Marketing Strategy Archives - Page 5 of 5

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How to implement an Account-Based Marketing strategy

August 14, 2018 No Comments

Instead of focusing on single leads, more and more B2B companies are increasing their ROI by focusing on accounts.

Today’s B2B buyer is no longer just an individual lead. They’re part of a networked account. They work within a company decision team to decide whether or not to make a purchase, based on self-guided research and selection.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is gaining traction as the viable complement to traditional sales and marketing efforts. ABM allows sales and marketing teams to be more personalized and targeted for the accounts that matter most to their business.

In this e-book, EverString takes you through:

The foundation of Account-Based Marketing.
Why ABM has become so popular.
How to select your target accounts.
How to build a data-backed ABM strategy.

Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download “The Demand Generation Marketer’s Guide To Account-Based Marketing Success.”

Sourced from Digital Marketing Depot

Digital Marketing Depot is a resource center for digital marketing strategies and tactics. We feature hosted white papers and E-Books, original research, and webcasts on digital marketing topics — from advertising to analytics, SEO and PPC campaign management tools to social media management software, e-commerce to e-mail marketing, and much more about internet marketing. Digital Marketing Depot is a division of Third Door Media, publisher of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, and producer of the conference series Search Marketing Expo and MarTech. Visit us at http://digitalmarketingdepot.com.

In News

Sharpen Your Marketing Strategy With The Top Digital Trends Of 2018

July 20, 2018 No Comments

By Karina Tama – Rutigliano

With 2018 already well under way, my mind is bursting with ideas on how to make the most of the latest digital marketing trends. Change is happening right before our eyes. Every year I like to take a step back and revisit key sales drivers, writing down probing questions about recent technological advances, search algorithm changes, SEO drivers and changes in consumer behavior.

Every key driver gives me new opportunities to experiment and measure the results. I’m always up for a challenge, and the results almost always surprise me. Here are the trending projects I have my eyes on in 2018:

Live Videos

I’ve had success using pre-recorded videos on our blog and other marketing channels. In 2018, live video is bringing us even closer to our customers. If you’ve spent any time on Facebook lately, you’ll notice that more people and companies are using live video to promote products, services, events and more. You’ll also notice that people are tuning in, and comments come pouring in on the live feed in real time.

Think about how to use live videos to publicize company events. Offer a promotion for those who tune in live during the event. Take advantage of the opportunity to get live customer testimonials from your satisfied customers.

Personalization

This year, I want to spend time on personalization by focusing more heavily on our customers and their experiences. Using personalization in marketing means knowing more than your customers’ names and general demographics. Voice why your customers appreciate your services and what a difference they can make in the quality of their lives. Develop new content that assures your customers that you understand them and their needs. Good experiences from current clients create brand loyalty. I’m happy to share with new customers how our services have changed the lives of our current clients.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is one of the biggest marketing trends on the horizon. AI can already do more than many of us can fathom. I predict that 2018 will bring marketing apps that use machine learning to help us identify customer needs. AI will also take advantage of natural language processing to give us increasingly precise details. Future applications may allow marketers to monitor the activity of programs that use data to signal the start or end of marketing campaigns. Whatever AI brings us in the coming months is certain to be valuable.

Meaningful Content

I’ve found that articles are a more cost-effective marketing tool than paid ads. Create new content for your platforms that enhance the connection between your customers and your brand. I strive to get our customers involved in a story using words or videos that establish a warm and comforting relationship with our services. The goal of any piece of content is to make it truly meaningful and memorable for the customer.

Voice Search

Last year, smart devices got even smarter as voice search applications on laptops and mobile devices made searching, connecting and multitasking even easier. Voice search will become increasingly popular as more applications become available and consumers get better acquainted with how useful they can be. Marketers should be aware that voice search uses words more naturally than written content. Voice apps are a great place to plug in those long-tail keywords and conversational phrases.

