Marketing Strategy
It is a great time to create a marketing plan for your business or review and update the current plan. Before you launch into which marketing channels you might choose, here are some questions to consider and work into your planning.
- How effective have previous marketing strategies been for your business? Analyse the numbers, profit margin, return on investment, source of new customers, prospects in the pipeline – whatever is key to your business.
- What is your target market? Specific market segment, for example geographic? Is your product or service meeting the needs of the market?
- Who is your target audience, do you have an audience profile, typical customer?
- What are your business and marketing objectives? Are these SMART objectives?
- Specific
- Measurable
- Actionable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
- Setting your strategies – are they appropriate to meet your objectives? For example it is great to see your social media engagement increasing, but does that actually grow your business?
- Who are your competitors, how are you differentiating your business? What are your unique selling points?
- Consider external factors for example the economy, brexit, new technologies, access to funding, will any of these impact on your business?
- Resources, both budgetary and human – how much time and money will you be investing to deliver the plan?
