For businesses looking to scale their productivity and grow, one significant factor they must take seriously is having a marketing strategy. A marketing strategy gives direction to your efforts and allows you to create an effective marketing plan for your business; it helps you clarify your goals for each year, and of course, how you want to achieve those goals.
But before we discuss the importance of a marketing strategy, let's briefly examine what a marketing strategy is.
What is a Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy describes the overall plan of any business for reaching potential customers and turning them into paying clients. A marketing strategy defines how a company intends to reach its target audience. It also includes how you intend to measure your efforts.
This is slightly different from your marketing plan, which defines the specific actions and activities you will take to realize your business goals. With a marketing strategy in place, it becomes much easier to direct your resources and measure your results. So a marketing strategy informs the details of your marketing plan.
Generally, a comprehensive marketing strategy includes the following:
What product or service you intend to deliver
Who your target audience is
How you will reach them, and
Who you are competing with on the market
Once this is sorted and out of the way, you'll enjoy every effort you put into getting your brand or service in front of people. A marketing strategy allows you to rest easy knowing that your marketing decisions are insight-driven and align with your company goals.
Why You Should Have a Solid Marketing Strategy
Helps to Streamline Your Business Practices
To begin with, the most important benefit is having the opportunity to focus your resources and energy on your business goals. In an organization where people come and go, a business plan that clearly defines the specifics and deliverables for each role is an effective way to get everyone on the same page.
When businesses can streamline their business efforts, then they stand a better chance of making the most out of their marketing investments.
It Helps You Effectively Evaluate New Opportunities
No doubt, new opportunities will arise, juicy offers will come your way, but it is always best to sway in the direction of your business goals. Since you have already created a marketing strategy, and by extension, a marketing plan, it will be easy to tell which opportunity aligns and which ones do not.
Once again, we emphasize focus here. Even when new opportunities come to bear, your marketing plan allows you to evaluate whether taking it on is worth it or north.
A Marketing Strategy Makes it Easy to Measure Your Progress
At every point in time, businesses with a defined marketing strategy and marketing plan can match their results with what they initially set out to achieve. If it's less, then you know you're not hitting the mark yet, and you can also retrace your steps and evaluate what changes you need to make to achieve your goals.
But if you're making progress just as you expect to, then you know your plan is working just fine. The insights you gather from evaluating your efforts help you develop better strategies for your business.
Keeps Everyone on the Same Timeline
We all know how important time is when it comes to business. Once everyone is on the same page, you can easily create a timeline for every project.
No marketing strategy is effective without defining the timeline for the project or realizing the business goals of that company. So, having a marketing strategy allows businesses to determine the timeframe for every defined milestone to be achieved. And at the same time, companies can measure their progress with time on
Your Marketing Strategy Helps You Compete Fairly
Another important reason why every business needs a marketing strategy is that your competitors already have a strong point against you if you do not have a marketing strategy for your business. With a marketing strategy, you are sure that you have a unique plan to survive the competition in the industry and bring in a sizable portion of the market through your door.
In a highly competitive market, doing business without a marketing strategy is similar to shooting amiss — without a clear target! That can only amount to a waste of time and resources, as your effort is only considered effective when you can trace your results back to the actions and strategies you've implemented.
Taking Action — Creating a Competitive Marketing Strategy
Developing a marketing strategy is the starting point of a successful marketing campaign. Businesses that have a marketing strategy do not only add more professionalism to what they do but equally stand out in the crowd and are positioned to take advantage of new opportunities as they spring up.
Need help developing a solid marketing strategy for your business? Don't sweat it — you can speak with a professional today. At The Mission HR, we are dedicated to helping small and medium-sized companies to succeed with their digital marketing needs and help them enhance their exposure to their target audience.
We are a leading partner in the PEO, HR, payroll, and benefits outsourcing marketplace. We provide result-oriented services for small and medium-sized organizations and government contractors, serving as a trusted partner in integrated human resource compliance, risk management, employee benefits, employment practices liability insurance (EPLI), and payroll processing.