Paid Ads

While it’s true that content is more engaging than paid ads, there is an effective way to use paid ads in marketing. Marketers must face the reality that many consumers are annoyed by ads that block the information they are looking for. Some customers will even pay a small fee so they don’t have to see any ads. However, I find that customers are more amenable to target ads that appear alongside content they are already perusing. If they’ve checked out our services in the past, they’re more inclined to click on an ad that appears to be a subtle reminder.

Customer Trust

Today’s consumers are over flashy ads, but they do have new appreciation for brands that work to establish trust. People still like reviews. Our customers have taken notice of disclosure laws that motivate marketers to obtain honest reviews from real consumers. Additionally, data breaches have caused new concerns about privacy. Developing a trusted relationship means letting customers know how their personal information is being used and how well your company is protecting it.

The Wrap-Up On 2018’s Digital Trends

A good digital marketer completes assignments and meets deadlines. A great digital marketer is a trendsetter, not a trend-follower. Look for new ways to leverage live videos, targeted ads and developments in AI and voice search. You can start by taking a fresh look at old content and revamping it to take advantage of 2018 trends.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

By Karina Tama – Rutigliano

Karina Tama – Rutigliano is the Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Caring People Inc. where she leads SEO, PPC and content marketing.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

4 proven tips of marketing strategy every marketer should know

April 4, 2018 No Comments

Sourced from TechGenYZ

Running a successful business and making and maintaining its place in the market is a really difficult task to perform. Some people are such skilled that they perform this task with ease and without any assistance but those who do not possess such skill happens to create that skill in them by adopting and learning about the basic principles of marketing and learning about the applicable and effective strategies which can help a businessman to run a successful business.

There is a whole wide range of stuff in the market which is sold or bought through different kinds of businesses. The most basic problem which we face is that many of the things in the market are not authentic or even overpriced at some place but now we have a perfect solution for this problem. Now you can have all the information you need to know about the latest gizmos and stuff in the market by simply checking out AmaTop10. They have all the information about the latest products on the market. In this article, we will provide you all the important information about the best and most important four principles of marketing strategies you should know about because these principles play a key role in making and maintaining a successful business.

We will provide you all the essential points and the techniques in which these principles of marketing strategies are used to increase the chances of success of your business. We will also tell you the working of these principles and result of them when you apply them in your business. We will enlist all these four best principles of marketing strategies so that you can easily know them and follow them to run a successful business. So here are the top used principles of marketing strategies which can help you to be a successful businessman and take your company to the next level.

Define the Goals:

The first and foremost principle of designing amazing marketing strategies is to define a goal or set a milestone of the plans where you want to take your business in the market. When the goals are set and defined, executing them and finding resources for them becomes a lot easier. In this brutal market where no progress is a dead end for the business and when you define your goals, it helps you to be more progressive in the market and maintain a stable position among the best businesses in the market.

Marketing communication:

This is the second thing which you need to ponder in marketing strategies. It is also the most important strategy because even if you have the best stuff but if the people will not know about it then you will never be able to sell anything, not even your products or your services. Different marketing strategies are adopted to target accurate consumers for your product to increase the progress of your business.

Think Before Investing:

You should always learn and gather information about the things on which you are investing and learn about all the advantages and disadvantages of the products or places in which you are investing your money. Investment is not easy to come, you should take every precaution to make it safe.

Differentiation:

The fourth principle of business marketing is that you have to be different and better than all your competitors so that the consumers should get more attractive towards your products and the services you are providing.

Business is nothing without strategies a good and successfully running business is a mixed combination of tireless work and trustable and organized business strategies. So these are some of the best and top four principles of marketing strategies which you should know in order to start a successful business.

I am sure you will love this article because it contains all of the useful and essential content which provides the top four principles of marketing strategies which are really necessary for taking your business to the new level. I hope this article will clear all the doubts which were present in your mind before reading this article because of the useful and authentic information in it but if there is still something left unclear then there is no need to worry about because you can ask us anything you deem necessary to know.

