Successful Marketing Strategy in 6 Steps

A robust marketing strategy is the lifeblood of a successful business plan. It’s your blueprint for how your business will captivate, engage, and maintain your customer base.

Well-crafted marketing strategies describe your brand perception, product promotion, and revenue generation approach.

Marketing Strategy Process

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1. Data Collection, Research, Analysis

Whether you’re a startup or a Fortune 500 company, marketing starts with data collection.

• • Conducting surveys of your present and ideal clients gives you insights into who your ideal client should be based on their actual or forecast Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). This is one of the areas in which a good contact management system comes into play.
  • Determining who is following/liking you vs. who is having an active conversation (high value) can reinforce or change your primary (ideal client) and secondary client base.
  • If you already have a client base, mining your website analytics with tools including Google Analytics, is essential to verifying the demographics and psychographics of your ideal client and determining secondary and profitable niche clients.
  • Establishing and maintaining a product/service review team is another crucial step to capture what at first might seem like a nuance but could turn out to be a future trend.  Since you’re asking people for their time, compensating them with discounts or access to limited edition products/services and special events is essential to expressing your gratitude for their help.

2. Competitive Analysis & Differentiation

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At the end of the day, two things matter the most to your client:

• • The benefit of using your product or service.
  • Convenience.

But within those overarching categories are a whole set of differentiators that must work to your advantage.

3. Target Client/Customer Personas

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Based on your data collection and analysis, it’s important to develop a dossier for your primary and secondary clients so your entire business team understands and can quickly visualize them.

This is also a step to check whether your data and analysis make sense compared to your current or expected client base.  If something doesn’t seem right, the first things to do are to:

• • Check your assumptions.
  • Review the sources of your data.

Remember, the process of creating a dossier is not just about understanding your existing clients. It’s also about uncovering new opportunities. If your analysis is error-free, it could lead to the exciting discovery of a new or more profitable client.

 

4. Website Landing Pages and Initial Advertising

It’s now time to start brand development, including:

• • Name of your product or service.
  • Tagline (value proposition).
  • Logo.
  • Key color selection.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can expedite all of these items, reducing the cost by an order of magnitude and the time to completion from weeks or longer to days.

From there, developing a dozen landing pages for the initial A/B advertising test is important.  This seems like a lot, but even with a solid client base, launching a new product or service carries many unknowns.  Landing page conversions are the place to determine which combination of product/service, images, video, copywriting, and call to action will work for your ideal client.  Multiple landing pages are also another way to find new client niches that may be profitable.

Content developed for your landing pages should be used in the correct format for your initial advertising once you’ve determined the channels that make the most sense for your ideal client, which could include:

• • Digital media (paid and earned social media, email, text).
  • Traditional media (cold calls, mailed ads, newspapers, magazines, TV/cable, radio, billboards).

5. Persona Validation and Recommendations

Based on your first A/B advertising campaign results, it’s time to review your primary and secondary personas.  Questions include:

• • Are there tag words that align with each demographic, psychographic, and motivation?
  • Do they place a similar value on the identified “desired product/service qualities?”
  • Do they consume media in the way that you projected?

It’s crucial to update your personas as needed and add new ones based on the insights and data gathered from your results. This data-driven approach will ensure your marketing strategies are effective and targeted.

It’s also important to update your advertisements and landing pages based on the best-converting combination from your initial A/B advertising campaign. Continuous improvement and adaptation to consumer preferences are key factors in successful marketing.

Next, it’s time to determine an acceptable conversion ratio for your next campaign, including total media spend, forecast return-on-investment (ROI), and client acquisition cost based on your forecast Client or Customer Lifetime Value.

6. Advertising Campaign, Results, Analysis, Recommendations

At this point in the marketing process, take everything you’ve learned and run a six-week or longer advertising campaign.

It’s essential to review daily analytics. This ensures that no mistakes were made during the campaign implementation and that your website’s analytics are reasonably well correlated with those from the advertising channel. This daily review is a key factor in maintaining the effectiveness of your campaign.

Note:  The primary goal for this first full advertising campaign is to collect data.  This data will serve as the foundation for your future campaigns, making it a pivotal step in your strategy. Other Key Performance Indicators (KPI) including revenue and profit are secondary.

Unless there’s a significant disconnect, this is not the time to make running adjustments to the campaign.

If there’s a disconnect:

• • If it’s obvious, correct it.
  • If it’s not apparent, collect two weeks of data before determining if the campaign should be paused or continued.

Once your first full campaign is completed, it’s time to do two things:

• • Compare the results with your personas and update them as needed.
  • Iterate content and channels based on which combination worked.

Secrets to Success

1. 1. Marketing decisions are based on research, data analysis, and ideal client personas.
   2. Use A/B advertising to validate personas and branding and find new profitable niches.
   3. Conversion ratios should be used to analyze the effectiveness of your full multi-week advertisement campaigns.

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