Marketing strategy

What is a marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy contains all the goals that a company has, which are used to make an overall plan. The strategy is developed from market research which provides data on the direction to take with the marketing strategy.

Market research is important because without data, you can't develop a marketing strategy. This is because the strategy needs to be designed to promote a product or service and therefore make money. Market research will be explained in more detail in the next section.

The marketing strategy is directly essential to show the company which direction to go in order to reach the goals they may have.

How to make a good marketing strategy?

It takes good planning to put a good marketing strategy in place. In addition, you need to keep your target audience and brand in mind, as these need to go hand-in-hand in your strategy.

To help you on your way, we recommend you follow these 9 steps when developing your marketing strategy.

• Start with your goal

Your marketing strategy should encapsulate all the goals that your business has. If your one goal is to achieve a certain revenue, then your goal with your marketing strategy could be to drive more visitors and conversions to your website.

• Conduct market research

As mentioned earlier, before you make the plan itself, you need to familiarise yourself with the market in which your business will operate. Find out what your weaknesses and strengths are as well as how the market has performed recently. Find out if there are any new trends that you can use to your company's advantage. In addition, explore what possible challenges you may face along the way.

• Know your customers

Customers are at the heart of your marketing strategy. You need to be able to see what their expectations are and how you can meet them better than your competitors.

• Know your products/services

Whether you're a start-up or well-established business, it requires you to have an understanding of what you need to sell to your customers. In particular, you need to consider the whole market when developing the service or product you want to sell. You should consider the following when establishing your services or products: how will you make your products/services unique from those of your competitors? How much will you sell your services/products for? How will you promote your products? And finally, how will you sell your products/services?

• Define your path to your goal

From the first step, you have already defined your overall goals that you want to achieve. That said, it's also a good idea to work out a route for how you will achieve your overall goals. This can be done, for example, by drawing up a "roadmap," in which you describe step by step how you will reach your overall goal.

• Outline your methods

Once you have developed your roadmap, you need to consider which methods can be used to take your roadmap one step further. 

• Set a budget

It's debatable whether this should be included in your marketing strategy, but it's important that you have money set aside to achieve your overall goals so you don't spend a lot of money on wasted effort.

• Make a marketing plan

When creating your strategy, it is also important that you have a plan for how the strategy will be executed.

• Analyse your performance

It is essential to keep up to date with your company's performance, especially as it gives you an idea of whether your marketing strategy is pointing in a positive direction or whether something needs to be changed in the strategy to achieve better performance.

Your marketing strategy is long-term

When developing your marketing strategy, it is important to ensure that it is long-term. You need to take a forward planning approach when developing your marketing strategy. The basic aim of a marketing strategy is to gain a competitive advantage, which is often referred to as a competitive advantage.

In principle, you should consider your marketing strategy just like an SEO and SoMe strategy. These strategies will help your business move towards the goal you want to achieve. But it can take a long time to get there. It can take anywhere from 6 months to a whole year to reach a result.

In your marketing strategy, you also need to consider your competitors and, in particular, which of your advantages can make you competitive with them in the long term. It is a huge plus if you have a competitive advantage. An example of this is Ferrari which has a competitive advantage over its competitors because a Ferrari car holds its value well. Ferrari didn't gain this competitive advantage overnight, or because they got lucky. It was part of the company's long-term strategy.

Marketing strategies

Most businesses will find at some point that they need to increase their visibility to improve sales. But to get more visibility, companies often need to spend more money. If there is not much money left in the till, there are still things that can be done today, even on a smaller budget, to reach more customers. It all depends on how much time you have. If you're short on cash, hopefully you'll have time on your side instead.

Here are 10 strategies you can use to market any business online.

• Use social media
• Make video material
• Start blogging
• Get to grips with SEO
• Take advantage of influencer marketing
• Create a "lead magnet"
• Use Facebook ads with retargeting
• Take advantage of LinkedIn marketing
• Create an affiliate program
• Use automated e-mail broadcasts (marketing automation)

Read also our post where we give some input for your email marketing strategy.

Frequently asked questions about marketing strategies