How to Create a Marketing Strategy With Action Steps

A marketing strategy is a business's long-term approach and an overall game plan for gaining a competitive advantage with consumers. It is what you have to do to convert a one-time buyer into a loyal customer. Like with any large-scale goals, setting an objective guideline helps a team visualize and stick to a set of standards. So as soon as you're able, sit down with your team and create a marketing strategy that will help spring your business into action!

Characteristics of a Good Marketing Strategy

As you build your marketing strategy, keep the following characteristics in mind:

• It should quickly identify and clearly define the activities you'll perform to achieve the set objectives.
• You should be able to enact the strategy regardless of your access to resources.
• No one needs a convoluted plan. Keep it straightforward and easy to understand.
• It should have a certain level of significance to the success of the business.

All in all, a marketing strategy should be a crystal clear plan that reflects the business. It needs to be easy to follow, easy to enact, and easy to convey to a group of people.

Creating a Marketing Strategy with Action Steps

Before creating a marketing strategy, you are always required to define clearly your objectives and tasks. Then, assess your resources and select strategies that will work with what you have. This is how you create a solid marketing strategy, one step at a time. We discuss these steps below for you.

1. Define Your Business

Define your business for what it is. Review your goals, objectives, mission, and vision. Then give your business a grade.

The objective here is to assess what is working for you, what is not working for you, which department needs improvement, what are your strengths and weaknesses, threats, and opportunities, among other things. By analyzing your business closely like this, you will get an overview of your current operations and your internal and external environments.

To help you with this exercise, ask yourself the following questions:

• How long have you been in operation?
• What's your most extraordinary milestone?
• What's your mode of conducting business, online or storefront?
• What's your product or service?
• What's your mode of communication with your customers?
• How can we improve?

Involve other people in this process. You want an honest assessment, and you may be a little biased.

2. Define Your Target Market

Here, you will have to outline anything you know about your targeted customers. Include basic demographics like gender, age, and location. Include any website analytics that reveal website behavior, anything that is abandoned in carts, conversion, etc. This is a great task for the marketing analyst on your team -- or anyone good at cross-analysis and compiling data.

And if you don't have an existing target audience, decide what you want your audience to be.

You'll want to answer about this category:

• What do they buy or pay for?
• Does what they buy solve any of their problems? If yes, how does it achieve this objective?
• Why do they buy from you?
• Other than your product or service, which other options do they have?
• Do they ever complain about your product or service?

Knowing your customer well will help you identify marketing tactics and implement a working and fruitful strategy.

3. Know Your Competition

The truth is, you are not in a vacuum working alone. Other businesses are working hard to produce products similar to yours. So to stake your claim in your niche, you must work smarter -- not necessarily harder -- than them to have a competitive edge.

Know your enemy!

The more you can figure who your competitors are and how they operate, the better. Look at their website, see where they show up on search engines, and adjust your SEO plan accordingly. Read testimonials left by their customers. Don't dismiss them, but look at what works and what doesn't.

Once you understand who else is out there, you can better differentiate your product or service from theirs. This will also prove to your investors that you know the market very well and are prepared to tackle any challenge ahead.

4. Understand Your Goals

What can you accomplish as a company throughout the year, in five years, in ten? What are the targets you have to hit and the obstacles you need to overcome? Break them up into small victories and big wins.

Goals could be anything from doubling sales by conquering new markets to opening a WhatsApp group where your customers discuss issues related to your product/service. Your goals must be motivating and far-reaching, but not so complicated and discouraging. But most importantly, they need to be relevant to the success of the business.

Finally, prioritize your goals and set trajectories.

5. Implement Your Goals

Now that you've stated your goals, you will have to plan on how to achieve them. Handle each one separately and list possible courses of action underneath it. This will give you an overview of what your team needs to do to push it towards that achievement.

Let's say your goal is to gain more followers on Instagram. Your action items may be:

• Posting at least five times a week.
• Respond to the comment section regularly.
• Ask your followers to tag their friends as they comment.
• Take advantage of trending hashtags.
• Offer giveaways and discounts to your followers.

6. Set Your Budget and Get to Work

Implement your action steps as your budget and resources will allow. Start by fulfilling what is affordable and essential.

Conclusion

An all-inclusive and well-executed marketing strategy will help ensure your success, for it will keep you ahead of your competitors -- or at least get you in the running. And remember, a marketing strategy is nothing without a team. Teamwork certainly does make the dream work. Delegate tasks to reach your marketing goals.