Marketing Strategy
The steps required to develop a well-crafted, strategic marketing plan: set your marketing goals, conduct a marketing audit, conduct market research, analyze the research, identify your target audience, determine a budget, develop specific marketing strategies, develop an implementation schedule for the strategies and create an evaluation process.
A marketing strategy combines all aspects of the customer journey and gives visibility to each department. This then allows the organization to focus on the resources available, figuring out a way to use them to the best of their ability in order to generate sales and increase competitive advantage.
marketing strategy framework is more of a high level, overall strategic plan that is connected to the entire brand, and its organizational objectives. Whereas marketing campaigns are much more focused, short-term initiatives set out to achieve a very specific goal. Your marketing strategy should be used to help inform your marketing campaigns. A marketing strategy encompasses the bigger picture. A marketing campaign, on the other hand, describes the logistical details for each specific project.
Your marketing strategy might require regular adjustments or tweaks, it provides you with a template of where to start and makes it easier to see similar or improved results from each campaign without having to completely reinvent the wheel. It also creates stability and a sense of predictability within the marketing department.
01
Setting your marketing goals
Once you’ve decided to market your practice, you need to set realistic and measurable goals to achieve over the next 18 to 24 months. This time span allows you to plan activities around community events that are in line with your marketing goals. For example, you might help sponsor an annual walkathon for breast cancer or speak at your community’s annual health fair. Because of the rapid changes occurring in the health care environment, we don’t recommend planning specific activities more than two years in advance. One way to define your goals is to separate them into the following three categories: immediate, one to six months; short-term, six to 12 months; and long-term, 12 to 24 months.
Overwhelmed? Give us a shoutout.
02
Conduct a marketing audit
A marketing audit is a review of all marketing activities that have occurred in your business over the past three years. Be as thorough as possible, making sure to review every product launch, TV advertisement, display advertisement, social media outreach, print / radio, paid / organic search, retargeting, email conversions, influencer conversions, affiliate marketing, OTT and programmatic advertising has been evaluated and whether it was successful.
It is vital to know exactly who you plan to target. Who your target audience is will impact many important decisions that you need to make, from branding and pricing, right through to the messaging you use, and marketing channels you choose to promote your products or services on
03
Target Audience
The target audience is whoever the business expects to purchase their product or service. If we use the earlier example of nappies, the product itself is aimed at the babies and toddlers but, of course, they aren’t going to be the ones making the actual purchase. In this circumstance, the advertising and marketing efforts should be directed at the target audience, which is made up of the parents and guardians making the purchase.
Your target audience can also be a subset of your target market; these are people you are trying to reach as part of a particular marketing communication or promotion. For example, a luxury beauty salon might be offering discounts off a number of anti-wrinkle treatments. As these treatments are generally age-specific, there is no need to target your entire market. Instead, your target audience can be made up of those who are within the right age bracket.
Overwhelmed? Give us a try
04
Audience Segmentation
Once you have established your general target market, it’s time to segment. Customer segments are made up of a number of subgroups of your overall audience, often defined by their similar needs and wants. Consumers have become much more empowered and expect highly personalized messaging from brands, meaning that segmentation is now more crucial than ever.
For most companies, there are various types of customers that might have an interest in the products or services you offer. The process of segmentation involves identifying these different groups and effectively positioning your brand to each one.
The most common methods used by marketers to segment their target audience are –
- Demographic
- Geographic
- Behavioral
- Psychographic
As a marketer, when you are equipped with an in-depth understanding of each of your customer segments, you will be able to set objectives and form ideas centered around your audience. This will ensure that you create only the most highly personalized campaigns that will achieve maximum impact. Your customer segmentation should underpin every part of your company’s marketing strategy.
[soliloquy id=”664″]
Toggle title
Toggle content goes here, click edit button to change this text.