The Four Essential Elements of a Winning Marketing Strategy

Throughout my career, I’ve encountered business leaders who say they don’t understand marketing. I haven’t just heard this at emerging or smaller-size companies; I’ve encountered this among leaders at massive brands too.

I understand their perspective. Marketing is complex and vast, involving numerous channels and requiring investment in brand growth and demand generation, with results that may not be immediately apparent. It can also be challenging to directly connect marketing spending to revenue impact. 

However, I strongly believe that investing in brand and marketing is crucial for long-term business growth.

If you have a strong product or service offering combined with a solid distribution strategy, you can achieve success without initially investing in branding and marketing. However, as competitors enter the market and your growth begins to plateau, that is a clear sign that it's time to focus on developing your brand and marketing strategy.

While creating a marketing strategy may seem overwhelming, begin with these four foundational elements.

1. Know your target customer

Whether you are targeting consumers or business customers, your company must connect with people on a human and personal level. It's crucial to thoroughly understand not just the demographics of your customers, but also their specific needs and motivations. Understanding these elements is key to building successful and long-lasting relationships with your customer base.

2. Build your brand narrative

After mining those valuable customer insights, it’s time to develop your brand story. We all love a good narrative, which is why it’s so important to craft a compelling and genuine narrative that is centered around your customer. This story will not only help you earn trust and build relationships with customers, but it will also form the foundation of your messaging and positioning strategy, fueling your marketing efforts.

When we typically think about strong brands, we often focus on B2C companies, particularly those with large advertising budgets. However, brand narratives are equally important for B2B companies. It's essential for all businesses to create a human connection with their potential customers. A powerful brand narrative not only aids in the initial relationship building, but also forms the basis for long-term loyalty and retention.

3. Analyze the customer journey

The customer journey encompasses all the interactions a customer has with your brand, with the ultimate goal of making a purchase. This journey includes becoming aware of and discovering your brand, weighing their options and researching, making a purchase, and finally, becoming loyal and making repeat purchases. However, this journey is not always a straightforward, step-by-step process.

If you already have an established business, it's important to evaluate your current touchpoints to determine how effective they are. Additionally, it's beneficial to speak with customers directly or at least conduct surveys to gain insights into how they first learned about your brand and what influenced their decision to make a purchase. This understanding will enable you to optimize these interactions, as well as tailor your messaging to align with each stage of the customer journey.

If you’re starting from scratch, identify the ideal ways for your customers to discover, research, and engage with your brand. The customer insights you gathered will help you with this; for example, knowing your customers’ interests and shopping habits will help you identify the channels where you can reach them.

4. Build your strategic marketing plan

Your marketing strategy must be aligned with your business objectives. Start by defining key goals and then create marketing objectives tied to those goals.

For instance, if your business goal is to increase net new customer acquisition by 20% year-over-year, your marketing objectives may include building brand awareness, boosting website traffic, and enhancing visit-to-purchase conversion to meet the acquisition target.

After setting your goals, you can create a marketing budget that covers the costs for creative work, media, and tools needed to achieve your objectives. Next, refer back to the customer journey research you've already conducted to develop your tactical plan. Identify the key channels for reaching your customers and determine the creative and content strategy needed to effectively communicate your brand message through these channels.

Learn more

I recently joined Sherrika Sanders from Transform the GAAP to discuss how business owners can approach these marketing foundations. Watch the conversation here.

For more guidance or support in developing your company’s strategic marketing plan, please contact us. We would love to hear from you.