10 Tips for Marketing strategy
By: Edward Luther
Tags: Digital Marketing, Customer Experience, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service

Every company needs a marketing strategy in order to conquer its place in the market. A little advertising here and a few measures are by no means a strategy. Half-hearted measures actually weaken a company, because they cost more time and energy than they ultimately bring in sales.

If you want to be successful in the long term, you shouldn’t leave anything to chance when planning. Because only if you know your offline and online marketing goals and have set them realistically can you achieve them. In order to show customers who you are and what you offer, the first thing you have to do is to recognize yourself.

Know the strengths and weaknesses of your positioning strategy and your USP!

What is a Marketing Strategy?

Achieve maximum customer growth with the right marketing strategy!

Well, everyone is talking about it and everyone knows that a strategy is somehow important, but what exactly is it? There are certainly marketing goals you want to achieve, otherwise you would end up being comfortable in bed in the morning. In order to achieve your ideas, of course, you need strategies that define your path. Just going for a run rarely leads to success.

After all, your business is not a walk in the park, but a marathon for which you have to allocate your strengths and resources well. Because only if your company grows solidly will you be successful and generate sales. If you know your key marketing figures , you can also achieve long-term successful positioning as a real brand. And at the same time benefit from branding marketing . Brand monitoring is important here. And the way to a strong brand is through communication!

So building your marketing is the way to go. But what exactly does marketing include?

Know the needs of your target audience

Marketing has a lot to do with psychology and that marketing psychology starts with you. Because the task of your marketing is to adapt your entire marketing philosophy and your marketing measures to the existing market. You should also align all of your activities with it. Because you find the market there and can hardly change it.

Let’s look at an example: If you make hairbrushes, you will hardly be able to sell them to bald people, no matter how beautiful, sustainable, practical or inexpensive. As long as you want to sell your brushes to a target group that doesn’t need them, you will hardly make any progress. Therefore, it is first about knowing exactly the needs, problems and wishes of your target group.

Recognize strengths and weaknesses

If you self-critically recognize the weaknesses in your plan and offer, you can develop plans that lead to the desired target state in the long term. In our example, you would have the opportunity to develop a different product that adapts to the needs of your hairless target group. With a special care cream or, for example, with stylish hats to protect your head from sunburn, you would definitely have more success! So it doesn’t mean that the hairless target group described above is fundamentally unattractive. There is just no need for your proposed problem solving.

So marketing is much more than advertising, it’s a mindset. Aligning the goals of your company with the needs of the market and then communicating your offers precisely to the right target groups is the art of successful marketing. After all, you will hardly be able to sell sand and shells on a beach because you yourself love shells and sand! With colorful shovels or ice cream, on the other hand, you are sure to attract customers!

For you as an entrepreneur, this means that you first have to adapt your planning approach to customer needs. In this way, you can then satisfy the needs of your customers and thus automatically your company. Knowing about the wishes of your potential and existing customers gives you the opportunity to develop long-term strategies. They make you as a company interesting, personable and attractive. In short: as long as you see yourself as a service person who fulfills wishes, your marketing, consisting of online marketing strategy and offline marketing, will also be successful!

The elements of a good marketing strategy

SEO definition for an optimized internet marketing strategy with customer growth

In order to be able to precisely define the goals of your company in marketing, you must of course know which elements belong to your marketing and your corporate identity. The marketing strategies in your marketing mix stand like a good table on four feet and provide tailored answers for your customers.

The product policy and what goes with it

Even with the product policy of your company, you have a lot of creative leeway and thus also the opportunity to make the right decisions. You will thus support your later marketing management. The product policy covers all questions about your offer. Service providers also need a product policy. In the case of service companies, the product is to be equated with the service itself.

You first start with the analysis of which products and services promise a successful positioning in the market and then move on to planning your range of services adapted to the demand. But not only the content is important, but also the packaging, in the truest sense of the word. How should the packaging be designed, what should the brand name be, what should your brand stand for in order to really convert the targeted target groups into customers?

The pricing policy — what should it cost?

The pricing policy is also part of your marketing strategy, because it is directly related to addressing the target group. The following questions often arise:

What preferences does your target group have and do these preferences fit your product? Where exactly do you want to position yourself? Do you want to make the masses happy with bargains or do you want to satisfy a few customers in the luxury segment? The planning of discount campaigns, low introductory prices, etc. is also part of your company’s pricing policy. Your pricing policy must also be reflected in the design of your image. Which colors and imagery do you use? Colors alone have very different effects on how people feel about prices.

