Every successful business plan requires a great marketing strategy. However, because his strategy is usually ‘buried’ deep in the business plan, only few business owners put their best effort to their marketing strategy. That’s quite unfortunate actually, especially since only a detailed and in-depth marketing strategy can reveal better business opportunities.
Developing Marketing Plan
There a 4 different tasks every business owner must complete in order to develop a great marketing plan.
Provide a reason
Make this simple and specific. Why do your customers need your product? What makes it different than your competitor’s product? One tip: focus on solving your customer’s need.
Identify your target customers
There are plenty of customer categories today. However, to make an efficient, better, and faster marketing, a business should focus on a specific customer category. Describe your target customer in specific details. One tip: try turning your target customer into a fictional person and examine what this person would think, feel, say, and do. Then link it with your product/service. For example, if you want to start an online betting company, like 188bet, the best personification of your target customer would be a gambler. Then your job is to understand them better.
Identify your competitors
It is most likely that you’re not the only one offering the same product/service to your target customer. Someone else might be doing the same thing, too, but don’t worry. There are many things you can learn from your competitors; beside the fact they can ‘steal’ your customers. For example, by learning from their marketing strategies, you can develop far better strategies for your own business.
Define your brand-positioning statement
Your product/service quality is the best reason to choose your product, but sometimes people need your word as a warranty. This is when you should deliver a strong brand-positioning statement. Keep it short, concise, but specific. Also focus on how you’re planning to solve their problem/need with your product/service.
Approaching your customer
Now that you’ve learnt how to develop a marketing strategy, it’s time to execute the plan.
Traditional vs tech-driven marketing channel
Most marketing channels nowadays are divided into traditional and tech-driven marketing channels. While traditional ways still focus on using TV and its brethren, tech-driven marketing channel delivers more updated version of marketing. Let me show you some of these trending channels.
Social media
Social media is not just a place where you can reach your target customers, wherever they are. It’s also a place where people ‘voluntarily’ share their information. You can use social media to learn nearly everything about your customers, from their favorite product, their needs, price range, and many things else. Information like this can even make your marketing even more efficient and specific.
Another great way to approach your customer is through email. Some people like email marketing because it feels more personal than social media marketing. You can perform email marketing through various ways like transactional emails, promotional campaigns, and newsletters. Just remember to keep the emails as less formal as possible. The reason people read your email because they need a more personal marketing, not a machine-sound text sent to them, asking them to buy your products.