Sourced from TechGenYZ

In News

How to Create Your First Instagram Marketing Strategy

March 27, 2018 No Comments

By Casey Cleary

When used correctly, Instagram is a powerful marketing tool for people in every industry, including home builders.

Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about creating your first Instagram marketing strategy.

Why Instagram?

First off, let’s discuss briefly why Instagram is such a great marketing platform.

Recent studies have shown that interactions with brands on Instagram are 400% higher than interactions on Facebook or Twitter! It yields 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more per follower than Twitter.

Hundreds of millions of people use Instagram every day. If you aren’t taking advantage of the platform for marketing purposes, you’re missing out.

Get Prepared

It’s important to take time to determine the purpose of your Instagram account and who you want to reach with it.

People have a number of different motivations behind their Instagram marketing strategy, including the following:

Increase brand awareness
Showcase employees and recruit new talent
Increase customer engagement to enhance sales
Showcase products and services
Share company news
Connect with influencers who can help grow your brand

What’s your motivation? You don’t have to pick just one reason, but you should definitely think about why you want to use Instagram for marketing before diving in.

Establish Your Account

After you’ve decided the primary goals for your Instagram account, go ahead and set it up! Make sure you utilize the bio section on your profile, too. This lets your followers know who you are and what you’re all about; it’s also a great place to include a link to your website.

Now, you’re ready to start sharing content.

Instagram allows you to share photos and live and pre-recorded videos. You can also share “Instagram stories,” which are videos and photos that will be deleted after 24 hours – similar to Snapchat. This is a great way to humanize your brand and give your followers a behind-the-scenes look at the type of builder you are.

Brand perception is everything in the social age.

Tips for Building Your Instagram Marketing Strategy

Not all Instagram content is created equal, but there are a number of tools you can use to make sure you are putting out great content that will help you achieve your business andmarketing goals.

Read on to learn what you can do to create the best Instagram marketing strategy for yourself as a home builder.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags (#) are crucial to reaching future customers on Instagram.

Use hashtags to categorize your photos and videos. They will also help prospective customers find your account more easily.

Creating your own hashtags for your business is great, and will be discussed below in more detail. In addition to creating business-specific hashtags, though, you should also take advantage of popular ones that lots of people are already using and looking for. A couple of common hashtags you can start with are #motivationmonday and #tbt (throwback Thursday – great for highlighting past show home openings and events).

It’s also a good idea to see what other hashtags people in your field or in your city are already using. Find one that works well and use it often so that when people look it up, your posts are all over their screens.

Time to Integrate

Even though you’re new to Instagram, you don’t have to start from ground zero. Instagram has hundreds of millions of active users — some of which you already know.

When setting up your account, take a moment to identify your customers who are already using Instagram. They can easily become your first followers!

Instagram has a “follow all contacts” feature that will allow you to easily reach out to all your customers who use the app. Once you follow them, at least some are sure to follow you back.

In addition to integrating existing customers, you can also integrate your Instagram content with your email and content marketing strategy.

Embed live Instagram content in your email campaigns to make them more engaging and relevant. Or if you’re running a contest or promo, embed some of those Instagram posts into a blog post as an update. This helps give people a more human view of your company, and because it’s curated content, it’s a lot easier for you to put together.

Encourage Follower Engagement

Instagram’s algorithms sort posts in such a way that content that is engaged with the most will show up first. If you want to expose your account to more people and grow your following, engagement is crucial.

Feeling lost on how to best engage your followers? Don’t worry. There are lots of things you can do to encourage people to engage with your content:

Ask questions and invite people to share their opinions on your business. Whether you’re asking about a customer’s favourite home model or simply asking them what features they’d like to see more of, people love to tell you what they think.
Run contests. You can have people engage with your posts in different ways to enter – like the photo, comment, use a certain hashtag, tag friends, etc. Contests are a win-win situation; you get lots of publicity and the winner gets something special in return.
Create an interactive hashtag and tell your customers to use it when they post about your company. You’ll get lots of free publicity this way.
Tease your latest posts in your Instagram Stories – take a screenshot of your page and block out the ones you want them to see. New home model and show home announcements are perfect for this – they’ll come back to your profile to check them out!

