Developing a marketing strategy for your business.
So, you’ve got a great idea for a business? Now you need to tell people about your great new product or service. In order to reach your prospective customers and sell them what you’ve come up with you need a marketing strategy, but how do you develop a marketing strategy for your business?
Here are my Top 10 Tips…once you have read this blog you should be able to get started on a marketing strategy for your business.
1. Develop your products and services
So, this may seem obvious, but in order to create a marketing strategy you need a REALLY clear vision of what your business is selling. Not just the details of the product or service, but what is the RESULT for the client. What PROBLEM does your business solve?
2. Define your target audience
Next, you decide WHO you will be selling to. No, the right answer is not ‘everyone could buy my product’…you are not Mark Zuckerberg (in fact Mark wasn’t even selling to everyone when he got started with Facebook). So really refine your audience, age, sex, income, geography, but also attitude, fears, likes, and dislikes…the clearer this person is, the easier it becomes to market to them.
3. Research competitors
Now you get out and research your competitors….what’s that I hear you say….no one else has a product or service like ours? Well then find the alternatives, after all before there were Hoovers there were brooms and brushes and pans. Hoover had to find a way to compete with these more traditional solutions to dirty floors. You need to understand the competition fully before you can compete.
4. Decide on pricing strategy
Now, this is absolutely essential, you can spend an absolute fortune on clever marketing, but if your product or service is not priced correctly your marketing strategy and thus your business will fail. Now I’m not saying you have to be cheaper, but if you are more expensive then you better have some great reasons why!
5. Decide how people will buy
Equally important is HOW people will buy from you. What is the process? Do you have a shop or showroom? Will you sell online? How will your products be shipped? What will the returns process be? If your business sells a service will this be delivered automatically? Can customers sign up online? Do they need to book a Discovery call with you? Do you just want them to start by messaging you? Keep this process as simple as possible, but ensure the system is smooth and easy to understand.
6. Define your unique selling points
Right now, it is time to define your product or service’s unique selling points. These will start to become clear to you as you develop your product or service, define your target audience and research your competitors. You will base your USPs around what your audience want, need, fear or desire.
7. Develop your messaging
Messaging is so important in marketing. It may change and grow, but once the product, audience and USPs are defined the core messaging should stay the same. Develop your initial messaging in line with your USPs and utilise it consistently across all marketing strategies…which leads us to
8. Decide the optimum strategies to reach your target audience
There are hundreds of possible marketing strategies, and it can be very daunting to try to decide which are going to give the best results for your business. ActionCOACH have some excellent resources for considering all the possible marketing strategies including some you may never have heard of! The important thing here is to really think about what media your audience engages with. If they are 60-year-old men, then TikTok is probably not very important.
9. Set your marketing budget and priorities
Now you know what you ‘could’ be doing you can set a budget and decide what you can actually afford to do. It is very unlikely that you’ll be able to do everything you’d like to on day one, so set your priorities….a professional logo, domain name, and email address, then it could be social media, website or flyers. Perhaps if you have a physical business signage will be your most important strategy. You might decide to invest in joining a networking group.
10. Test and Measure
Set metrics that you will measure to assess the success of your strategies. Don’t just assume one works because enquiries are coming in, you need to know where your enquiries are coming from. It could be several of your strategies that combine to create an enquiry or sale. Reassess your strategies regularly to ensure you are getting a good return on investment and that you haven’t missed any opportunities.
I hope these top 10 tips help you to understand how to develop a marketing strategy for your business. If you need support with understanding this or any of aspect of marketing why not take a look at our NoLimits Community – become a member at any level and join our community.
By Duncan McKechnie