No matter if you are the owner of a small business or are part of a bigger marketing team, making sure that you get your products and/or services in front of customers can be an exhilarating challenge. It takes a broad variety of skills and knowledge to know how to attract to your target market as well as understanding how to create a marketing strategy can play a central role.
The More, The Merrier
A marketing strategy should never be created in a silo. In fact, when you assemble a team of employees from across a number of different disciplines, levels of seniority as well as departments, you will create buy-in from the outset and improve your chances of putting together a more robust plan. The team may encompass sales, marketing, public relations, IT and more, which will make sure that a variety of perspectives are included in your plan.
It can often be tempting to rush through this step and move on to tactics and implementation, however, give this collaborative effort ample time so that everyone is able to provide insights and recognise their role in turning marketing strategy into reality.
Run A SWOT Analysis
Begin by running a SWOT analysis in order to pinpoint your business’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities in addition to threats. It’s actually a fun team exercise, crucial to your planning process as it will inform – in one way or another – all the following key steps towards developing a marketing strategy. In order to avoid bias and cover different viewpoints, get as many fellow colleagues to contribute as you can.
Having a clear view about what you’re best at, what areas you are required to improve on, spotting the external factors which represent the motivation for your business to exist or, conversely, factors which have the potential to place your business at risk, will equip you with the correct tools to build a well-informed marketing strategy.
