Marketing Strategy
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Marketing Strategy
Marketing strategy is an approach that is long-term and forward-looking, as well as a general strategy for any company or business that aims to gain an ongoing competitive advantage by knowing the wants and needs of the customers. The term “marketing strategy” refers to a vast strategy that includes all aspects of how the firm places itself in the market, the marketplace, the innovative strategic partners, media relations, the marketing mix, and the channels and strategies.
A marketing strategy is the company’s overall plan to attract potential consumers and convert them into buyers of their services or products. It also contains the firm’s values, key messages for the brand, information on the target audience and demographics of customers, as well as other high-level elements. The overall marketing strategy used to be referred to under the umbrella of “branding” back in the more uncertain times of marketing. It provides a clear overview of the main elements of the strategy, as well as a few general objectives and the methods employed to accomplish these.
What is the significance of marketing strategies?
Sometimes, eCommerce and marketing managers are lost between bits of bits. They lose the vision of the company and its larger objectives. They forget about their target market and the significant issues the product can solve for customers. In this case, the strategies the company employs could lose their effectiveness.
Marketing strategies aren’t just dusty documents you can put on top of your shelf only to forget about. It’s a crucial method of determining your business’s most important goals and goals, as well as ways to accomplish these goals. This is the basis for all your actions to promote your product or service.
1. Determine the brand's value and the services you offer
2. Determine the customer's pain points and expectations
3. Recognize trends in the market and identify competition
4. Create your value proposition
5. Identify your target audience
6. Find potential collaborators and partners
7. Select the message and design of your brand
8. Determine your marketing channels
9. Create a budget and strategy for each channel
10. Review your results
Your brand strategy is all about setting the fundamental importance of your company to ensure they align with what prospective customers and current customers value most, as well as aligns with your current trends in the industry and your competitive environment, as well as to what you are offering, i.e., your service.
This isn’t an easy task. However, without it, all other tasks related to marketing are much more challenging.
Many large and abstract terms are tossed around when discussing branding value, so here’s an easy method of thinking about it.
An easy way to determine the ideal values that define your brand’s image is as follows:
- Think about the main pain points/needs/frictions your brand is solving
- Convert it into a value-based dialect
- Check that it matches your beliefs and motives
One of the main reasons services or products are unsuccessful is that their creators aren’t able to recognize their customer’s problems. Also, they aren’t able to meet the requirements of the customers or do not solve a significant issues that they face in daily life. Additionally, the needs of customers may evolve. Therefore, it’s crucial to constantly review the customer experience and resolve your customers’ current challenges.
What are the various types of customer complaints?
Financial
The most fundamental problem is the one with the finances. Does your product help users save on costs? Are you able to justify the price better than the alternatives? Are savings in the short or long term? If your product is less expensive than other products, is that enough difference to bring enough value to your customer?
Convenience
Another critical issue is convenience. Does your product help make users’ life more manageable?
Service
Service is another crucial aspect in resolving a customer’s problem. The term “service” refers to the complete customer experience. It includes things like warranties, maintenance, customer replacement services, and ease of use.
Five easy steps to determine the pain points of your customers
We’ve already discussed the different customer-related pain points, but how do you decide whether it’s for your company or your product? Here are some tips to help you get on the right track.
Create a customer journey map
Find out what drives your customers to purchase your product and how they got to your online or physical store. It should be a list of the channels they went through, like a result from a search or the Facebook advert or a post on social media along with an email and other physical and online media. Each time you go through the process, identify potential issues and discover why customers are drawn to your product. This can aid in evaluating your marketing strategy and determining what channels you’ll need to be able to add.
Ask your customers to take surveys.
Another method to determine the root of the problem for your customers is to ask your customers for feedback. Find out what your customers find appealing and disappointing about your product and what factors influenced their decision. There are plenty of survey tools you can use, such as Typeform and SurveyMonkey.
Review customer comments
If you’re thinking of creating a new product, take a look at feedback from your customers about your current products. They will reveal many things about your clients, their preferences, expectations, and concerns. Particularly effective for eCommerce websites is visual reviews, which are photos or videos uploaded by customers in addition to their studies. It is possible to use tools such as Pixlee, Yotpo, or Loox to gather and display images of reviews.
For more information, contact your sales team.
