Maybe you've been toying with the idea of launching a business; and if it's a product or service, the one thing you'll need is a marketing strategy to get you started. It can feel like a rabbit hole of information that most startups, and small business owners feel overwhelmed to tackle.
To make things a bit easier, let's dive a little deeper into how you can create a basic framework for a marketing strategy to make your launch successful.
First, let's address the elephant in the room: What is a marketing strategy?
A Marketing Strategy is a part of your business plan - this area of your plan lists out how you plan to market and attract future clients. This focuses on what results you want to achieve based on your business plan. Oftentimes, marketing plans and marketing strategies are used interchangeably however a strategy explains the goals and a plan explains how those goals get accomplished.
Second, when creating a marketing strategy you want to consider a few things:
1. Your target customer. Who is this person - is it a guy? girl? Are they young/old? You get it. Create a customer profile detailing everything about this person as best as possible which will help you narrow your focus in the type of person you're trying to reach.
2. Your competitors. Doing market research to assess your industry, see how you fit within it, and what they do well, or not so well.
3. Commonly known as the 4 'P's of Marketing, it's imperative to think through the following: product (or service), price, placement and promotion. Even moreso in our digital age, people, are just as important to this list:
Product (Or Service): What are you selling? What services are you offering?
Price: How much are you charging for your product and/or service?
Placement: Where are you selling this product or service? Are you going to build your own website? Work with another affiliation (eBay/Amazon)? Are you creating a physical product and selling door-to-door?
Promotion: How are you going to get the word out? Social media? Word of mouth? Kiosks and venues at events?
*People: Do you have a team that you're building your business and brand with? A co-founder? Partner? Assistant?
4. The marketing plan is where you'll want to assess the 'how-to' of your marketing strategy. This can be the fun and creative aspect as your work toward launching your product or service. As you comb through the 'P's of Marketing' begin to jot down ideas on tactics you'll want to incorporate to see this to fruition.
Many people don't see the value in creating a marketing strategy and investing a budget in this area of their business plan, but we'll say this: you don't want to have an amazing product with no one to share this with. It's imperative that while you work toward building something of value for people to see and take hold of; that you'll spend the proper time creating a marketing strategy to help sustain it.
Please email us if you have any additional questions or want to get started on your marketing strategy today!
