This article doesn’t give you information on how to create a marketing strategy or how to build a marketing campaign. You are not going to read the same thing here that you can read on hundreds or thousands of other articles.
This article doesn’t cover things such as how to spread awareness or how to build credibility. This article gives you the essential elements required for a marketing strategy.
It doesn’t give you the meat and bones of the subject, it gives you a schematic on how to create life and implores you to design your own bones, meat organs and soul that will one day create a living and breathing marketing strategy.
1 – A Plan with Deadlines, Targets, Measuring Methods and Correct Evaluation Methods
In marketing terms, we are starting with the basics, but only by embracing the basics will you correctly determine your path and follow it. Since you are probably aware of the many complexities of this marketing element (that is what all those years in college were for), allow this section to refresh your memory on the key elements.
Targets
Even the simplest target has value. Without a target, you cannot measure, and if you cannot measure, you cannot improve or change your marketing plan.
Deadlines
Targets are worthless without deadlines. Time is your biggest ally in any marketing effort. A target and a deadline form the basis of any marketing test.
Measuring Methods
A way of measuring how close you came to your targets and being able to juxtapose it to your deadlines is important, and correct measurement is truly essential.
Correct Evaluation Methods
Every marketing effort is a test, from the safest Volvo to the newest Coke. Correct measurements are extremely valuable, but your realization of that value depends greatly on your evaluation methods and your ability to pull accurate insights from them.
2 – Targeting Protocols Tested with the Scientific Method
Stand on a box and shout to one hundred curious people, or sit in a quiet room with ten warm leads? The answer is easy, and yet so often forgotten by marketing experts both old and young. How you fill your room with warm leads requires highly sophisticated targeting protocols. What are your target consumers doing right now? On what items do their eyes rest during the day? What desires and needs compel them to buy?
The answer seems so basic, but the targeting protocol is highly complex. It must be repeatedly checked and improved using the scientific method, or else all your marketing efforts start to lose their return on investment (ROI).
3 – A Contingency for Anticipating and Reacting to Your Competition and Events
Reacting to events is easy if you follow Abe Lincoln’s comment, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Yet, even multinational companies fail in this regard.
For example, every four years, during the soccer World Cup, there are lager adverts running in Great Britain. Often, they feature songs supporting the English team which enhances the image of the lager through its association with English people’s pride in their soccer team. Invariably, when the team is knocked out of the competition, the lager adverts continue to run and therefore have the contrary effect. Such mistakes are very easy to avoid.
Adapting and reacting to your competitors is just as easy as adapting and reacting to events in the market because your competitors broadcast almost all of their moves via their own marketing campaign. It is your job to place yourself in a position where you may react to such moves. This is where smaller businesses tend to have the upper hand as they are often more flexible than larger businesses and corporations.
As a side note, be wary of playing into your competitor’s hands. Let us not forget the Pepsi advert that were ran during the “New Coke” era with the person asking, What happened to my Coke?” Pepsi helped to fuel the buzz that Coke eventually used to great effect when Classic Coke returned.
4 – The Ability to Reach Your Target Audience in the Most Efficient Manner
Remember the basics in this area and your success is almost guaranteed. Remember that you need the most “efficient” and/or “cost-effective” methods of reaching your target audience. Remember that your goal is never the widest possible number or the highest possible number.
Clever targeting helps, but targeting + anticipation is your truest ally. The ability to guess what a target consumer will do before he or she does it is the art of a true marketing expert. If you’re facing challenges, create content for your target audience by outsourcing it to Upwork, or the best writing companies.
5 – Tests Where You Sell Your Product Prior to its Existence
Possibly the most powerful element of all marketing campaigns is the ability to sell your product prior to its existence. A simple example includes writing a book. A man who spends years writing a book and then tries to sell it is a fool. A man who sells preorders for a book, and then writes it, is a marketing genius.
You Now Have All the Elements Required for an Effective Marketing Strategy
The best marketing strategy of all time is creating a product that people already have a burning desire for, instead of creating a product and then trying to create a burning desire.
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Robert Morris is a creative writer, researcher, and essay writer living in New York City. An alumnus of NYU, he can be contacted at morrisrobert522@gmail.com
