Strategizing Your Marketing Effort

Choosing the right strategic approach will make
your marketing much more successful.

So you have one of three things; a smart business idea, a successfully operating business, or a struggling business and you want to see if you can't get things going on the right track. By the right track we mean getting new customers or clients, and keeping them happy, and increasing your income while doing so.

Well, keeping your customers happy is up to you. Marketing will not do that. But effective marketing can boost the awareness of your company in the minds of potential customers and clients, and can create interest in what you are offering. This means more business inquiries coming to you.

We're going to skip over how you can make your customers and clients happy because that revolves around the way you run your business and handle your customers satisfaction issues. What we will not skip is the strategy in which you use to reach these customers.

Every day, there are many businesses getting started, and there are also many businesses failing. Lets face it, businesses fail because they don't make enough money to make it worth while. Often times the business owners have made bad decisions, and sometimes it's just bad luck. It is obvious now that running a business in the economy we have seen over the past three years or so has been difficult in almost all industries.

One thing to note is that a great marketing plan will not solve all of your business' problems. But with the right business plan combined with a smart marketing plan can, in most cases, help your business grow steadily.

This is what we in the marketing industry call strategy. Your marketing strategy coincides with your business strategy. You have a certain market that will benefit from your product or service, so you should strategically target this group with your marketing efforts. By doing this you will get a better response rate than if you are randomly marketing your brand to the wrong groups. This often happens when business owners are in a hurry and want to get something done quickly without thinking through the process. By pinpointing your audiences you will drastically increase your response, and will not be wasting your marketing budget on a low response rate.

Targeting the Appropriate Audience

When planning your marketing strategy, you should consider all things about what your are offering, especially your target audience. Let's use this as a hypothetical example:

Lisa has a revolutionary hair product and she is ready to put it on the market to order by mail. Lisa knows that her hair product is made of a new formula designed to keep hair full yet silky throughout the day. She also knows that a bald man with greasy hair isn't going to be interested in this product, so she is not going to waste efforts in marketing to him. However, she will market to the 23-43 year old women, who research shows makes the vast majority of the household purchases, and hope that she can get some interest and with a little luck, get some trial first purchases.

So, with that being said your primary strategy should be to target those who will be the most interested in your product or service.

The Right strategy for the Right Budget

Now that you have figured out who to direct your marketing efforts to, you should begin to calculate a budget for these efforts. A very important factor to remember is that just because you are spending a lot of money on marketing, doesn't always mean you are getting the best results. There are many large companies that have spent millions on marketing campaigns that failed miserably.

You can achieve great success many different ways. If you have a small budget ($0 to $100), and only have your own time to work with you can do simple things like blogging online or printing small flyers to hand out at the gym. Say your budget is a little more ($500 to $1000) you could hire a freelance designer to create a nice flyer and an email marketing campaign to get the word out. Or possibly hire a freelance consultant, copy writer, or designer to help you brainstorm some ideas for cost effective marketing to get you going.

If you have a larger budget ($1000 to $5000) you might consider contacting a freelance professional or small ad agency to help get your brand identity and marketing started. The plus side to using experienced professionals in these efforts will usually pay off because of their industry experience, they generally know what works effectively and what does not.

It will be important, however, to not spend your entire budget on advice. Remember to keep some set aside to have the printing, developing and distribution of any marketing materials you choose to use.