How to Develop a Marketing Strategy for Your Business

A marketing strategy is the plan that links what your business wants to achieve with the people who matter to it, the message you will use and the channels you will rely on. It states your vision, your mission and your business goals, and it lays out the steps toward them. Ads, posts, mailers and commercials are tactics. The strategy is the reason each one exists.

Because a strategy shapes how you run the business and not only how you advertise, build it with your team instead of handing it down. Keep it simple enough that everyone can explain it in a sentence or two. A plan only one person understands will not survive a busy week.

Start by deciding what the marketing is supposed to accomplish. Good goals are specific enough that you can compare the outcome with the intention: more inquiries for a particular service, more repeat customers, or awareness of a new offering in a certain area. Name the response you are after, such as a call, a store visit, a form submission or a sale, and be precise about which one counts.

The plan must be substantial enough to show whether the spending was worthwhile, and flexible enough to evolve. Expect to amend it. A new competitor, a new technology or a major change to your products can each make last season’s plan the wrong one.

Some products suit broad audiences and others suit narrow ones, but every strategy needs a clear picture of its people. Consumer marketers often describe the ideal customer by income, age and location. Business-to-business marketers add company size, revenue and industry. Learn as much as you can about these people: what they need, what worries them and how they prefer to buy. The piece on picking your audience covers that work step by step.

Research keeps a strategy honest. Gather information about the size and growth of your market, social trends and the demographics of the people in it, then keep checking, because markets move. Focus groups, surveys, conversations with customers and what you can find online all help, and none needs a large budget to begin.

What you learn should shape the plan instead of decorating it. If your research reveals that customers use a channel you were ignoring, or ignore one you were counting on, the strategy should change to match.

Consistency turns separate pieces of marketing into a brand. It covers the look of your materials, the message you deliver, the level of customer service and the quality of the product itself. People like to know what to expect, and each time what they see, hear and experience agrees with what came before, recognition and trust build a little more. When the pieces contradict one another, the audience notices even if you do not.

An advertising concept is the framework that holds a campaign together. To build one, work through the benefits to the customer, the reason customers should choose you over someone else, how you will catch their interest, what makes the message believable, how it will be remembered and how it will carry on from one piece to the next. A campaign without a concept tends to become a pile of unrelated ads.

Once the strategy exists, hold each piece of content up against a short list of questions. Continuity is the goal: your audience should meet one recognizable brand in everything you share.

• Does this matter to the people I am trying to reach?
• Why would they stop for it?
• Which form of marketing suits them?
• Is the message clear on a first read?
• Does it speak to a real need or solve a real problem?
• Would anyone want to talk about it or pass it along?

Website and digital

Ask whether your website only informs or whether it steers people toward an offer and collects information about your audience. Look at what it communicates, whether ease of use, boldness, professionalism or humor, and whether that matches what you intend. Confirm that it links clearly to your social profiles and that they link back. If you use video, decide whether it invites viewers to act or only informs. Make sure the site works well on phones and tablets, that someone actually reads your analytics, and that surveys tell you what visitors want to find.

Traditional media

Billboards can build recognition when something new enters the marketplace, or act as a steady reminder that fixes a brand in people’s minds. If your market gathers at trade shows, plan before the show, choose and train the people who will staff the booth, and set up a quick way to move conversations into your sales process afterward.

Television and radio need real money and careful production, so every element deserves thought. Each second of a spot should do three jobs: state the message clearly, build recognition of your brand and push the listener to act. Media buying covers how radio, television and outdoor are planned and placed.

A strategy that lives only in conversation drifts. Put the essentials on a page: the goals, the audience, the message, the channels and the way you will judge progress. Share it with everyone who touches marketing, including anyone outside the company who works on your behalf, and set a regular time to compare what happened with what you planned. Treat each review as a chance to drop what is not earning its keep and to give more attention to what is.

If you and your team need help building a strategy, working with an agency can pay off. Atlanta-area businesses weighing that choice should ask pointed questions first. How does the agency plan to get to know your customers? How will it track response? Who does the work? What does it need from you? What happens when your market shifts? Reading about hiring an agency can sharpen the list.

In AdSense2: The Digital Revolution, Kirk Donovan studies advertising as a behavioral scientist does. The book aims to help a reader see through advertising rhetoric, win the customers their business requires, and bring behavioral-science thinking to each advertising and marketing decision. The training page describes it further, and related reading is collected among the strategy articles on the blog.