Interact With Users

If you’re asking your followers to interact with your posts, it’s important that you also interact with theirs.

Make sure you respond to comments in a timely manner and be sure to pay attention to what your followers are doing outside of your posts.

It’s also important to like and comment on your followers’ posts and let them know that you’re paying attention to them. You can even repost their photos and videos if they’re relevant to your business’ purpose. You’re more likely to stay in the forefront of their minds if you are active on Instagram and show an interest in what they’re up to.

Don’t Overwhelm Your Audience

Being an active user is important, but make sure you don’t bombard your followers with constant content.

Overdoing it on posts can negatively affect your business, as people might start unfollowing your account altogether if they start to feel annoyed.

To avoid this, aim for a healthy posting balance – recent studies show seven posts per week is the magic number. With this amount of posts, you’ll definitely be remembered by your followers, but they also won’t feel smothered.

Change It Up

The great thing about using Instagram for marketing is that you get to be creative and think outside of the box.

If you’re constantly posting photos of the same person or photos that are taken in the same place, your followers will get bored. Keep it fresh and regularly try to switch things up. Get your show home staff involved and have them take selfies in different rooms, encouraging your followers to stop by for the full tour.

It’s easy to vary your content on Instagram since the app offers so many different posting options. If you’re always posting photos, try throwing in a video every once in a while. Or, if you’ve been ignoring Instagram stories, start utilizing those as well.

Put Out Quality Content

Make sure you’re putting out the kind of photos and videos that you would want to see. Nobody wants to see or engage with posts that feature grainy, low-quality content.

Fortunately, there are tons of free tools out there to help you enhance the quality of the content you’re sharing on Instagram.

Try out different filters for your photos – Mayfair is a good one to experiment with for more interactions – and be sure to adjust the lighting; lighter and brighter pictures are much more appealing than darker ones. You can also add frames, stickers, and other fun touches to make your posts stand out.

Find Influencers to Help Spread Your Message

Collaborating with influencers should absolutely be part of your Instagram marketing strategy.

When you partner with people who have a large Instagram following, your brand gets a lot of great press. These partnerships are also mutually beneficial, since the influencer’s following will also grow as a result of the exposure to your followers.

To attract influencers’ attention, try @mentioning people you want to work with in your posts. You can also send them a direct message to discuss a potential paid partnership, as most influencers promote products from brands this way.

Pay Attention to Patterns

Different tactics work for different people.

It’s important to pay attention to which aspects of your Instagram marketing strategy are working and which are not.

If a certain type of photo or video tends to get a lot of responses, keep posting them – although you want to avoid being redundant with your content.

Likewise, if other posts get very little attention, that’s a sign that your followers aren’t interested in that type of content.

It will take some time to determine what works and what doesn’t, so be patient. You’ll have an established Instagram marketing strategy before you know it.

How to Stay on Top of Your Instagram Marketing Strategy

Consistent content is key when creating a solid Instagram marketing strategy. Keeping up with social media posting can be overwhelming, though, so it’s important to have other members of your business on board if possible.

If you have a social media manager, you want to make sure they’re monitoring trends and posting trends. If you don’t have one, consider dividing the workload among other members of your team. For example, one person will be in charge of content creation while another will manage analytics.

If you take this approach, make sure that everyone understands the goals of the business’s Instagram account and is aware of any posting guidelines you have in place.

Let Us Help You Create a Killer Strategy

What do you think of our tips for creating an Instagram marketing strategy? Have you tried any of these yet? What would you add to the list?

Let us know in the comments below.

Need additional marketing help? Contact us today for all your inbound marketing needs.

