5 Ways to Ensure Marketing Success

As there are over 300 marketing tactics you can use to promote your business, knowing which ones to use can feel overwhelming and confusing. Not to mention expensive. In order to help businesses create a marketing budget that is effective and fruitful, creating a marketing plan is essential.
Marketing plans are ‘blueprints’ that identify the company’s goals and the ‘playbook’ – or tactics – needed to achieve them.  Here’s 5 ways to ensure marketing success:

1.    Objectives As companies seek to construct a successful plan, leaders must develop their objectives, and they depend upon the company’s goals.
Some objectives include:

• Generate more leads
• Increase sales
• Launch a new product or service
• Increase market share
• Build brand awareness
• Improve customer loyalty

Recommended marketing tactics will vary, depending upon a company’s objectives. Keep in mind, not all tactics are effective for each goal.

2.    Research Who wants to buy your product or service? What are their buying patterns and habits? Where are they located? How do you find them? What makes your company unique? What are their barriers to buying your goods and services? These are all questions that should be answered when conducting market research. The results will help build the right plan.

3.    What’s the Competition? Identifying and studying the competition is a great way for companies to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. It helps customers understand what they get from Company A compared to Company B.

Understanding this will help companies understand where and how to  “speak” to their most targeted audience.

4.   Creative This is the part of marketing that frustrates most businesses. But in reality, the reason why creative development (think content and design) drives businesses crazy, is that many companies don’t do their homework on the first three elements.
For creative to be successful it must speak to the right audience. If you don’t know where you’re going, any route looks fine. But in reality, you may end up driving in circles.

The marketing plan helps businesses understand these requirements and connect the pieces together.

5.    Measurements At the end of the day, business leaders want to know one thing: is the marketing getting results? A marketing plan identifies key performance indicators (KPIs) that answers that question.

Indicators include: an increase in social media likes and followers, higher open rates in email campaigns, higher conversion rates from calls to action, an increase in sales during and after a marketing campaign, higher retention rates for existing customers and more.

A well-developed marketing plan takes some of the guesswork out of marketing budgets and helps the company to achieve its goals. As you can see, a lot of thought, research and resources must go into making that plan. As such, it may be helpful to have an outside consultant, such as First Impressions Marketing, guide your team during this process.

Got questions about how to develop a cost-effective and successful plan? Contact us today for more information.