Another way to discover your customers’ pain points is to inquire with the sales staff. Since your sales team is the one who hears and reacts to the concerns of your clients and customers and is, therefore, the most informed about what they are seeking in your products or services. Take a seat and have an open discussion with your sales staff. You should find out what customers think of or dislike about your product, the main things they complain about the most frequently, and what causes customers to turn away from the product. If your marketing department interacts directly with your customers, you might also want to ask them for feedback.
Learn about your competition
It’s crucial to do a competitor analysis to examine the competitive landscape in any field. This is the way Netflix and Apple began as they tried to create products that were superior and more innovative than the norm. Determine where you are and where you stand in your market. Examine all of your competitors’ items, their advertising strategies, the types of promotions, the media they use, and the strategies they employ. Determine the problems they have resolved and those that remain unsolved. One option is to address the same problem points but better. Another approach is to target unsolved issues to create something that hasn’t been seen before.
Make use of the STP framework.
Another method of marketing that is effective is to employ an STP framework. STP is a term used to describe segmenting, targeting, and positioning.
Segmenting refers to breaking markets into distinct groups (or targeted market segments). Targeting is the process of determining which part of the market you would like to concentrate your marketing efforts on. The creation of the brand’s positioning, the marketing mix, and various other strategies for marketing to attract the potential customers within the market you want to target and influence them into making an informed purchase decision.
The STP framework aids brands in identifying the various marketing strategies and channels needed to market their products or services to their customers effectively.
This brings us to the next part of our discussion of creating a competitive analysis. This is an essential element of the marketing strategy planning process because it’s the point where you can determine what sets products or services from your competitors. It is possible to do this with an easy SWOT analysis.
Find your competition
The first step in an analysis of your competitors is to determine the names of your competitors. Learn about the various companies offering comparable products or services. Check out their social media pages, look up the exact or specific community sites, and read news and reviews of products.
Sort your competitors into categories.
Once you’ve compiled complete information about the competitors you’re competing against, it’s time for you to categorize them. Divide them into primary, secondary, tertiary, and primary competitors. This will allow you to understand the ones directly competing against your business and which competitors you must focus on when analyzing your competitors.
Please have a look at their social media profiles and their branding.
The next stage of your competitive analysis will be to discover everything you can about your competitors. Examine all their social media sites, their contents, and the branding they employ on their websites and emails. This will give you an understanding of their branding and how your service or product differs from theirs. Make sure you check for their marketing strategies involving influencers to understand the kind of brand image they present on the internet. Check out their display ads (owned media) and UGC(earned media).
Conduct an audit of your site to examine traffic sources and site positioning
This is the more technically-oriented aspect of the audit on branding. Utilize a tool such as Ahrefs, SimilarWeb, or Alexa to find out the keywords your competition ranks in and their traffic channels. This will reveal specific search terms users search for and the particular needs your competitors can meet. You might, for instance, find that your opponent is using a form of content or media you aren’t yet using or a traffic channel you’ve not yet developed into. This is precious information to use in an online advertising strategy.
Once you’ve got your message, now is the time to create the proper plan to help you market. This involves making business-like decisions on what you are offering and who.
A product, service, or product says what you want to convey about your company.
This real-world experience that customers and prospects experience with your brand can impact their opinion of it most.
Make sure you live by your word and incorporate what you have stated about yourself in your service.
Choosing your audience will affect how you promote your brand and the language you employ to communicate it.
It is essential for your first targeted audience of the second tier to be a good target market to grow your business, and it’s not a Via Delarosa to persuade them to purchase the products and services you provide.
This isn’t the only method you can use to identify the people you’ll be investing most of your marketing budget to contact.
The second tool we recommend to you is defining your personas or, more precisely, asking yourself who would be your ideal client and your primary customer down to the smallest of details.
To define your primary persona you can use this question list:
- Who am I as a persona? Is it a male or female? What is the age of he or she? You can identify your persona and attach a photo , so it is simpler for you to design your messages accurately.
- What is my mental state at the beginning? What are their thoughts and emotions before starting to make a decision?
- What are the various stages of a buyer’s buying process?
If you’re planning to introduce an innovative product or service that customers or prospects aren’t used to or purchasing, you may look at this psychological change model. You’re probably trying to alter the perception of people in this case.
Each stage represents individuals’ particular psychological mindset until they decide to act. It is possible to use the following needs to develop marketing strategies that can effectively influence your character to act.
The following should be noted for each phase that buyers go through:
- What are the expectations of your character? What are his priorities?
- What is the process she goes through at this point? Where does she go to find details? Whom are they talking to?
- What would you say about the customer’s experience at every stage of the customer journey?
