No matter what kind of industry your business is in, you need to have a marketing strategy. Of course, coming up with your own strategy is easier said than done. You might become overwhelmed when you start thinking about your marketing strategy or think that it’s okay to cut corners.

Investing in a good marketing strategy is equivalent to investing in your own business. You don’t even need to spend a lot of money to get started. Ultimately, by knowing about the top factors to consider when developing a marketing strategy, you’ll be able to employ a cost-efficient strategy while converting customers.

Are you interested in learning more? If you are, then keep on reading and we’ll walk you through everything you’ll want to know when it comes to building your marketing strategy!

1. Storyline

In order to have a successful marketing strategy, you’re going to need a strong storyline. What does your company stand for? What’s the story behind the creation of your company?

These days, people don’t just buy products. They buy brands.

More and more people are looking to invest in ESG companies these days and it’s definitely a factor that you need to think about.

ESG deals with “environmental, social, and governance” factors and it’s currently a $30 trillion industry. When you take ESG factors into consideration, you won’t just be able to attract new investors but new customers as well.

2. Emotional Attachment

There are two kinds of consumers in this world. There are emotional consumers and logical ones. A logical consumer is going to show up in any business.

However, you want to be trying to build an emotional attachment with a consumer who is eventually going to turn into a dedicated fan of your company. No marketing strategy is going to be complete unless you work towards forging and strengthening this emotional connection.

Part of that connection is going to come from your storyline. However, it’s also going to come from your company trying to be honest and transparent. You need to show how your company is helping make the world in general, and the world of the consumer, a better place to live in.

You can utilize sales copy and brand imagery to help build these bonds.

Your company can use ethically sourced materials, provide fair wages, or make donations based on how many sales you make. Believe it or not, it is possible for you to do good in the world while also leveraging that goodwill into more sales and stronger connections with customers.

3. Consumer Needs

Regardless of what kind of media you go after or how you go about positioning your business, you need to make sure that your company is focused on the consumer. You need to be constantly bringing value to the life of your customer.

If you aren’t helping the customer at the end of the day, then they aren’t getting more in return than what they paid you for and likely won’t be coming back to you.

Every marketing strategy needs to put the customer at the center of the message. Every service, good, and piece of information that you offer will have to be for the benefit of the customer. After the message shifts to one that’s centered around the business instead of the consumer, your company will start to see declining sales and revenue.

The founder of Walmart, Sam Walton, once said that the only boss is the customer. By spending their money elsewhere, the customer has the ability to fire everyone, from the CEO down.

4. Scalability

If you want to have an effective marketing strategy, then you’re going to need to be scalable. One of the biggest mistakes a new business can make is spending money on marketing before they even know if it will actually lead to conversions.

You should perform small tests before you start putting a lot of money into your marketing strategy. After you have a tactic that leads to conversions, you can scale that strategy as big as you want.

After you figure out a successful strategy, spending more money should simply mean converting more customers. However, you need to make sure that your strategy is first scalable and that you’ll be making a profit.

5. Flexibility

Every marketing strategy needs to be flexible. When you fail to adapt to the changing tides of the market, you’ll quickly fall behind the competition. Look at companies like Kodak, Barnes and Noble, and Blockbuster as examples of companies that failed to adapt even though the writing was on the wall.

If you find success, you need to see that you can’t just rest on your laurels. You need to be constantly evaluating and reevaluating the viability of your marketing campaign to make sure that it continues to hit the metrics you’re after.

Thanks to the power of the internet, market shifts no longer take decades. They take a few years or even a few months. You need to be ready to pivot your plan and be flexible enough to shift your priorities.

Never put all of your eggs in one basket because that golden goose of yours can soon end up laying a rotten egg.

6. Target Customer

You can’t have a successful marketing strategy unless you know who you’re marketing to. To do this, you’ll need to build a target customer persona. You’re going to need to come up with your ideal customer.

For your customer persona, you’ll want to consider the person’s:

• age
• gender
• location
• values
• hobbies
• interests
• income level
• goals
• lifestyle
• pain points
• education level
• family life

The more detailed you can be, the more successful and targeted your campaign will be. You’ll be able to get very specific and really connect with people who match your ideal customer.

