While there is still space for a traditional marketing strategy, the focus for businesses of all sizes and sectors needs to be on the digital side. From a cost-effectiveness perspective, digital marketing outperforms traditional marketing by a vast amount and provides higher levels of ROI. That means that it is essential for modern businesses to design and execute a marketing plan in the most hard-hitting and impactful way. If your business still relies on an attitude of ‘advertise when we remember to,’ then you are missing out on the value of a well-developed marketing strategy. If you want more from your marketing in 2020, here are the five steps that you need to take.
1. The Plan
You need to start by identifying your campaign objectives and ensuring that you know who the target audience for your marketing communications is going to be. All marketing campaigns need to be built around your overall marketing plan, which means having both long-term and short-term goals identified. The focus at this stage should be on goal specificity. It’s not enough to say that you want more sales; be specific, as this will provide you with more value when you get to step five
2. Budget Demands
When it comes to spending money on marketing, most companies will prefer to keep those costs as low as possible. After you have identified your specific goals, you will need to evaluate the costs. This will depend on your marketing channels. However, there remains a lot of value in low-cost or free marketing, although this will mean the time it takes to identify met targets will be longer. You can keep costs lower by ensuring that every task is being carried out at the right time, so it’s worth making use of cutting edge task management software for improved efficiency. These types of tools are now essential in the fast-paced and increasingly demanding marketing arena.
3. Channel Options
Your next step is to identify which channels you will be using for your communications. There are plenty of options to consider, so look at:
- Your website as the foundation
- Social media
- Email or messaging platforms
- Content marketing (with an SEO focus)
- PPC
This will depend on your target audience. Identifying your target audience is something that should be in place before you start running your business, but it’s never too late to start. Understand where your audience spends their time online, and what they want to see from you.
4. Campaign Launch
Once everything is in place, it’s time to run your new campaign. Make sure that you have followed your action plan step by step and that all of your marketing materials are ready to be seen.
5. Measure and Evaluate
Once your campaign is up and running, you need to know if it is working. This is where your analytics come in. Identify what is working and what isn’t, and you will be in a much stronger position. If you met all of your marketing goals, that doesn’t mean that you can avoid checking that data. Knowing your metrics will make it easier to design and implement your next, even more successful marketing campaign.
Marketing can take time and work to get right, and not every campaign will work as effectively as you hoped. Take the time to build the right foundation, create as detailed a plan as possible, and keep a close eye on your results. By taking the time to improve your marketing, you make it easier to reach out to consumers and bring them to your sales funnel. That means more customers, more sales, and greater profits in 2020.
