Strategy First: A Guide to Creating and Building a Marketing Strategy

A business’s marketing tactics are only as strong as its marketing strategy. So what does it take to create—and build—the perfect marketing strategy for your business?

There’s no question, developing the right marketing strategy is one of the hardest parts about small business marketing. But there’s also no question that it’s one of the most important. As the owner of the 5-year-old strategic marketing firm, I’ve had both great success in developing a marketing strategy and also made some mistakes along the way. And I know I’m not alone. Most of the business owners I have worked with, have experienced the same.

What I have learned is that nothing about building your marketing strategy should be haphazard. Marketing strategy should be considered as important a business practice as sales, and operations. It’s probably the most important  upon which your business is being built.

What follows here is a guide to creating and building a marketing strategy perfect for your business.

Don’t waste time marketing and selling to people who will never buy. Save time and energy by understanding your ideal customer.

Every day, 98% of the people responsible for the marketing strategy of organizations end up implementing tactics that FAIL for one simple reason: these tactics do not appeal to their ideal customer.

The secret to increasing your profitability isn’t more marketing—it’s targeting. Don’t squander your marketing budget and hundreds of hours generating leads that take your business nowhere. Find your profitable client from the outset, and everyone wins.

Think about whom your 10 best customers are and what you need to do to attract 10 more just like them!

From your client base above start looking at the characteristics of these successful accounts or best clients. You’re searching for any common characteristics that are shared by this client base.

Here’s what you are deep diving for:

After developing a profile of an ideal client it’s time to find a way to attract this group. In my experience the only sure-fire way to do this is by discovering or creating a unique selling proposition through your approach, market niche, product, service, message, delivery, or guarantee that clearly stands out in the mind of your customer.

In my opinion the best way to create a unique selling proposition that can’t be easily copied and stand out from the competition is to sit down with a handful of your best clients face to face or over the phone for about ten minutes and conduct a service improvement interview of sorts. Learn more about attract your ideal customer here.

Some other things to take into consideration:

Your company could be the one who always sends handwritten notes after a signed agreement. Your company could be the one who sends certificates after engaging a client thanking them for the completion of a program or project. These things are about being different, not being better.

If your business is receiving inquiries, and the first questions is, “How much does it cost?” there’s a strong possibility your difference strategy isn’t effective.

The final step in the marketing strategy puzzle is to take what you’ve done previously – defining an ideal customer and creating a unique selling proposition – and turning it into action.

Strategy-first thinking forces you to push your core marketing strategy above into every marketing activity. I’ve developed a very powerful approach for building this kind of customer journey.

Our approach to the customer journey is a concept that asks you to create processes, offerings, and campaigns aimed at strategically moving prospects and customers through five stages – Awareness, Education, Sample, Purchase and Refer. By viewing each of these stages as a place to reinforce your USP as well as deliver key educational information, you create the kind of journey that leads to  your profitable customers .

Awareness –  This is the phase where sales, social media, content, networking, public relations will do well and even search, advertising and referrals start here.

Education –  This is the stage where once you attracted prospects to your website or location you have give them reasons to come back, reasons to relate and even reasons to like your team and also provide reviews, success stories and client testimonials.

Sample –  Now that prospects are wondering how your solution might work for them it’s  time to demonstrate  to them with reports, eBooks, webinars and very detailed how to information. You might also have an assessment, audit, seminar, evaluation, trial version or low-cost offer here.

Purchase –  For this stage the focus is still on educating but from the standpoint of a new customer

Refer –  The customer journey is ultimately about referrals

Without a strategy, you have too many “opportunities” coming at you with no way to filter what makes sense for your business. Or without a strategy the marketing services you’ve hired such as a website developer, print company, social media person, and advertising rep, 9 out 10 times, each of these experts will pull your business into a different direction. In either case, you will most likely waste time and money with little to show for it.

A marketing strategy will focus your efforts on attracting your target market and help you determine if you are going off track and what you need to do to reach your destination (or business goals).

For the greatest success, your marketing strategy must be holistic. Your ideal customer profile, messaging, differentiation, content and offline efforts can’t be just one aspect of your work; they need to be infused into every facet of your business.