, so that it becomes easier for you to comprehend when to do various activities. If you’re working with a team, then tell them their separate responsibilities.

Implementing the Marketing Strategy

Your marketing strategy and monthly order plan would be useless if you don’t implement them. You should note down all the activities and responsible personals on the calendar or digital planner with specific deadlines.

Check Analytics

You should collect data from various sources like social media insights, click-through rates, email-open, and Google Analytics. It’s to evaluate your performance that how you’re performing.

Most importantly, you should check your marketing strategic performance at the end of June. It would help you to review what has been working out and what hasn’t so that you could change your focus on those areas that need attention.

Marketing Strategy Tactics

We have been talking about marketing strategies and tactics ever since the beginning of the article “how to create a marketing strategy.” Now, it’s time to discuss some of the main tactics that have delivered a good result in various fields. They’re as follows;

Blogging

Some of the main objectives of blogging are;

Increasing the traffic on your website
Improving the brand recognition
Spreading the brand awareness
Establishing yourself as an expert in a certain field
It provides people a reason to choose you and work with you

The essential benefit of blogging is that it brings traffic to your website which is also one of the objectives of marketing strategy. When you publish quality content week after week and months and months, then you let the search engine know that your platform is delivering quality content for ordinary internet users. However, it improves the ranking of your platform in the searches.

The best way to write and let the search engine know is to produce quality content that would help your target customers. Your platform would help you to establish yourself as an authority expert in your niche.

Social Media Ads

Some of the main goals and objectives of social media ads are;

Approaching those people who aren’t familiar with your company
Makes people choose you and work with you
Making a name of yourself as an expert
Improving brand awareness and brand recognition
Bringing the traffic on your website
Increasing users engagement on your platform

You can launch paid advertising campaigns on various social media platforms like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, etc. Now, it depends on your budget, affordability, and target audience. Therefore, you should choose the right ad (compelling message and visuals), right target audience, and right platform, then it would bring new followers and increase user engagement.

It’s important to know that the algorithm of Facebook and Instagram gives ranking to the advertisers. It means if you’re launching paid advertisement campaign, then it becomes visible to your target audience.

Social Media Organic

Some of the main goals and objectives of an organic social media campaign are as follows;

Making it easier for people to contact your business
Giving people a reason to work with you
Boosting brand awareness and recognition
Increasing traffic and user engagement on your website

If you aren’t launching a paid ads campaign on social media platforms, but it’s equally helpful to your audience if you’re staying online. It provides interested users an opportunity to check out the products/services you’re offering and contact your business. You make them feel that you care about them. It would help you improve SEO and customer service in order to increase the traffic on your website.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a very important tactic for developing a successful marketing strategy. Some of the main statistical facts are as follows;

Marketers that follow the targeted marketing campaign, their revenue increases 760%
59% of the users say that the marketing email influence their decision
80% of the companies believe that email marketing helps them to retain customers
73% of the millennial prefer the email as a mode of communication

If you want good results, then you shouldn’t put all of your resources into one campaign. A weekly/monthly newsletter via email would be the best marketing strategy and tactics to improve traffic and spread brand awareness. It would allow users to check out whatever you’re offering.

Press Release

Some of the main goals and objectives of the press release are as follows;

Attract the attention of editorial page and media coverage
Boosting the brand recognition and brand awareness
Increasing the traffic on your page

If you’ve news worth sharing, then the press release is one of the best ways to use it. If you release the information on wires, then it would provide you 100s of links directed to your website. However, it would instantaneously increase the traffic and ranking of your website in the searches.

If you send important news to the specific media channels, then they would mention your business ad company to the viewers. The important thing here is that the information you’re sharing should be newsworthy and eye-catching.

Promotional Events

The goals and objectives of promotional events are the same as the press release. However, customers want a connection regardless of the growth of digital media platforms. When you create or host a promotional event in order to face to face meet with customers and provide them a wonderful experience, and then it attracts the attention of media and editorial pages.

Editorial Media Pitching

Some of the main goals and objectives of editorial media pitching are;

Having 3rd party testimonial investment for your company/business
Building yourself as an authority expert in a certain field
Increasing traffic on your website
Boosting brand awareness and recognition

The endorsement from the 3rd party media editorials and journalists would attract the attention of potential customers. You’d have a feeling of excitement by seeing the press talking about your business. If media coverage is online, then the report would add the link to your website. It’s good for SEO and ranking in the searches.