Photo credits: woman, icon, couple, hashtag, integrate, texting, content, pattern

By Casey Cleary

Casey is passionate about marketing and using his skills to plan, implement, and run social media campaigns. He also creates and promotes content and plans digital strategies. He loves split testing and tweaking programs for maximum conversions! Also… #GoOilers!

Sourced from MarketingNinjas.com

In News

4 proven tips of marketing strategy every marketer should know

February 22, 2018 No Comments

Sourced from TechGenYZ

Running a successful business and making and maintaining its place in the market is a really difficult task to perform. Some people are such skilled that they perform this task with ease and without any assistance but those who do not possess such skill happens to create that skill in them by adopting and learning about the basic principles of marketing and learning about the applicable and effective strategies which can help a businessman to run a successful business.

There is a whole wide range of stuff in the market which is sold or bought through different kinds of businesses. The most basic problem which we face is that many of the things in the market are not authentic or even overpriced at some place but now we have a perfect solution for this problem. Now you can have all the information you need to know about the latest gizmos and stuff in the market by simply checking out AmaTop10. They have all the information about the latest products on the market. In this article, we will provide you all the important information about the best and most important four principles of marketing strategies you should know about because these principles play a key role in making and maintaining a successful business.

We will provide you all the essential points and the techniques in which these principles of marketing strategies are used to increase the chances of success of your business. We will also tell you the working of these principles and result of them when you apply them in your business. We will enlist all these four best principles of marketing strategies so that you can easily know them and follow them to run a successful business. So here are the top used principles of marketing strategies which can help you to be a successful businessman and take your company to the next level.

Define the Goals:

The first and foremost principle of designing amazing marketing strategies is to define a goal or set a milestone of the plans where you want to take your business in the market. When the goals are set and defined, executing them and finding resources for them becomes a lot easier. In this brutal market where no progress is a dead end for the business and when you define your goals, it helps you to be more progressive in the market and maintain a stable position among the best businesses in the market.

Marketing communication:

This is the second thing which you need to ponder in marketing strategies. It is also the most important strategy because even if you have the best stuff but if the people will not know about it then you will never be able to sell anything, not even your products or your services. Different marketing strategies are adopted to target accurate consumers for your product to increase the progress of your business.

Think Before Investing:

You should always learn and gather information about the things on which you are investing and learn about all the advantages and disadvantages of the products or places in which you are investing your money. Investment is not easy to come, you should take every precaution to make it safe.

Differentiation:

The fourth principle of business marketing is that you have to be different and better than all your competitors so that the consumers should get more attractive towards your products and the services you are providing.

Business is nothing without strategies a good and successfully running business is a mixed combination of tireless work and trustable and organized business strategies. So these are some of the best and top four principles of marketing strategies which you should know in order to start a successful business.

I am sure you will love this article because it contains all of the useful and essential content which provides the top four principles of marketing strategies which are really necessary for taking your business to the new level. I hope this article will clear all the doubts which were present in your mind before reading this article because of the useful and authentic information in it but if there is still something left unclear then there is no need to worry about because you can ask us anything you deem necessary to know.

Sourced from TechGenYZ

In News

How to Plan a Winning Marketing Strategy for 2018

February 6, 2018 No Comments

By Anuja Lath

With a few days of 2018 gone by, it is time to plan a brand new marketing strategy for your business in 2018. As a new year begins, it’s time to learn from our previous digital marketing strategies and upgrade them for more success in 2018.

The objective of a digital marketing strategy could range from brand awareness to lead generation. But no matter what the objective is, a successful digital marketing strategy requires focus. Focus on crafting a strategy that makes your brand go viral and hence creates brand awareness. A well-framed business marketing strategy clarifies objectives to be achieved. It is requisite that businesses must stay updated about the trends in marketing which in turn helps to frame the winning marketing strategies for a business. Strategies that were deployed in 2017 are now the past. For a great digital presence, you must embrace the new and apply it to maximize exposure for your own business.

