Why you need a marketing strategy and where do you begin?
Many businesses simply don’t have or don’t understand the importance of a marketing strategy. Developing a marketing strategy (or as it should be a combined sales and marketing strategy) should be one of the most important priorities for a company’s overall growth. This strategy needs to closely align with the overall business strategy (if there is one!) and support that strategy to help a company achieve its overall goals and objectives.
Where do you start? Here’s a few simple steps to follow:
1) Start with a strong value proposition and purpose statement
It doesn’t matter how many great individual campaigns you run, marketing cannot fix or overcome a non-existent or weak value proposition or purpose.
So, what’s a value proposition and purpose statement. The clearest description of these for me is from Simon Sinek - ‘Start with Why’.
Here’s a quick summary:
Why: Very few companies clearly articulate why they do what they do. It’s not about profitability, that’s a result. Why is all about your purpose. Why does your company exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care?
How: More companies know how they do what they do. Whether it’s called a 'value proposition', ’differentiating value proposition’ or a ‘unique selling proposition’. HOWs are often given to explain how something is different or better.
What: Every company knows what they do. Everyone can describe the products or services their company sells, or the job function they have within the company.
Most companies start with the what, but the key to any strategy is to start with the Why. Even in the B2B market, your value proposition should focus not only on the rational but also the emotional. Don’t only focus your why on the rational i.e. it saves time, or it helps me streamline – focus on the emotional – how does it make them feel. (I’ll write a blog post about this soon!).
The marketing strategy should then align with the purpose and value proposition.
2) Define your target audience & the right channels
The role of strategic marketing is to take this value proposition and expand and amplify it to create the right messaging to the right people. The basic key to all marketing is targeting the right content to the right audience at the right time. Simple? No!
Who are your target audience?
Firstly, your strategy needs to make clear the audience(s) you want to target. In B2B, that must go beyond a simple descriptor of type of company and dig much deeper into the buyers / customers you really want to attract. For example, it’s not enough to say we target businesses with £10m+ turnover or over 1000 employees.
In companies I’ve worked for and consulted for, we’ve gone much further to look into both the companies and the individuals in those companies that are prospective buyers. Maybe you want to understand where they are in their business lifecycle, how open to change or advice they are, where they are in their personal lifecycle, who are the other influencers in the company you need to consider, what their ambitions are, their objectives and what their challenges are that your product service can fix. I’ve seen client ‘attractiveness’ scoring based on a matrix of these types of criteria and individual buyer personas created to further target the marketing messaging.
“Dig much deeper into the clients you really want to attract.”
What channels can you use to reach the target audience?
Now you’ve defined your target audience you need to be clear on the most appropriate channels to reach those audiences. Where do they consume content, where do they hang out, what associations or groups are they part of and who do they trust and go to for advice?
There are generally 4 types of channels:
Advocacy Channels – No marketing will ever beat word of mouth and one human telling another human directly and honestly how great you and your products/services are based on first-hand experience. Your current customers are you most powerful marketing tool and so are other third-party referrers. In today’s digital world, online reviews, customer testimonials and word of mouth recommendations via social channels will also act as powerful advocacy tools.
Owned Channels – Your website, email and your own social profiles can be key owned channels as a route to market now for many companies. Organic search traffic would fit into this (although how much you ‘own’ this is debated as Google forever changes its algorithm and you have no control over that). Maybe your locations / buildings are an important part of this mix? Maybe you run loyalty programmes.
Distribution Channels – Your people are crucial here. Your sales team, customer relationship managers and service teams are a critical element of your marketing and one that is so often overlooked. If you use distributors or retailers for your products, then these will be part of the mix also.
Paid Channels – Media, Pay Per Click, website banner ads, social advertising, sponsorships and paid for partnerships and events etc. all come into this category. This is where you really need to consider the budget you have and how to make best use of it across the right channels. Paid channels are now, more than ever often necessary to reach your potential audience.
3) Sales & marketing alignment / sales funnel / customer journey
Many of you will of heard of the ‘sales funnel’ and there are many versions of sales funnels and often this is dependent on the sector / business that you are in to define and use the most appropriate one for you. Customer journey mapping, which now many companies undertake digs even deeper. For example, the traditional funnel is something like this: Awareness, Consideration, Conversion, Loyalty & Advocacy.
Marketing and sales need to be closely aligned and work hand in hand to understand the gaps and opportunities throughout a customer purchase funnel or their customer journey. An effective marketing strategy should map the most appropriate channels and marketing activity against these gaps and opportunities.
4) Marketing planning & operations
At this point, I must mention that this is where data and systems are crucial. Good quality and clean data is the foundation to everything we do in marketing. It’s the single biggest marketing challenge in many companies.
You’re now clear who you want to reach and how you can reach them, but without the right data in place to do this and the right systems in which to store and interrogate this data for future use, there is no point moving onto the next stages of marketing output. So many times, I see companies who have spent a huge amount of time and energy on the steps above but simply don’t have the right systems and the cleanest data to be able to move forward with their more detailed and tactical marketing planning and operations.
Once you’ve done the above, the next steps are marketing planning - including setting clear objectives and detailing initiatives, campaign planning, resourcing, testing, learning, modifying, and reporting (a future blog on this to follow).
Many businesses simply don’t understand the importance of a marketing strategy or just don’t see its value. A marketing strategy should act as a road map for the many future decisions you need to make. Ensuring that all areas of the business are aligned to not only your overarching business strategy, but your marketing strategy as well. Key to its success is also to have complete buy-in to this strategy from the senior team.
Successful marketing results shouldn’t be left to chance, you need to ensure you are using your marketing budget and resources wisely to target the right people with the right content at the right time. Without a clearly defined business and marketing strategy this is impossible to achieve.