Create your marketing strategy

Introduction

Developing a marketing strategy is vital for any business. Without one, your efforts to attract customers are likely to be haphazard and inefficient. The focus of your strategy should be to make sure that your products and services meet customer needs better than competitors and develop long-term and profitable relationships with those customers. It may also help you to identify whole new markets that you can successfully target.

Central to any successful marketing strategy is an understanding of your customers and their needs. The ability to constantly satisfy your customers' needs better than your competitors are able to will make you the preferred supplier in the market place. In order to achieve this, you will need to create a flexible strategy that can respond to changes in customer perceptions and demand.

Once you have created and implemented your strategy, it is equally important to monitor its effectiveness and to make any adjustments required to maintain its success.

Key elements of a successful marketing strategy

One of the key elements of a successful marketing strategy is the acknowledgement that your existing and potential customers will fall into particular groups or segments, characterised by their "needs". Identifying these groups and their needs and then addressing them more successfully than your competitors should be the focus of your strategy.

You can then create a marketing strategy that makes the most of your strengths and matches them to the needs of the customers you want to target. For example, if a particular group of customers is looking for quality first and foremost, then any marketing activity aimed at them should draw attention to the high quality service you can provide.

Once this has been completed, decide on the best marketing activity that will ensure your target market know about the products or services you offer, and why they meet their needs.

This could be achieved through various forms of advertising, exhibitions, public relations initiatives, Internet activity and by creating an effective "point of sale" strategy if you rely on others to actually sell your products. Limit your activities to those methods you think will work best, avoiding spreading your budget too thinly.

A key element often overlooked is that of monitoring and evaluating how effective your strategy has been. This control element not only helps you see how the strategy is performing in practice, it can also help inform your future marketing strategy. A simple device is to ask each new customer how they heard about your business.

Once you have decided on your marketing strategy, draw up a marketing plan to set out how you plan to execute and evaluate the success of that strategy. The plan should be constantly reviewed so it can respond quickly to changes in customer needs and attitudes in your industry, and in the broader economic climate.

Tips and pitfalls

Before looking at new markets, think about how you can get the most out of your existing customer base - it's usually more economical and quicker than finding new customers.

Consider whether you can sell more to your existing customers or look at ways of improving the retention of key customers.
Focus on the market

Your marketing strategy document should:

analyse the different needs of different groups of customers
focus on a market niche where you can be the best
aim to put most of your efforts into the 20 per cent of customers who provide 80 per cent of profits

Don't forget the follow-up

Put your marketing strategy into effect with a marketing plan that sets out actions, dates, costs, resources and effective selling programmes.
Measure the effectiveness of what you do. Be prepared to change things that aren't working.

Pitfalls to avoid

Making assumptions about what customers want.
Ignoring the competition.
Trying to compete on price alone.
Relying on too few customers.
Trying to grow too quickly.
Becoming complacent about what you offer and failing to innovate.