• 0
• Content Strategy , Business Growth ,
• 07 Feb

How to Create a Complete Marketing Strategy

• Create buyer personas.
• Find Goals & Measure
• Account for existing resources.
• Audit and plan media campaigns.
• Make It Happen.

 

1. Create Buyer Persona(s).

If you can’t define who your audience is in one sentence, now’s the chance to do it. A buyer persona is an example of your ideal customer.

For example, a store like yours will define a buyer persona as Budgeting Betty. She is a fashionable working-class woman in her 30’s living in a suburb. She looks to fill her closet with designer deals at low prices.

With this description, your marketing department can picture Budgeting Betty and work with a better vision of the consumer.

Buyer personas have critical demographic and psycho-graphic information — including age, job title, income, location, interests, and challenges. Notice how Betty’s attributes include all of these in her description.

2. Find Goals & Measure

Your Complete Marketing Strategy should coincide with your business goals. You want to have 300 prospects attend your annual conference in three months. To achieve this, your marketing goal should be to boost online RSVP by 20%. Aim to achieve this by the end of the month.

Use Google Analytics to measure blog and web page performance when your goals are outlined.

3. Consider Existing Assets.

What do you already have in your arsenal to help you create your Complete Marketing Strategy? To streamline this process, consider your assets in three categories — paid, owned, and earned media.

Paid media is any channel you spend money on to reach your target audience. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer paid media options that boost your exposure.

Owned media is any of the media you create. Blog posts, eBooks, images, and infographics are examples. Your marketing team creates these types of owned media.

Earned media is user-generated content. Shares on social media are examples of earned media. Tweets about your company are also examples. Additionally, photos posted on Instagram mentioning your business count as earned media.

Assemble your materials in these sectors. Put them all in a single place. This way, you’ll have a clear vision of what you have. You can see how to combine the three channels to maximize your strategy.

You want to promote your blog posts on paid media like Twitter. This is especially true if you already have a blog that’s releasing weekly content in your niche (owned media). Customers then re-tweet them (earned media). Ultimately, that will help you create a better, more well-rounded strategy.

The free option? Tweet it from your company’s Twitter or post it on Instagram, using relevant hashtags to share content.

If you have resources that don’t align with your goals, get rid of them. This is a great time to clean up your house or identify gaps in your assets.

4. Review & Plan Media Campaigns.

Now, you must decide which content will help you with your Complete Marketing Strategy. Focus on your owned media and marketing goals. Would updating the Call To Action at the end of your blog posts be beneficial? Can it increase Reservations for your event?

Next, look at your buyer personas. Let’s say you work for a video editing software company. If one of your persona’s challenges is adding clean sound effects to their videos, create some content that reflects that. Make a 15-second demo video for Instagram. This will show how great your product is at solving that challenge.

Finally, put together a content creation plan. The plan should include the title, goals, format, and channel for each piece of content. It should specify which challenge it solves for your buyer persona.

5. Make It Happen

Finally, we’re at the last step. You should already have:

1. Buyer persona(s).

2. Specific marketing goals that coincide with your business goals.

3. Existing paid, owned, and earned media inventory.

4. An audit of a media campaign.

Your market research and planning should help you see how your strategy will be executed.

The last step is to bring everything together—to put actions into your planning. Create a document that spells out the steps you need to take to execute your campaign. In other words, define your strategy.

When organizing this document, think long-term. A standard strategy document is for 12 months. Your strategic marketing efforts should focus on this structured timeline.

For example, let’s go back to the video software company.

In January, you will launch a software update that improves users’ exportation process. In April, you want to publish an eBook explaining editing terms to your buyer personas. In September, you plan to launch an integration with other software.

Remember, your Complete Marketing Strategy should be unique to your business, and the document should be original. Ensure the plan includes all of the necessary information. This will set you up to take your company’s brand from start to outstanding.

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