7. Social Media

These days, you need a strong social media presence. People of all ages, backgrounds, and income levels use social media and they expect the companies they buy from to use it too. According to Pew Research Center, more than seventy percent of all Americans use some form of social media.

First, you’re going to need to figure out what social media platforms your target customer is on. Not sure what platforms they’re using?

Research what your competitors are on. See which of their accounts are the most successful and have the most followers. This is likely where your potential customers are also going to be found.

You should also consider using paid promotions. All of the main social media platforms offer fantastic targeting to help you make the most of your social media advertising funnel.

Paid promotions are going to help you put your ads in front of a targeted audience. Facebook Ads are probably the best at this. With Facebook, you can actually put in all of your key demographic points, such as age, location, and even hobbies, and then target people who match those descriptions.

As an experiment, you should create a social profile for all of the major platforms. Then, use their native paid promotion tools in order to find your audience. Use the analytics from each network to see where you’re getting the best results and improve your social media marketing strategy.

8. Emails

Despite what you might have heard, email marketing is alive and as important as it ever was. Of course, it’s not easy to run a successful email marketing strategy. You’ll need to consider what your delivery times will be, the design and copy of each email, and be able to manage your growing subscriber list.

The thing about email marketing is that it’s very effective. But if you abuse it, you’ll turn your customers away and lead them to unsubscribe.

One popular way to utilize email marketing is with newsletters. These go to your subscriber’s inbox at the same time at certain intervals. They let you show your subscribers all kinds of information and content that they might have missed if they haven’t been to your site recently.

Your email newsletter should be made up of mostly educational information and only a little bit of promotional or product content. You want each newsletter to center around one idea or theme. This is going to save you from randomly throwing a mixed bag of content into one newsletter just so you get your content out there.

You can also utilize automated drip campaigns. These are emails that are sent to subscribers based on their interactions with your site. This will help move your clients down the marketing funnel.

After the customer takes action, emails will slowly be sent to their inbox in order to help bring them to conversion.

These emails are going to change based on the action that the subscriber makes. For example, this person might have clicked on your product page and added a product to their cart but didn’t make a purchase. Your automated emails will go to that subscriber and remind them that they should check out that cart and complete the purchase.

9. Search Engine Optimization

Another factor that you’ll need to consider is search engine optimization (SEO) and your overall digital marketing stratgey. The basis for your SEO campaign is going to be your keywords. You can utilize Google Suggest to come up with strong keywords.

Simply start typing a keyword into Google’s search bar. Google will then provide you with useful suggestions of what its users typically search for.

Because they come straight from Google, these suggestions typically make for great keywords. You’ll know that people are actually searching for these keywords.

Plus, shorter keywords (known as “short tail keywords) tend to be more competitive than longer – or long tail – keywords.

You’ll then need to analyze the first page of results on Google when you search a keyword. All of these sites are going to be excellent examples of good SEO.

In order to employ a good SEO strategy, you’ll want to provide content that’s helpful, relevant, and put together in a pleasing and useful manner.

You also want to use links. You want to link to authoritative sites.

However, you also want other websites to link to your page. This will show Google that you too are a legitimate site and deserve to rank higher.

10. Branding

Your branding should be consistent throughout all of your marketing strategies. That means your tone of voice, your colors, and your formatting should be apparent wherever your brand is.

If you’re after minimalism, then that should make that clear in your ads, on your site, and on the packaging of your product. This is going to help people associate your brand with a certain style and stay relevant in their heads.

Eventually, consumers might even start to associate certain aesthetics, sounds, or even emotions with your brand. This is truly going to help you elevate your marketing strategy to a new level of connection.

The Importance of Knowing Which Factors to Consider When Developing a Marketing Strategy

Hopefully, after reading the above article, you now have a better understanding of the various factors you need to consider when developing a marketing strategy. As we can see, marketing might not be the easiest thing to do but it is very important. And when you know what factors to consider when coming up with your strategy, you’ll have a much easier time when it comes to implementing your strategy.

Are you looking for other helpful articles about marketing? If you are, then check out the rest of our site today for more!