Strategic Marketing: It's all about Understanding

Author
Nick Marsh
High Growth Coach & Mentor | Business West
18th February 2014

Effective marketing will provide the basis upon which you build your business plan, providing market insight and customer feedback.

However it’s important to remember that marketing is both a support and a leader in a customer focused business.

Understand the Objectives

As a start, the marketing function needs to understand what the key objectives are for all departments or functional areas of the business, plus the overall ambition of the firm.

This overall ambition is the yardstick by which you measure marketing and promotional activity. If it won’t drive you towards your ambition, don’t do the activity.

Understand the Numbers

The financial targets that the company sets should not just be a discussion of labour and material costs and a desired profit margin, but should also take a cue from an understanding of:

  • what you sell
  • who you sell to
  • how much more you can sell
  • who else you should be selling to 
  • how you can outperform the competition, consistently
  • by how much the markets have expanded or constricted

Understand the Customers

Once the numbers are identified, the marketing function will identify where the right type of customers ‘live’, what they buy and why they buy and what is important to them when making a purchasing decision, for example, product performance or speed of delivery or range of services. Each group of customers that you target must have the ability to deliver the revenue and profit targets that are required.

Choose the Channels

Now the customer types are clear and the messages your customer groups will respond to have been identified, it’s necessary to agree the most efficient channels to use to deliver these messages.

The most effective marketing campaigns utilise a blend of activities which combine both on and off line campaigns. Bear in mind that your target customers may not notice your first attempts to gain their interest. Try to identify how many attempts or touch-points it takes to move a suspect to a prospect; a prospect to a customer and a customer to an advocate.

Whatever you do do, be clear on the response you require and monitor, measure and fine tune the message in order to generate the best possible outcome.

Strategic marketing is not a cost to your business; it is an investment in effective selling. What it isn’t is producing a brochure, having a website and expecting customers to break your door down.

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