More than five million American businesses got their start in 2021. Is yours one of them? Then you have a lot of competition to deal with as you build your customer base.
You might have the best products in the world or the most throughout services, but if you don’t learn how to market your business your competition will beat you out every time.
Many new entrepreneurs focus all of their time perfecting their craft. While it’s respectable, you also need to develop a solid marketing strategy plan.
Marketing strategy plans act as your guiding light letting you know what you need to do, and when, in order to continue seeing new business come through your door.
Are you new to the marketing world? Then keep reading below for seven tips on developing B2C and B2B marketing strategies that work.
1. Start With Your Target Customer
The most important aspect of any digital marketing strategy plan is knowing your target customer. It should take you a fair amount of time to research who your exact customer is, then you need to write down everything you can possibly know about those people.
You need to define the demographics as well as the psychographics. Demographics are easy.
Where do your customers live, how old are they, how much money do they make, what is their level of education, and what is their family situation?
You also need to understand their behaviors. Where do they shop? Where do they spend their time, in real life and online? What is their relationship with money? What are the things that inconvenience them the most?
Then, move on to the psychographic; what motivates or scares your target customer. You need to know the deeper things going on inside your customer.
What is important to them when choosing a brand to purchase from? To what extent do their political and moral values play into their purchasing decisions?
When you can answer all of these questions, you can develop a more thorough strategy in your marketing plan.
2. Define Your Goals
Next up, it’s time to list out your goals. You know you need to market your business so you can gain more customers, but you need to be a lot more specific than that.
Is your goal to get more leads calling your business? Do you want more prospects to fill out an inquiry form on your website? Do you want email newsletter subscribers?
Are you trying to grow your followers on Instagram or other social media platforms? Or are you just looking for more foot traffic through your door?
Before you can market, you need to understand the end goal you are trying to achieve. Only then can you create a step-by-step marketing plan.
3. Use a Marketing Plan Template
There are various ways that you can write down and track your goals when it comes to marketing or any other aspect of your business. One of the most basic is the SMART goal system.
SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based. When you write down your marketing goals you need them to be as specific as possible.
For example, you want 100 new email subscribers per week, or 10 phone calls per day coming into your office.
The goals also need to be measurable. You need to know how you are going to track your progress.
Make sure the goals you set are actually attainable, even if they are ambitious. Give each goal a timeframe and set a deadline date for each goal so that you can evaluate your progress every single day.
4. Choose Your Medium
With goals in place, it’s time to get into the weeds. How are you actually going to make this happen? What types of technology or mediums will you use to reach these new customers?
Is it a specific social media platform? Will you use paid advertising online? Are you going to try billboards and other outdoor advertising methods? You should always focus on one method first before trying to diversify into multiple marketing methods.
Get really good at one platform, or prove that it won’t work for your business model before trying to add another marketing vertical.
5. Build Your Funnel
With a marketing medium selected, it’s time to think through the process from start to finish. Your goal is to build a funnel, a system that takes a cold prospect through a marketing journey ultimately converting them into a customer.
Funnels involve introducing strangers to your product or service. You then build trust with them by showing them that your company is the answer to their problems.
Then, give them a reason to make a purchase and make the process as easy as possible for them.
When you build an effective marketing funnel, it can essentially run on autopilot. Then, all you need to do is figure out how to get more people into the start of your funnel.
6. Measure Your Results
Everything that you do in your business, marketing included, should be measured and analyzed at all times. You always want to know what is working and what isn’t.
As soon as you figure out what isn’t working, you can either tweak it or scrap it, and move on to something else. You should never waste marketing dollars on ineffective strategies.
7. Diversify Your Marketing Methods
Once you’ve found a strategy that works, don’t just sit back and relax. What happens when an update comes to the software your using, or the search algorithms, and your strategy stops working?
Your goal should be to have multiple marketing strategies, or at least multiple platforms bringing in new business.
If you rely too heavily on one platform, that becomes a bottleneck for your business. You can’t put your entire business model in the hands of another company that could be here today and gone tomorrow.
Assembling Your Marketing Strategy Plan
Creating a marketing strategy plan isn’t as difficult as you think. It just takes time to understand your customers, where they spend their time, and how to grab their attention.
If you put in the effort upfront to craft a solid strategy, you can reap the rewards for years to come.
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