Here are a few ways to map out marketing strategies for your small business:

An Ideal Website

The only way your customers know about your business is probably through the business website, hence it is important to keep your business website always updated. For customers who don’t visit your organization in real time, your website acts as a great marketing tool and as an outlet too. Your website must look neat and clean, modern and professional. But more importantly, your website must provide the information a visitor is looking for.

Make sure your website contains all the information that a prospect is likely to search for, including your products, services, history, clients etc. A flawless, responsive website is a great start to a relationship with your prospects and leaves a good impression on your visitors. So, even if you have to revamp your business website this year, make sure it’s done!

Highlight the Main Idea

The main focus of most digital marketing strategies for almost every business is to highlight what they have to offer. If you offer a particular medical service, your marketing (and website) should say the same as clearly as possible. One of the most important aspects of developing a digital marketing strategy is to highlight what your business is all about. Of course, there are other peripheral things like facts and quotes; but your main focus should be on what your business has to offer.

One of the best ways of conveying this is by adding clear call-to-action buttons on your website or social media posts. Adding a CTA makes your product or service more easily accessible to your visitors or prospects. Another way of doing it is to showcase your best sellers as the first thing on your website or social media profiles.

Feedback

A great strategy that plays a big role in enhancing and developing your overall business is to consider customer feedback. Giving importance to customer feedback is the best way to naturally improve products or services that you offer. Customer feedback is highly valuable and should be given a lot of importance. Why? Because your target audience is telling you exactly what they want from you! You must take this information and put it to good use to develop your products or services into something that your customers desire.

Responding to customer feedback in a positive manner is also a great way to manage reputation and build a relationship with your target audience. If your business receives a lot of customer feedback, add it in your strategy to respond to these comments or messages in a positive manner. This will help you build a trustful relationship with your customers.

Close Watch on Expenses

The expenses that a business is spending on a project or promotion must be closely monitored. Identify the areas that require more promotion than others, and deploy your resources in getting better results. For example, if you’re running an AdWords campaign and notice that Ad A is performing better then Ad B, put more resources into Ad B for more success. Keep a tab on all your promotional expenses to identify if you’re putting the right money into the right place.

Before investing money into online promotion, analyze the domains which requires more attention and resources. This will give you a good idea on where to start.

Social Media

Social media is the most powerful tool in the hands of a marketer. Businesses are exploring social media channels to the maximum potential in order to discover how they can leverage it for maximum exposure.

A powerful and engaging technique on social media is to ‘ask’ your audience questions. For example, If you simply asked them “What do you think should be added to 2018’s business marketing strategy?”, chances are you’ll get a lot of opinions and answers!

Questions make people curious, and curiosity gives rise to opinions. Social media is loved by people for sharing their perspectives and opinions on different topics. Therefore, it’s a good idea to ask your audience what they want in order to give it to them!

Buyer’s Psychology

The buyer’s psychology effects a lot in deciding whether they will proceed further or will they leave the option of buying from your brand. If you are targeting a completely new set of buyers, showcasing your strengths and achievements will help them get familiar with your brand.

All in all it is important to analyze a customer’s psychology. You must be familiar with the different stages that a customer goes through before they make a purchase. However showcasing brand achievements guarantees no surety of generating huge leads, but you as a business definitely make a place for your brand, way ahead of your competitors.

Personalized User Experience

Do you like speaking to a bot or a machine that talks in a tone similar to a human? Businesses are now more focused on giving a more personalized user experience. No doubt that bots have made the life of the businesses super easy but at the same time businesses do realize that a customer feels alienated while talking to a robot.

So whatever your objective is, keep in mind that the customer will be feasible and flexible in talking to a human rather than a machine that seems to be talking like a human.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is something that your business just cannot miss out on in 2018. Make sure to add videos to your marketing strategy if you want to see online success. Video marketing carries the maximum potential in this era of marketing. No matter how good your content is, it is never going to beat a video that is ever luring and attractive.

