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- Marketing strategies are founded on understanding your unique selling proposition (USP) and being able to identify target consumers.
- Layering insights about customers into your marketing strategy helps you to identify the channels that are worth focusing on.
- Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) goals around your marketing objectives to make sure you see reward for effort or where you might need to pivot.
Q: How do you build stronger marketing strategies?
A: All solid marketing strategies start with understanding the marketing funnel and knowing how to move your customers through that funnel. At the top, you’re looking to make potential customers aware of your brand or product. As they move through, you want those potential customers to consider purchasing from your brand then commit to a purchase. Finally, you want customers to continue doing business with you and tell others about you.
Marketing builds awareness, drives sales and distinguishes you from your competitors. It’s a powerful tool to capture attention and ultimately feeds customers through the marketing funnel.
“Marketing is about having the right message in the right place at the right time,” says Katreena Tyson, from business marketing at CommBank. But how do you create a marketing strategy and how do you find potential customers?
Follow Katreena’s three-step guide to get started.
1. Know your brand
Start by understanding your unique selling proposition (USP). In other words: what makes your business different from – and better than – the competition?
“A strong USP is something your business does exceptionally well, a value your business represents or a problem only you can solve,” says Katreena. “Frame your USP into a simple message that highlights this value for customers. For example, you might be ‘the only 24/7 plumber in town’ or have ‘handcrafted quality at half the price’.”
Your USP is the foundation of your marketing strategy. Keep it close and make sure you’re referring to it in your marketing activity.
2. What is a target consumer and how can you find yours?
“Look at the needs and habits of your best customers and then create a simple profile of your ‘ideal consumer’. That includes their age range, location, interests and pain points,” says Katreena. “Find out where they spend time – is it online or out in the community?”
If your business uses a customer relationship management (CRM) platform you can pull a lot of this data from there but it also helps to understand the trends in your field by reviewing social media hashtags and reading industry newsletters. This will help you identify where potential growth is coming from.
3. Build your strategy
Once you can answer “What is my USP” and “Who is my target consumer”, you’ll be set to solve the big one: “How can I market my business?”
“Knowing your customers’ pain points, where they spend their time and when they shop helps you devise a marketing strategy that talks to the right customers on the right channels at the right time – and with a highly targeted message,” says Katreena.
She notes that the right channel – or channels – for your marketing is the one that matches your audience’s habits. “Always test, learn and validate your strategy by collecting data and feedback – quickly – on your marketing activity.”
Set SMART marketing goals
It can be easy to get caught up doing lots of marketing on all the available channels. Instead, set SMART goals around your activity to help you stay on track. “SMART goals are important because they turn vague ambitions into clear targets you can actually track and meet,” says Katreena.
For example, instead of saying “I want more customers”, a SMART marketing goal could be: “increase our Instagram followers by 20 per cent (from 500 to 600) in the next three months by posting three times a week”. This goal is concrete and time-bound so you can measure progress and know when you’ve achieved it.
Congratulations, you’ve completed this lesson!
Next lesson: 5.1 - How to build a marketing strategy for better business growth