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7 Steps to a Complete Marketing Strategy [2022]
In order to achieve your business goals it is necessary to conceive, plan and implement a comprehensive strategy.
A successful, effective and comprehensive strategy can be achieved with the following seven steps which, if followed, can skyrocket your company's profits.
Let's look at these steps in more detail.
1. Create a marketing strategy
First and most important step is to create your marketing strategy and write it down.
A marketing plan is essentially a description of your business's advertising strategy with all the actions that need to be taken.
The design of a marketing plan can include the company's identity and philosophy, goals, competition analysis, SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), budget, selection of promotion channels, etc.
So creating a marketing plan will help you stick to your overall strategy.
2. Know your audience & form buyer personas
After designing a marketing plan, it's time to learn all about your target audience and create buyer personas.
Buyer or marketing personas are imaginary depictions of the ideal customers of your business. They are types of people with specific characteristics and qualities (e.g. demographic information, education, work, interests, etc.) who could be your customers. Your potential customers, that is.
What you have to do is create some such characters by doing market research or collecting data from the databases you already have about your customers.
The use of buyer personas in marketing is extremely important, as it allows a deeper understanding of your audience and their needs, so that you can (re)adjust your strategy based on them.
A related concept is marketing funnels, which can help you with this step. If you want to know what marketing funnels are and how they help, check out our related article.
3. Set goals
Can a self-respecting business operate without solid and clear marketing goals?
Probably not.
That is why it is very important to identify and set your desired goals so that you know where you are going.
And if this is done, it will be easier to find the best ways to achieve these goals.
Some goals may be to increase traffic to your site, sign up for your newsletter, fill out forms or make a purchase.
4. Select the appropriate tools
A complete and effective marketing strategy must definitely include the selection of the appropriate tools.
After all, you will need to monitor your actions and the evaluation of the goals.
Tools like Google Analytics will allow you to track traffic and overall performance of your website with data.
Other programs, such as SEMrush, will allow you to improve the SEO of your site or blog (by doing tasks such as keyword research and analysis, competitor keyword analysis, etc.) in order to gain more traffic.
You can also take advantage of tools for managing and scheduling your social media posts (eg Hootsuite, which allows you to create a calendar for your posts) or to run email marketing campaigns (e.g. Mailchimp), with bulk sending and email management, etc.
5. Leverage existing means
Decisive for your overall strategy will be the recognition and utilization of the already existing assets of your business.
For example, if you have a strong presence on social media, focus there and build on the content in order to optimize or maintain it at a high level.
If you have a strong blog, focus on it and include in your strategy the prospect of promoting and sharing it through many different channels for greater impact.
More specifically, your blog's informative articles (owned media, i.e. your own content) can be promoted on social media (paid media, i.e. content promoted with payment), with the ultimate goal of spreading them through shares from your followers (i.e. earned media).
Always keep in mind that a comprehensive marketing strategy should include all available channels and their combination to maximize its performance.
6. Review data & plan advertising campaigns
And at this point comes the time to come up with the most suitable content.
Rethink your goals and depending on your audience, decide what content will be most effective.
Finally, create a content creation plan.
This needs to include the topics, their goal and also each channel that will be used for the promotion and dissemination of each form of content.
Thus, every form of advertising will perform to the maximum and leave you fully satisfied.
7. Take action
The final step in completing your strategy is obviously implementation. Your digital marketing strategy is ready to pay off.
Create the strategy implementation plan and schedule and assign each action or group of actions to the appropriate teams.
Then implement all the individual actions that make up the strategy and track their performance.
If some of them do not work properly or do not satisfy you, then you only have to readjust the actions and replace them with new ideas.
Don't hesitate to make the necessary changes whenever you come across something that isn't working.
Creating a marketing plan in 2022 - Conclusion
A marketing strategy is a fundamental obligation of any modern business that respects itself and its audience.
It must include every possible way and means of promotion, combining techniques from both traditional and digital marketing.
Start from a strategic marketing plan, know your audience, set goals, use the ideal tools, focus on your strengths, organize advertising campaigns and finally, put your overall strategy into action. And your business will definitely reach new heights!
If you want to create a comprehensive marketing strategy for your business, don't hesitate to contact us.