Surf on any social media channel and what you will come across will be 80% videos which get the maximum engagement as compared to written content. This is the reason why businesses are now focusing more on videos.

Your customers and also the people who are new to your business services and products might always be in doubt, hence they should be made well versed with the capacity of your business. The best way is to showcase your business via a video displaying all your services and products in an appropriate way.

To conclude: The growth of a business online depends on its digital marketing strategy!

Basic marketing strategies for almost all businesses are the same. However, the difference lies in the nature of business and the services and products it offers. If you’re looking for a digital marketing agency to handle your end-to-end online marketing, we’re probably the guys! You can also start by getting a free audit report for your business!

By Anuja Lath

Sourced from BBN

In News

How To Balance Between Marketing Strategy And Marketing Tactics

December 21, 2017 No Comments

By John Rougeux.

Every startup founder is faced with the same seemingly unanswerable question: how much time should you spend on marketing strategy versus tactics?

In this post, I’m going to share one approach that will help you quit worrying about whether you’re spending too much time one or the other. Spoiler: it’s actually pretty easy.

The Temptation Of Tactics

First, let’s take a look at the behavior most of us revert to: spending all our time on short-term wins, with little attention given to anything long-term or strategic. It’s easy to live in that state. It feels good. You’re making that sale, publishing that blog post, attending that event. All that activity keeps you really busy. And when you’re trying to grow a startup, somehow things just don’t feel right unless you’re constantly getting things done.

Overall, this focus on action over theory is a good thing. No one built anything by just thinking about it (don’t worry, I still love you Napoleon Hill). But two major problems arise if you spend all of your time on tactics.

Two Pitfalls Of A Tactic-Based Focus

First, you might be spending all of your time getting really good at the wrong things. For example, there’s no point to optimizing your marketing on the wrong channel or creating a bunch of content that your audience isn’t interested in. As obvious as those examples are, most of us are guilty of confusing activity for progress. Developing and checking your strategy helps you avoid that scenario.

Second, without a larger strategic plan, it’s unlikely that your efforts will have any compounding effect. Ideally, your efforts would complement each other, every action building upon another. But simply spending time on activities without consideration for the end goal is a bit like preparing a bunch of random foods without knowing what dish you’re planning to make. Yes, you would have made something to eat. But the result would be pretty sorry.

How Much Strategy Is Enough?

So how much time should you actually set aside for strategic thinking about your marketing? I’m not going to give you a number of hours or a percentage of your calendar. There’s no right answer that works for everyone.

Instead, ask yourself one question: “How well do you know what actions will consistently grow your company?”

If you’re highly confident (and you have a track record of showing that you were right), then you can afford to spend less time on marketing strategy. After all, if something is working, why change it? And chances are, your actions are probably succeeding because they’re based on a sound strategy. Maybe you don’t have it written down but you know where you’re headed, who you’re selling to and what gets them to buy.

But if the outcome of your tactics is unpredictable (or just plain fruitless), then you need to start setting aside more time for strategic thinking. The more erratic or unsuccessful your efforts, the more likely it is that the solution will involve more than just “trying harder” or “needing to optimize.” And you won’t have the clarity find that solution unless you step back and look at the bigger picture.

Use This Baseline To Get Started With Strategic Thinking

If you aren’t spending any time on strategic thinking today, here’s a good place to start. Set aside one hour a week, one day a month and one week a year to strategically think about your marketing. And spend extra time on the areas that tactics typically don’t cover: your branding, positioning, messaging and marketing channels.

Even if things are going really well, this will be time well spent. Few things stay the same. What worked well one year may let you down the next.

For example, for a couple years our business was able to grow consistently using paid Facebook ads. We didn’t need to “strategize” about marketing too much because we could reliably grow the business. But over time, our market became increasingly expensive to reach on Facebook, and we had to rely more on partnerships and referrals. And we were only able to find the new direction after we took a step back and looked at the big picture.