The communication policy — it is impossible not to communicate!

Your company communicates on many different levels. You communicate internally with your employees, in the B2B area with suppliers, dealers and even the competition that you should rather consider as competitors. And of course you communicate with the customer. There are many different measures available to you for this, which you should mix sensibly. You can use trade fairs or events to draw attention to your company, for example through word-of-mouth marketing , push pull marketing , classic advertising in print media, affiliate marketing , direct marketing, guerrilla marketing or newsletter marketing — It is always important that you base your plan on how and where you can connect with your target group.

Your sales policy — the fourth pillar of your marketing strategy

Without a healthy distribution your product will of course hardly conquer the world and of course the development of your distribution also depends on the product. An infinitely scalable digital product naturally requires a different distribution than fresh crabs from the coast. In short, your sales team overcomes the distance to the end consumer, in terms of time and space. When you have optimized your sales channels, you directly influence your marketing strategy. Because if you can deliver faster and cheaper than the competition, you can also use this as a special added value for your company for your advertising.

Four elements determine a marketing strategy

These four pillars of your company form the basis of your marketing strategy. When you have optimized the pillars of your marketing, the knowledge of the following measures will come naturally to you. The development of long-term marketing strategies and the successes resulting from them are almost only a logical consequence.

What are the advantages of a marketing strategy?

Address your target group with the right marketing strategy

You can imagine it as a route that you only have to follow once you have created it — but small corrections are always part of the process. Of course, you first have to formulate realistic goals such as a certain number of leads , new customers or orders within a clearly defined period of time. Because only if you clearly define your marketing goals can you also check whether you have achieved them and which of your measures are successful. The advantage of clear marketing strategies is that you

Be able to work out and clearly define goals

Develop measures to implement these goals

can regularly check the effectiveness of your strategies

Recognize and address weaknesses in your marketing strategy

A marketing strategy helps you to keep your goal in mind and to align the development of your lead marketing activities accordingly. The precise definition of your marketing goals and the development of an effective offline or online marketing strategy to achieve these goals gives you a clear competitive advantage over your direct competition in the market.

What to look for when creating a marketing strategy

So let’s take a very specific look at which points you should consider when developing your marketing strategy. In order to achieve your marketing goals, you have to communicate very specifically with your customers and there are many practical options available to you! But how exactly do you now communicate that you are running the most irresistible company in your niche?

Step 1 of your marketing strategy: who do you want to be?

The clearer it is to you which niche you want to occupy in the market, the clearer your plan will be. You have already clearly defined your product policy and your price policy with the knowledge of your target group. But what about you and the personality of your company? Today, customers are wooed with so many marketing messages that they only remember what they particularly like. So, especially online, you need a personality that people will remember because they are so personable and unique. Humanity is the most important selling point, especially in digital marketing!

By the way, SMEs and even startups actually have it easier than industry giants when it comes to defining marketing strategies. Because a small company is more easily perceived as a “personality” than a bombastically large shop that customers perceive as an anonymous mass. For example, as an Amazon customer, do you have the feeling that you have a personal contact who likes to take time for your questions and who knows you? So ask yourself how you want to stage yourself in order to appear as transparent and human as possible and then optimize your website!

Step 2: work on your weaknesses!

Yes, you have weaknesses too! Your business can’t be perfect, so don’t even try to be. You can only optimize, but to do this you have to recognize your weaknesses in order to improve. Where can you put a scoop on it? Is your product range broad enough? Are your services adapted to the needs of your customers? What can you offer to set yourself apart from your competition? Only when you have asked these questions and identified your weak points can you further improve the service of your company and optimize your positioning on the market! The theme positioning marketing is becoming increasingly important.

Step 3 of your marketing strategy: stand out from the competition!

You will hardly serve a niche in which there are no competitors, because where there is a need, there are products. There is no shame in “spying on” your competitors because they too have a publicly available marketing strategy. You can also analyze the weaknesses of the competition and of course the strengths! Because if you know what strengths and weaknesses your competitors have, you can sharpen your own niche and thus align your marketing strategy even more efficiently. For example, is your competition targeting new customer acquisition with their entire marketing strategy? Then you have the opportunity to set yourself apart by offering particularly great customer care and, for example, offering special discounts for loyal customers!

