The first step in devising a successful marketing strategy is alignment of marketing effort to business goals and target audience. For example, if you are marketing walking sticks to senior citizens then using larger than usual font in your communications and prominently displayed phone numbers would be a tactic to get you leads. However, if your target audience consists primarily of teenagers then content that can be “skimmed” rather than “read” may work best. This is because teenagers tend to have a lower attention span. If you are marketing to young children then lots of music, images and bright colors would be your preferred choice.
Hence, your marketing strategy should vary according to your target audience even if the medium and type of communication you use is not the most popular. For example, if Facebook has more users than most countries, does it mean you should start marketing on Facebook? Not at all! It may be that your audience responds better to an offline conference in which you offer expert advice in your domain. In this case investing your marketing dollar on Facebook could be a marketing mistake. Following the general crowd will not help but following your audience will. Within your target audience, there will always be a segment known as the “influencers” who have credibility and whose actions others want to emulate. Focusing your attention on this group is definitely worth your while.
The next step in devising a successful marketing strategy is to do a competitive analysis of your top competitors. The objective of this exercise is to learn from your competitors. Defining the top players in your chosen industry can help benchmark your marketing strategy. You can learn from what the other players are doing well and also from the mistakes they make.
The final step is to track the tangible results from your marketing effort. If your objective is to optimize sales, then you could use call tracking to determine which media channel is generating the most productive leads. Experimentation and testing leads you to perfect your marketing strategy and ensure it is in line with your audience’s preferences. You can use a keyword level analysis to determine which language goes well with your target audience. If you find that a certain communication channel or ad script has stopped generating productive leads, then re-allocate your dollar to higher return channels immediately. This will ensure that you optimize Return on Investment (ROI).