- What is your goal for each decision-making stage?
- What can you do to get there?
Finding possible partners or collaborations is essential to finding your ideal customer. There are online communities that already exist for your customers to hang out. It is possible that you have to collaborate with an intermediary or marketer to aid get them to join.
The majority of companies (and particularly startups) cannot afford to employ a digital marketing specialist on their own. Therefore, they rely on freelancing or agencies.
It’s the reason storytelling is so important.
You must ensure that the company you choose to work with aligns with your brand’s image and the various strategies for marketing you’re planning to use to adapt your plan to the communication you’ll be able to share with potential customers.
After establishing the value of your proposition, your partners, and your unique messages and assets, it’s time to choose the best marketing channels to complement your marketing mix. This is among the most critical steps in establishing your marketing plan. Each marketing campaign on the internet will be different based on the channels for marketing you select.
It is essential to select channels that are appropriate for your brand and the product you offer. Let’s look at a few of the most popular marketing channels and the best practices they employ.
Social media
Social media marketing is an integral component of any digital marketing strategy. There are a variety of things you can implement. Keep in mind the fact that effective social media marketing campaigns will help you increase traffic from searches. Organic social media can help with the awareness stage, also known as the lead generation phase of the marketing funnel, while a Facebook advertisement is utilized to complete the final stage of the conversion phase. There are many different strategies and platforms to choose from, and selecting the appropriate method for your business is essential.
Here’s a list of the most effective and efficient social media channels for various types of businesses:
For products that are visually appealing to the eye, Utilize Instagram and Pinterest, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter.
For B2B firms, use LinkedIn, Instagram, ProductHunt, and Angellist.
For B2C companies – make use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest
For businesses that are heavily reliant on written content, make use of Medium, Quora, and Reddit
For GenZ-focused companies, focus on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok
It’s a costly strategy that won’t be a good fit for most brands’ marketing budgets. However, it’s a great illustration of a brand posting success stories and focusing on its customers correctly through social media.
Social media advertising
Ads are becoming increasingly more well-known across social networks due to recent algorithm changes continuing to favor them and diminish organic reach. In the end, this is how social media platforms earn their profits, so it’s necessary to pay for advertising to be successful these days.
Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram are the most used social media platforms for advertising. For B2B, you can use Quora, Reddit, or LinkedIn.
Top Advertising Tips:
* Build a lookalike audience on each platform and for each type of campaign you’re conducting
- Plan your campaigns according to the funnel for marketing (top, middle, bottom, and the bottom)
- Match your design and copy to your intended audience
* Retarget your site’s audience and users on Facebook, Pinterest, and Google.
Paid Advertising
Social media marketing is one aspect of online advertising. Other forms of digital advertising include native advertisements, Google ads, shopping, banner ads, and many more. Each promotion requires a careful plan of action to ensure that the message and design align with your target market to draw new leads and retain existing customers.
Marketing with influencers
Influencers are among the top and most profitable marketing channels you can tap into. Research shows that companies earn $5.20 per $1 they invest in influencer marketing. In addition, 49% of customers are influenced by influencers for their purchasing choices. That’s huge.
This means that approximately 50% of your customers are likely to search for influencer-related posts, and it is vital that these influencers recommend your product on the internet. The concept behind influencer marketing differs from when users upload images showcasing your products. Influencer images are paid media (like ad campaigns); however, UGC, or user-generated material (UGC), is known as earned media.
Top Influencer Marketing Tips:
Select influencers based on the kind of audience they attract, and the degree of engagement (not the number of followers they have)
- Conduct giveaway campaigns using groups of influencers
- Stories can be run on Instagram since they can be clicked
- Conduct competitor research and find out what influencers they employ on the various platforms.
- Make use of YouTube influencers to create YouTube videos about your service or product
- Make use of accurate data to identify which influencers are your top performers
Email marketing
This will be a surprise, but the return on investment of emails is still among the top digital marketing platforms and channels.
Top Email Marketing Tips:
- Make use of UGC or earned media to promote your campaign
- Set up emails campaigns as well as email flow (cart abandoned flow, welcoming flow, sunset flow)
- Design campaigns that contain educational content. Don’t constantly promote your products
- A/B-test different formats and copy based on your data to help you better align your messages to your target public
This isn’t to suggest that other channels can’t aid in the sale, but similar to the roles played by the different team members during soccer matches. There might have been 5-6 players involved in the ball’s journey before it hit the goal line. A similar thing happens in marketing.