Step 4 on the way to success: start online with your website!

An optimized website is the basis of your entire marketing strategy, because where are consumers today? You are of course online! Even when you are strolling through the city, you have your smartphone in your hand. Some do research in front of the entrance to a shop to see whether it is worth going into the shop. So your website has to be in top shape so that your desired customers can find out about your company anywhere and anytime. SEO experts rely on content that, through SEO Search Engine Optimization, achieves such a good ranking on Google and other search engines that they constantly attract streams of visitors to websites. So become your own SEO manager and focus on search marketing.

Step 5: High quality content answers questions and makes your marketing strategy successful!

Intrusive product placement or email marketing has long ceased to be successful online. The key to really good SEO online marketing lies in your high-quality content marketing and impeccable usability. Make a clear separation for yourself when you want to use advertising for your marketing strategy and when you want to provide helpful content.

This way your concept keeps a clear line and advertising and content do not mix too obviously. Because if visitors to your website have the feeling that you are only providing a few pieces of content to sell them, they’ll jump off immediately. Good content has to answer questions. So, to create good content, you have to ask yourself what questions your visitors might have and how your product could help them solve their problem. A good solution is to create a company blog. Well-known external blogs are also a good marketing opportunity!

Step 6: Ask yourself where your desired customers are online!

A social media strategy is part of your overall marketing strategy, because in order to get traffic, you not only have SEO measures available for your SEO marketing , but also the huge playing field of social media portals such as XING , LinkedIn , Facebook , Instagram and Co When you have found the playgrounds of your dream customers, you can, for example, establish targeted contacts on Xing or LinkedIn, do Instagram hashtag marketing or gain followers on Facebook. So you can share every post from your website as a Facebook post and thereby attract “warm” traffic to your page.

Step 7: Analyze regularly how close you are to your SEO goal!

Use tools like Google Analytics and the Google Search Console to check whether you are using the right strategy for your search engine optimization measures. The abbreviation SERP stands for Search Engine Result Pages and tells you which Google ranking you have already achieved. In order to be successful with your online marketing, your ranking cannot be good enough. So make sure to create really high quality content often and regularly! The article Goals Marketing Online can help with this.

Step 8 to be successful in the long term: Use social media correctly!

In order to use social media portals like Facebook or Instagram effectively for your strategies (for example through Instagram hashtags or certain hashtag strategies), you should also have fun really interacting socially, because that is the point of a good social media marketing mix !

Do your competitors use your Facebook page for advertising? Use them to interact with your target customers online! Ask your followers regularly whether they are satisfied with your service, impart knowledge to them in an entertaining way, let them participate in the development of your latest ideas, ask them what their wishes are! Does your competitor regularly upload informative Yoube videos? Do the same and maintain your own YouTube channel!

It has never been so easy, free and direct to find out how your desired customers perceive your company! So use your chances, show yourself human, interested and always be open to questions — this way you will be perceived as personable in the long term and successfully build customer loyalty!

Step 9: Long-term success through networking!

Ask yourself who will achieve a better position in their niche in the long term, the lone warrior or the charming networker next door? Use your social media pages to regularly share posts from your direct competitors and to create content about trends in the industry. If you are now wondering why you should advertise your competitors for free — the answer to your question is very simple!

You seem extremely personable when you don’t fight for your position with your elbows, but with mutual support! Include active networking in your strategy and you will find that your competitors reciprocate and also take measures to bring you closer to your goal!

Step 10: Achieve your goal not through advertising, but through content!

Marketing measures that simply advertise your product are out and won’t get you any further. Subtle inbound marketing is much more effective today than aggressive push marketing . Any online agency will tell you that. Keep asking yourself what your followers might like and work continuously to create content that is not perceived as a cramped attempt at a good positioning strategy but is authentic and honest. Don’t push yourself to the front with a flat doctorate, rather answer questions to prove your expert status in practice.

Develop a marketing strategy with passion and patience!

So you can see that it’s not that difficult if you ask yourself the right questions and just check yourself regularly. Once you have internalized that there is nothing more exciting than developing a strategy and creating suitable content, your marketing will also radiate your rousing passion for your business. At the latest when you have decided, for example, to generate the first thousand leads and then actually realize this milestone, you will love your marketing strategy!