“To be successful and to grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products,” said the famous American executive and author Brian Halligan, who is a CEO and Co-founder of HubSpot, an Internet marketing company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is also a senior lecturer at MIT.
Business experts define marketing strategy as any combination of activities that helps a business to move forward towards its short or long-term strategic sales goals. The strategic activities can be either online or offline and includes a thorough evaluation of the demographics, market dynamics and competitive environment of any industry.
Marketing statistics does not always mean that the plan has to be something being concerned only with the external factors; rather it involves the internal factors too. The marketing department must understand the company, its aims and objectives, plan and policies and every hook-and-crook of the company to design the most effective marketing strategy. To find a path which would lead an enterprise to its target goal is quite complex than it sounds. It is a monumental undertaking to find, create and execute an effective plan.
Marketing mastermind says that the knowledge and analytical skills are the most important factors for understanding the micro and macro aspects of the business. They say that with experience comes inherent knowledge. Creativity and experimentation are the most important and the best quality a marketing professional must have. CMO at Cybereason, Startup Investor & Advisor, Mike Volpe says, “Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment with your marketing.”
The procedures to make a marketing strategy successful are as follows.
Build a Strong Story Line
Whatever the content is, it must carry an impressive storyline and an impactful message. The storyline and the message should be so clear that it must touch the minds of their potential customers and have a long-lasting impact. The storyline must contain the company’s idea, aim, story, encircling journey and history, and these should be the backbone on which the story should be based on so that customers can build a relationship with that. The successful professional says that the marketing strategist should design in the content of the message in such a way that it is surrounded by the storyline as the story is the most important piece in the company’s potential for success.
Build an Emotional Attachment
In general, marketing strategists differentiate buyers into two types. They say that the buyers are either logical or emotional buyers. They say that logical buyers surround any company, but the company should focus on new plans to build an emotional attachment with the customers to transform buyers and potential buyers into fans. Experts say whatever the content is and the marketing strategy should be designed in a way which creates and strengthen the emotional bond.
The main part of this emotional bond-making process starts from the strong storyline. Pundits say that the other part of bond building process starts with transparency, honesty and working pattern of marketing strategists to fill the gap where help is required by the customers. This bond gets the further strengthened and reinforced by the brand image, sales copy and other smart tactics applied in the central storyline. The CEO of Marketoonist Tom Fishburne says, “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.”
Make Sure the Strategy is Consumer-Centric
The famous English Businessman David Ogilvy once said, “The consumer is not a moron; she is your wife.” So, marketers should not focus misleading consumers instead they should focus on designing their strategies whose prime attention will be on the consumers. It’s not only about what the company is offering rather it’s the value that the company is adding to the lives of the consumers that matters. Legendary business leaders say that at the end of the day if the product or service provider is not helping the consumer in any way or if they are not getting more in return for what they are paying for, it’s of no use in developing a marketing strategy.
Whatever the message contains, the consumer should be the heart of it. Let it be product, service or any piece of information the company wants to convey, if it is more business-centric and not consumer centric, then the business is supposed to lose their business soon and decline their sales.
The iconic entrepreneur behind Walmart, Sam Walton once made an amazing quote on this topic and said, “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
The business professionals and marketing researchers said that marketing strategists should focus on developing content and marketing strategies in a way which touches the heart of not only those people who are buying, but also of those who are part of the marketing strategy viewer. The strategist should have a customer-centric vision. Experts say that it is not always necessary to develop a new content every time while making a marketing strategy, rather, add a new spin on the old content, experiment creatively with various structures and catch the audiences’ eye by giving the message which points directly straight to the message.
Vice President of Marketing at Insight Squared Joe Chernov said, “Good marketing makes the company look smart. Great marketing makes the customer feel smart.”
Ways to Make Your Marketing Effective