The Perfect Strategy Is A Myth

Don’t give into the temptation of thinking that you need a perfect strategy before you take action. By the time you have every last detail addressed, someone competitor will have passed you by. And besides, a perfect strategy is a myth anyway. All of us deal with uncertainty, a lack of information and imperfect judgment. So consider the 80/20 rule: spend 20 percent of your time getting a strategy that’s about 80 percent right and then move forward.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

By John Rougeux

John Rougeux is Co-founder/CMO at Causely, overseeing their marketing, branding and growth strategy.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

How to Build a Practical Brand Marketing Strategy

July 18, 2017 No Comments

By Todd Giannattasio.

When most people think about a brand marketing strategy, they think about identity. “Who are we as an organization? What should our logo look like? What colors and fonts should we use?”

Those are all important things to nail down so that your brand is consistent when distributing public (and internal) communications. However, those things in and of themselves are not going to help your business grow or get more customers. A more practical brand marketing strategy is to think about how to connect with your target audience and build a relationship with them.

Most marketing and sales companies constantly mention funnels and customer journeys. Heck, I own a company that talks about those things all the time. These are key components to growing your business. But the problem with only focusing on a customer’s “buyer” journey is that they have to be in the process of buying. And depending on where you look, only between 3 to 20 percent of a market is currently in an active buying process. What about those other 80 to 97 percent of people who will eventually become a great customer opportunity?

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You don’t want to just ignore them until it’s too late. Then they’ll be shopping around and comparing you to your competitors. What if you could separate yourself before they started looking around? What if your target audience already knew who you were and that they want to buy from you before they enter that buyer journey?

That would put you on the fast track in that sales funnel and make your customer acquisition seamless. That’s what a practical brand marketing strategy can do for you.

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Build those relationships before your customers need you and before a trigger event takes place. Then when that problem occurs, instead of going out on a lengthy buyer journey, they already know you as the “go to” for what they need. Not only are you growing your business more efficiently, but you’re preemptively creating a better experience for your customers. Now they don’t need to waste as much time shopping around or trying to figure out what they need or where to get it.

Inside a Practical Brand Marketing Strategy

In a typical marketing strategy, you would start with what kind of problems to solve for your target audience, and build around while they are discovering their options and making their purchasing decisions.

With a brand marketing strategy, you’re working prior to that interaction. It’s important to know your customer’s daily routine, what they’re up to, what they want to be up to, where they are, what they’re talking about. This research helps you to understand the problems you need to solve. So you need to get out there and connect with them based on who they are and their lifestyle. Here are some brand marketing examples:

Target Audience	Their Daily Life, Emotions, Needs, Interests	Your Messaging and Content
New moms	Chaotic. Stressed. Scared.	How new moms can calm the chaos and have a stress-free day
Entrepreneurs with a growing business	Busy. Seemingly unproductive and inefficient. They want more out of their employees. They want more customers, higher profitability, and a smoother run organization.	Ways successful entrepreneurs can get more organized, be productive, and increase profits

See how you can connect with your target audience on levels unrelated to your specific product? When you create your messaging and content to resonate with your target audience so that you get their attention and get them to engage with you, you will begin building a relationship with your audience that will make “selling” seamless when the time comes.

Use can use this type of content (by publishing blog posts on your website) to rank on Google and get shared on social media within your target audience’s communities, and in time you will win the brand marketing game.

Have you ever heard the saying, “Dig your well before you’re thirsty?” This strategy is how you will get found by the people that you want finding you. This is how you will build a relationship with your customers before you need it.

Get Started With Your Strategy Now

Take out a piece of paper or open a new document. Set up the table from above with a column for who your target audience is, what their life is like, and content ideas. Now fill in those boxes and you’ll have a nice list of ideas that would get their attention and add some value to their life.

By Todd Giannattasio.

Founder of Tresnic Media, helping brands build their online audience and drive sales.

Sourced from TECH.CO