Author: Samuel Edwards / Source: Entrepreneur Starting a new marketing strategy is exciting. You'll get to come up with creative new idea
Starting a new marketing strategy is exciting. You’ll get to come up with creative new ideas, see your brand applied in new contexts and in new ways, and hopefully see a positive ROI that makes all your peers and supervisors happy.
But successful marketing campaigns don’t just appear out of thin air. A lot of work goes into the execution and follow-up of great campaigns, but the real value — the make-or-break of a particular strategy — comes in the planning phase.
Before you finalize a strategy, make sure you have these seven pieces of information at a minimum:
1.Your main goal
That’s obvious, right? Get more customers, make more money. But marketing is a bit more nuanced than that. You’ll want to dig deeper into the specific marketing area you’re working in; for example, are you trying to drive more traffic to your site? Are you trying to earn more conversions? Are you simply building more brand recognition? Then, identify the specifics: Are you looking to achieve a certain growth rate? Are you working within a specific period of time? The more specific you are here, the better.
2.Your target audience
You’ll also need to know your target audience, and I mean really know them. It’s not enough to make a reasonable guess about who might be interested in your product; you need to prove, with research and objective data, that they’re interested in your product, and make sure no other demographics would be a better fit for your approach. Then, figure out what makes them tick; use surveys or existing market research to get inside your average customer’s head and build your strategy from there.
3.Your competition
You also need to know who your competition is and what strategies they’ve been using — for multiple reasons. Do some quick Google searches if you aren’t familiar with other companies like your own,…
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