How to Design a Powerful Marketing Plan?
Without a plan there won’t be a customer.
The end of 2019 is coming close and we at Viral Access are busy reviewing and analyzing the overall performance throughout the year. This feedback and insights are important to help us as marketers and business owners to answer these questions:
What strategies work this year and will work again next year? What strategies did not work? What will be the next step?
A marketing plan is an essential marketing tool for business. A solid marketing strategy will give your business a clear direction towards your business goals. Surprisingly though, many of us aren’t putting in nearly the same effort when it comes to building a strong marketing strategy.
Developing Marketing Strategies
Marketing strategies differ depending on your area of business. But developing a resonate marketing strategy almost always involve the identification of a target market, defining and redefining business goals, conducting thorough consumer and market research, and the implementation of initiatives to execute the formulated strategies.
1. Identification of Target Market
Naturally in order to develop a sound marketing strategy, first you need to know who you’re selling your product or service.
Your target market is the specific audience you want to reach with your products and services or the group you are trying to sell.
One way you can do this is by creating a buyer’s persona. Buyer’s persona is a generalized representation of a brand’s ideal customers. Creating buyer’s persona helps you to relate to your customers better, hence leading to the creation of relevant content, effective product development, relationship establishment, as well as better customer acquisition and retention.
2. Defining (and Redefining) Business Goals
Your marketing strategy is directly connected to your business goals. Marketing strategies will help you outline all actions and details to achieve your marketing objectives. It will also serve as a standard to measure how effective your strategies are.
Your business goals, meanwhile, need to be based on a rigorous market research and review of your past performance. Don’t forget to attach a specific timeline that serves as a deadline to your goals. Having specific time frame will help you to create a more targeted and realistic marketing plan.
3. Customer and Market Research
After identifying your goals and target market, the next step is to do research. Investigating both your prospective clients and your competitors is the best way to get a firm understanding on the right way to implement your strategy to achieve your expected goals.
For example, you’d want to know which social media channels your prospective clients would mostly spend their time, what content format they prefer, or what kind of topics will catch their interests. These information are important to help you in executing your strategy.
Additionally, running competitor analysis will also help you understand how your competitors prevail, what they are doing right and what they might be doing wrong. SWOT analysis or Social Listening are some examples to help you evaluate your competitor’s overall performance. Conducting a thorough market research will assist you to identify areas to better approach your customers, identify your niche, and prepare to address competitive challenges.
4. Formulate Pricing Strategies
One of the most important factors to ensure that your marketing plan will go smoothly is to set a budget plan. Apart from resources spent on product development and research, you also need to relate your pricing information to your marketing activities, i.e. promotions and ads.
The most important function of a proper pricing strategy is to provide your customers with a clear idea of the value and benefits they will receive in exchange of your product or service.
A higher value for money often leads to increased conversions.
5. Actionable To-Do-Lists
Ask yourself: How would you market your product and service?
Make a list of important tasks that need to be executed that will act as a guide for you and your team. This list will help you stay on track and help you stay consistent in your delivery.
Your marketing plan should also cover all of the interactions with your target consumers. Keep in mind that different market segment might need different approach. For instance, email marketing might work for older demographic customers while mobile marketing might be more effective for younger customers.
6. Measure and Evaluate
The development of a marketing strategy does not end once your campaign hit the market. Instead, you should constantly evaluate and measure the overall performance of your strategy in every step. It allows you to turn the traditional, static plan to a marketing strategy with growth as the ultimate goal.
Measuring the results of your marketing strategies also help you to tailor your future marketing activities to focus on the areas that will need improvement.
Ready to Execute Your Plan?
Marketing strategies are essential for the growth of your business. Regardless of how amazing your product or service is, if no customers pay attention to them, you will not make any sales. Earning the right for their attention is your subsequent goal.
The key to develop a powerful marketing plan is to think how your business and marketing efforts can be improved. A successful marketing strategy, after all, must remain in a state of constant evolution.
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Viral Access is an AI and data-driven social communication company — we help you tell your story through social media. We pair your brand with relevant micro and nano influencers that help you increase awareness, engagement and conversion. We have the systems and team in place to support large scale communications throughout Asia.
For business inquiries, contact us at: info@viralaccess.asia.
