Every marketing plan has certain attributes to determine if it would be effective or not to a business. It is not often difficult to tell if a marketing plan has the potential of being successful or not. In a nutshell, there are road maps in creating a killer marketing strategy which would help your business excel. And we’d be looking at 6 steps to achieve this.
1. Pay Attention To The Product
Which audience does your product target? Women, men, young, or old? If for instance you target working women who are already in their 50s, then you should offer semi-formal attires, or formal dresses that are of good quality. You will also need to detail on the usefulness of each of the products.
If you sell shoes that heighten the wearer, explain to your prospective wearer how the shoes will meet their needs. Products like this would be specifically targeted at women who are probably in their 50s, and also short.
2. Pay Attention To Your Market
Well, since you already know that your product cannot be for everybody – no matter how good and nicely packaged you think it is – it is thereby crucial that you give optimum attention to your target market. You should be able to decide if your product is best for men or women, and also consider other factors and demographics, like age.
You should also put the likes and dislikes of your prospective audience into consideration. This is the formula – choose, divide, and conquer.
3. What Platform Are Your Target Audience?
Where your target audience largely are should determine what social media platform to put more focus on. Find out where your target market spends more time online, it would be easier to reach them that way. Pinterest has a larger audience of women , Instagram has a larger youthful audience, LinkedIn is basically for professionals, etc.
Doing a proper analysis will determine the media to settle for. You can’t use everything at a time, focus on the ones that meet your needs. Here are the most common platforms; Facebook, Google Search, Instagram, Twitter, Amazon, Pinterest, Snapchat, Houzz, Reddit, YouTube, Email, LinkedIn, among others.
4. Be Accountable And Responsible
Put your focus more on individuals rather than groups. By doing this, ensure to put much more specific tasks on individual players that you require them to work on. Handle the aspect of accountability, while also keeping an eye on outcomes, to be sure that everybody involved is playing their part to the fullest. As everyone put forth their best foot, ensure to reward excellence, while also reprimanding failures to attain set goals.
More than just being involved, a good marketing plan demands that you are committed to the course. Every player should know exactly what their task is, and know the result of doing well or performing poorly.
5. Have Specifics That Are Measurable
Put everything in numbers and quantity. These should include all minor and major information, with specific dates. A good marketing plan should not only be driven by strategy, it should also have tactics and details that give it the required push for success.
With each plan revealing the activity’s result, it becomes much easier to measure the returns on investments(ROI).
While high-quality products are very vital to have happy clients, a fashion brand, for instance, should not have empty goals such as ‘make clients impressed’ or ‘product quality clothes.’ Such kind of goals aren’t quantifiable, thereby should not be put together in such a plan.
To create a killer marketing strategy, you should consider more solid goals such as, ‘to reach $1 million sales in three years.’ This kind is more specific, but then, it still depends on the timeline if yours is one for one or three years.
As a newbie in business you should create marketing plans on short and long-term. Ensure that these marketing plans are interconnected. For instance, the short-term plans you make should help you in fulfilling the long-term plans set. In all, your marketing plans should be very attainable.
6. Reviews And Revisions
Creating a killer marketing strategy is in all a process and not a finalized plan. The kind of environment we live in today is very dynamic and doesn’t entertain being static with marketing plans. In essence, having a good and, in fact, solid marketing plan has everything to do with setting goals, tracking your performances, and measuring your progress in quantifiable units. This involved doing regular reviews and revisions, as required.
The group involved in marketing should go over their marketing plans often to see what and what is working or not. And the same constant moves should be taken even if the plan is a three or five-year plan. You should not wait till the end of the planning period to review your moves. For instance, as a fashion brand, you may want to consider changing your prices over a few months due to rise or fall in prices of raw materials or high demand. With this development, your marketing plan should also experience an adjustment.