Users can interact with a brand via multiple channels before purchasing the product or service. This is why it’s essential to develop an “omnichannel” strategy, a strategy that encompasses many different marketing channels.
Here are some ways to use channels that perform exceptionally well when combined with email marketing
Push notifications
Push notifications are messages that you receive through your mobile or desktop mobile screen. They’re great when paired with emails. Send an email at the beginning of the day, and follow it up with an email push message 30-60 minutes later, reminding users to look at your offer of the day.
The click-through rate that’s seven times more than emails. Therefore, if they’re sent after an email, you increase your chance of a sale a lot more.
Chatbots and messages
Text messaging is one of the fastest and most effective methods to reach customers. This is now its marketing channel. It is possible to create automated messages and flow that are sent to customers or chatbots that can be capable of taking customers from the discovery of products until they purchase with no human interaction. It is also possible to use this method to notify customers of promotions for your products, cart abandonment flow, or even a content promotion.
Text messages are a lot more personal, and that’s why they are so effective for companies. Based on Social Media Today, chatbot messages have open rates of more than 80% and click-through rates of more than 50%. These messages can be an extremely effective method to increase and enhance your marketing email performance.
Search Engine Optimization
One of the least-known methods is Search Engine Optimization, specifically for eCommerce. It involves optimizing the site’s content to make it simpler for search engines to locate and display the content. There are many methods to display your content in search results than ever in the video section, images such as quotes, products and how-to’s, and many more. SEO is a highly efficient marketing tool that will provide highly targeted and quality visitors to any website.
Top SEO strategies:
- Utilize Google Search Console data to discover the search terms and keywords from which you receive the most traffic.
- Optimize your content on the page using a tool such as Ahrefs or Moz
- Create a comprehensive backlink strategy based on the data of your competitors and the best practices
Be aware that it’s not always the case that all SEO best practices are suited to your requirements or be logical. It’s an artful combination of SEO and customer experience (UX) and can sometimes require some difficult decisions. Always learn from your research and ensure that your users are your top priority. You will be successful.
Content Marketing
And lastly, we’ll discuss your strategy for marketing through content. Content allows customers to discover your product or service on the internet. Use content to meet your ideal buyer profile, attract new customers, and delight and maintain your existing customers. To utilize effective content marketing, businesses must develop different content for each sales funnel stage. For instance, a company could offer educational content at the upper part of the funnel for new visitors and more advertising content for buyers ready to purchase.
Top Content Marketing Tips:
- Write long-form blog entries to increase organic traffic through search engines.
- Create shopping and comparison guides for the middle funnel.
- Make use of UGC or video content as well as longer descriptions of your posts on social media to convey your story
- Public Relations (PR)
Public relations is among the most efficient growth strategies to build your brand image and increase your online presence.
We’ve now covered the various channels of marketing you can consider for the growth of the business you run; it’s time to discuss strategies.
Now is the time to choose the best strategy and budget for each channel you’ve decided to use to promote your brand. Here are some practical actions:
Determine your company’s goals
What are your objectives? Select a few business strategic goals or KPIs that you can focus on in the near term. An excellent rubric to use for this is known as Smart goals. Smart refers to:
Specific – define clearly what you are trying to accomplish
Set goals that are measurable – make sure that you can be able to measure
They must be achievable – they have been attainable and are not too far away.
Relevant goals – set objectives that enhance the specific elements of your marketing. There are you who don’t have vanity metrics.
Time-bound – choose goals that can be achieved within a specified time frame.
Conduct market research
Get information on your market, including the size of the market, its growth, social trends, and the demographics of the market you want to target. Determine what’s feasible and achievable to achieve, what channels, content kinds, and types can be used to connect with your customers, and what you can include in your marketing mix. It is possible to use SWOT analysis to help in your study.
Make sure your strategy is aligned with your ideal client
Review the customer personas you’ve developed at the beginning of the process. You should ensure that your plan aligns with the personas you’ve created. Take a look at the current trends and the kind of customer you’ll be able to connect with and modify your strategy accordingly.
It’s time for the performance!
Now, you have your brand story, values, primary marketing strategy, and a professional in charge of your marketing activities.
From now on, it is time to focus on a more tactical approach to managing. This means testing your creatives and content iteratively, of your intended audience groups and even the words you choose to use in your advertisements CTAs (call-to-action buttons).
This is among the most critical steps in anything you do in the marketing field. You