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hen you take on a new project, where do you start? Certainly your next steps might include debriefing certain team members, ordering certain materials, creating a specific timeline and more.
In the marketing world, properly executing a marketing strategy requires important prep work like this to ensure the plan is set up for success.
We wouldn’t head out to climb a mountain wearing flip flops and carrying sunscreen, would we?
While many marketing agencies focus on tools, you often miss out on the technical expertise and strategy to have a comprehensive foundation before getting started. Here are some essential steps we take when we start any marketing strategy, and a free guide you can use to get started today, too.
SWOT stands for: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and is a traditional marketing exercise that allows companies to analyze and understand a lot about your business and it’s capabilities.
It generally helps to have a diversified group from the company to participate in this activity in order to ensure you grab various perspectives; this means department leaders, employees working on the projects day in and out, sales people and so forth.
In general, strengths and weaknesses are internal factors that impact your business while opportunities and threats will be external. Consider questions such as …
It’s simplest to complete a SWOT analysis by discussing one area at a time thoroughly, and then allowing the conversation to naturally develop from there. Our marketing tool template includes a basic layout for this analysis. (DOWNLOAD HERE)
While it’s always important for your company to forge its own path in order to truly connect with your unique customers, reviewing companies that are similar in capabilities to yours offers valuable insight and inspiration that can uniquely apply to your work.
Make a list of 3 to 5 competitors to review. These can include companies that create the exact same products, but they can also include companies who have a vision and reputation that is already similar to yours or one you aspire to. When that list is complete, go through the following questions for each competitor.
Our marketing tool template includes a basic layout for this process.
Another important piece to consider when designing a marketing strategy that will actually work is to clearly define the milestones a customer will experience from when they initially need your product through a completed sale and successful project. This is known as the customer journey, and can help you make key decisions about which digital marketing tools are important to include in your marketing.
To start, this process may look a little unorganized - which is OK! In the beginning, its about identifying any possible opportunity to connect with a customer and the corresponding milestones that can coincide with a decision making process to enable the person to easily decide to go with you.
So, ask yourself:
What are the reasons a customer chooses us over competitors? And how can we make this decision easier?
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