Business growth demands efficient marketing, and if you haven’t formulated a marketing strategies yet, it’s time to develop one!
A marketing strategy helps you identify the target audience, ways to reach them, and pinpoints opportunities and challenges ahead. Before you go for some digital marketing services for your venture, it’s better to get familiar with some basics first.
Here’s some core stuff that all businesses need to attract more customers. Let’s dig in!
What Your Marketing Strategy Should Involve?
For surviving the competition, businesses deploy some unique bespoke marketing strategy that is unique and highlights their position in the industry. Copying a competitor won’t help!
What now?
How to formulate an effective marketing strategy?
There is no single answer to that. However, we’ve jotted down the key elements that you must include in your marketing strategy. Read on!
Market Research
Before diving into marketing strategy formulation, you need to conduct market research that involves evaluating the feasibility of the product/service you intend to sell in the target market.
Data is collected, organized and opinions are documented. Consider the following areas while conducting target market research:
- Customer Needs
- Suppliers
- Products/Services
- Current Sales
- Industry Benchmarks
Marketing Plan
Here you determine goals, identify required resources and processes, and formulate strategies to advance towards the goals. Moreover, you make budget estimates for your business as well.
SWOT Analysis
The SWOT analysis lets you identify the internal strengths and weaknesses that reside within your business. You can also pinpoint the external factors that are positively (opportunities) or negatively (threats) influencing your business.
4P’s Marketing Mix
With the 4P’s, i.e., Product, Place, Price, Promotion, you determine what you are going to offer, where you will offer, and at what price you are offering the product/service. It lets you generate creative and targeted offers that boost sales.
Promotion Strategies
For winning new customers, different businesses deploy different promotion strategies. These help you create offers for some targeted clients. Some of the best digital marketing strategies in Dubai include the following:
- Digital Marketing
- Advertising
- Networking
- Training Programs
- Cold-Calling
Competition
Finding out what the competitors are offering, where they are offering, and their target customers will help you identify your USPs (Unique Selling Points) and your position in the market.
Using Tools & Resources for Marketing Strategy Execution
Setup the Project Team
Focus not only on project completion for the sake of it, but ensure delivering the best quality, utilizing the best skill set, within the given time. To successfully execute digital marketing strategies, your team is a crucial resource.
Brainstorm and get specific about what you need in your project. For example, writing a 3000-word blog is totally different from creating 60-words search ad content.
Define roles required for your marketing plan and add strategists, content writers, editors, analysts, graphic designers, social media managers, etc. to your team.
Start with a Creative Brief
A creative brief brings everything to a central spot, preventing your team from ending up in several different directions. It’s the best tool to drive your marketing strategy execution. Keep the content brief short, specific, and based on SMART goals.
The elements used to create an effective content brief include project summary, problem statement, project objectives, target market, processes, the people involved, KPI, timeline, and budget.
Estimate time for each task
It’s essential to utilize the time resource smartly. All you need to do is allocate the required time for each task. It tells your team how much time each task needs and lets the members gauge their workload.
The members know better about their capabilities, so it’s best to converse with the members before setting the time. Their input will help a lot in making the best and realistic time estimates.
Mark the project on Editorial Calendar
Keep an actionable marketing calendar that is public to your team as well. It keeps you and your team on track and provides a single visual space to maintain everything about your project.
Processes, deadlines, production, priorities -it includes it all. Moreover, a marketing calendar helps achieve each milestone within the estimated time and makes rescheduling a breeze.
It’s best to keep a separate content marketing editorial calendar that lets you map out the required content for a whole year, i.e., blogs, podcasts, etc.
Project Management Tools
While executing a marketing strategy, project management is the biggest challenge. Look for some easy-to-use project management tool, such as Trello, that provides share boards and lists to keep everything in one place.
Project management tools let you organize things, set priorities, make production schedules, etc. It’s a must when you are on a limited budget.
To-do checklist & management software
Track your project’s progress with a checklist that lists all the tasks to be executed. Once a job is completed, the team can actually check it off the list. You can keep the checklists in your marketing calendar or as printable reminders.
Allot a specific task to a single member and assign a time slot. The next step is to add the checklist to your work management software and integrate all tasks into your project workflow.
When relevant tasks with each member’s work calendar are in sight, meeting the final deadlines becomes way more easier.
Devise a task approval process
When a project approval is required, you will have to wait for the manager to sign it for permission. Isn’t it better to create a task approval process, like the CoSchedule tool that lets the manager monitor and keep track of the workflow?
As soon as a task completes and requires approval, a notification will be sent to the manager or stakeholder. Hence, the work progresses seamlessly without any unnecessary breaks.
Moreover, Self-Assessment Tools, Website Scorecards, and SEO checklists are also beneficial tools for executing digital marketing strategies.
Sales funnel and Marketing Strategy
Research suggests that, on average, a customer requires 5-8 contacts before making a purchase. So, the process of noticing a product/service, planning to buy it, and actually buying it is a journey every customer goes through.
Sales funnel is a tool that lets you track the leads as they progress from potential customers to actual buyers. It targets converting visitors to loyal buyers, whether it’s a physical or online business. The sales funnel consists of three parts:
Top of the funnel: The top represents the marketing strategy in which you attract the target individuals through advertisements, website landing pages, etc.
Middle of the funnel: It represents the entire sales process before a purchase is made. It involves customers showing interest in your product’s benefits online or trying out the product at physical stores.
Bottom of the funnel: It is associated with the final purchase made by the customer—for instance, customers paying for the product at checkout.
The widely accepted AIDA model suggests that the customer journey has four phases:
Attention: The prospects know his need and your product/service that can meet his requirement.
Interest: He starts taking an interest in that particular product/service.
Desire: The customer desires to purchase your product and even makes up his mind.
Action: Finally, he buys the product/service.
Importance of Sales Funnel in Marketing Strategy
Examining the sales funnel helps you find out where it works and where it doesn’t do so. With this, you can find the loopholes in your marketing strategy that prevent prospects from becoming buyers.
After identifying such shortcomings, you can further improve your marketing strategy that attracts more customers. Plus, you can boost up your sales by analyzing the sales funnel.
The data also reveals what customers are thinking during the entire sales process, how they behave, where you need to invest in your marketing activities, and how to improve your messaging and communication with prospects.
Invest into your business growth by getting the best digital marketing services in Dubai from Techno Vision Dynamic Tech, which will totally change your business course and boost sales.
If you have any queries, let us know in the comments section below!