Marketing – it’s not just about generating sales opportunities, it’s about developing a brand, an identity which your target audience will relate and appeal to. It also presents businesses with a strategy by which they can achieve their goals. Therefore the entire marketing strategy needs to be reassessed – the reason for this? It identifies weaknesses, suggests ways to achieve goals, strengthens a successful operation, anticipates future areas of improvement and covers all business areas; thus keeping your marketing strategy up-to-date and relevant.

The Marketing Plan

The strategy compromises of the following;

– Business mission
– Marketing objectives & Goals
– Marketing Strategy

The Business Mission Statement

A mission statement – a term most businesses will be accustom to. It outlines the core principals of the business, which is why it’s important to re-evaluate your mission statement. With this in mind it’s essential that you consider the following, ensuring that it addresses each individual point;

– What is Your Business?
– What Products/Services Do You Offer?
– Who is your Target Market?
– Who Are Your Competitors?
– What Are Your Aims?

The statement should address each individual term in a concise and clear way. If there is any ambiguity this is the perfect time to clarify this.

The Marketing Objectives & Goals

As any business will appreciate, there needs to be a list of goals and objectives so that your business can move forward. By having goals and objectives, you can measure your success and identity weaknesses and areas for improvement.

The objectives need to be clear and concise. If you don’t know what you want to achieve this could cause confusion; by having a marketing objective you and your employees have something to work towards which in turn increases productivity.

Common goals/objectives include;
– To generate X amount of leads by X date
– To acquire X amount of customers by X date
– To improve retention by X amount
– To increase brand awareness
– To build traffic to your website by X amount by X date
– To create awareness of X product
– Increase Sales of X product to X target market
– Increase online enquiries by X date

The Marketing Strategy

This is a clear and concise plan of action which outlines how the objective and goals are going to be met. It’s a good idea to update your marketing strategy as there are always new delivery methods and ways to achieve your goals. Therefore, it’s a good idea to make a plan that has a strong structure – it’s also a good idea to have a plan of how to record certain activity. This allows you to see if your goals have been met, what works well for your business and what doesn’t work as well.

The marketing strategy should give clear direction – outlining what responsibility each department has, how they can meet them, and how they can record their results. This is usually a good time to draw up a financial plan that runs alongside each objection.

For continual success it’s important that marketing strategies are updated on an annual basis, this keeps things fresh and relevant. I would wish you good luck, but then again it’s not about luck it’s about strategizing.

This article was written by Gayle Brown on behalf of GCL Direct; they specialise in lead generation and telemarketing, giving expert support to large and small business. For more details please get in touch with them and click here.