Marketing strategies define the direction in which you aim to take your business this year. They show who you are as a business organization and determine how you position yourself in the market. From past experiences, it is visible that businesses need to reshape their marketing strategy in alignment with the ongoing trends and changing customer preferences. To put things simply, ‘If your customers prefer vanilla ice –cream do not serve them a chocolate or a strawberry flavored one.’
We all are aware of the fact that a successful marketing strategy is not just about one factor but it is a combination of several factors.
Here are the 7 steps to develop a successful marketing strategy for 2021: –
Step 1 – Define Your Marketing Goals and Target Audience
It is usually observed that businesses formulate their marketing strategies without identifying what they aim to achieve from it. A marketing strategy without goals is like a building constructed on weak foundations. Your marketing strategy should be in alignment with your business size, organizational needs and future aspirations about it. It is also not advisable to set unrealistic marketing goals for your business this year as circumstances may turn out to be very different than what you may have anticipated.
Moreover, it should also be noted that businesses often design and develop their marketing strategy without identifying the types of marketing mediums that they aim to use i.e. online or offline. Due to this they are unable to identify their target audience and pitch them correctly to generate leads. If you do not define who your target audience is it, where is it based and what does it prefer then your marketing strategy may not achieve the desired results.
Step 2 – Conduct Market Research and Competitor Analysis
A market research can be done for a lot of reasons like conducting a marketing audit, analyzing what your competitors are doing, calculating the brand value, enhancing brand positioning, getting exact information about what customers expect from your business and much more.
Once you conduct your market research, you need to have in-depth information about what your competitors are aiming towards and how are they designing and implementing their marketing strategy. As soon as you get hold of all this information you are now all set to go live and stand out against them in the market!
Step 3 – Set Your Marketing Budget
Once you decide what mediums you are going to use and which audience you are going to target, you need to allocate the financial resources required for promotion on these mediums. You have two ways of doing this either you identify the mediums and publish information about yourself there or hire a digital marketing agency which could do all of these on your behalf.
There is no fixed standard on how much your budget should be, you can keep it flexible in alignment with your needs or you could allocate certain percent of your revenues/expenses on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis depending upon your requirements.
Step 4 – Choose Your Mediums of Communication
This is something where businesses face a lot of dilemma in making decisions. Choosing a medium of communication for your message is extremely important. Most of it depends on the nature of your business and the audience you aim to target. For a smaller audience group you could target traditional offline mediums like advertisements in radio, television, newspapers, magazines, periodicals, pamphlets and leaflets distribution, etc.
Whereas, for addressing a larger audience group you could target online marketing strategies like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), social media marketing, influencer marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Pay–Per–Click (PPC) campaign, E-Mail marketing, Content Marketing, etc. Your brand message should be pitched through the right mediums which your customers prefer to use and holds higher chances of your business getting noticed.
Step 5 – Create a Groundbreaking Content Strategy
Once you have decided the medium of communicating your brand message, there are certain questions around it which need your immediate attention i.e. what, where, when, why and how to pitch the message. These questions are answered by your content. Regardless of the medium, ‘Content is King’ for making your brand successful. To start with you can create a tentative content calendar where you could highlight all the key events, festivals, decide the mediums of engagement and make daily, monthly and yearly content strategies in alignment with the vision of your business this year.
Step 6 – Identify the Trends and Design Your Campaigns Accordingly
Trends are an extremely powerful medium to pitch your message to a larger group of audience over digital mediums of marketing. Used mostly for social media marketing, there are several ways in which you could promote your business in alignment with the latest trends. Sometimes you may lose a lot of potential customers and demote your social media presence through not responding to trends.
Trends are a reflection of how people are thinking and have a huge impact on their ways to engage with businesses. To gain popularity amongst a large group of customers trend can prove to be the best friend for your business.
Step 7 – Measure Your Results through Data Analysis
Marketing strategy is a combination of working and reworking. There are several analytical tools which can help you keep in track the progress of your marketing journey. Easier with online marketing mediums where everything is measured in numbers, data analysis could prove to be the best way to enhance the results of your entire digital presence. It could be tough to count the numbers for traditional mediums. Therefore, it is advisable these days to keep your marketing strategy mostly to digital rather than traditional mediums where you can upload modify and analyze your presence all available at the tip of your fingers.
Conclusion
A good marketing strategy in 2021 is a combination of both traditional and digital mediums of communication. In a world shifting online it is advisable that 85% of your marketing strategy is based on digital marketing and the rest 15% could be based on traditional mediums of marketing. Finally, if you are looking for assistance in framing an effective digital marketing strategy for your business and are confused about how to implement it, it is always advisable to hire a marketing agency which could do things on your behalf in your budget.
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