Marketing strategy development

Marketing strategy is about making key decisions that give you clarity and purpose, and it needs to be done intelligently.

 

As your marketing consultant, I’ll take you through the following elements to establish your clear marketing strategy:

• Segmenting your prospective audience
• Identifying and targeting your prospective customers
• Defining your marketing proposition (or what makes you different)
• Setting your Smart marketing objectives

 

My take on marketing strategy is that it’s about making ‘choiceful’ decisions. Decisions that ensure you’re going in the right direction.  Decisions that set the scene for everything else that comes later.  Things like your brand, your messages, your distribution channels and your communications.

Find out more about each of these stages of strategy below.

 

Segmentation

Segmentation is all about creating a map of the broad market area that you’re interested in, and dividing this up based on criteria that is meaningful to you.

Once this is done, we populate each segment with data and insights that we’ve gleaned (for example, the number of businesses or people within that segment, or the frequency or size of purchase).

 

Targeting

Targeting follows segmentation, and involves evaluating and honing all the segments identified. This is a skill in itself.

Once complete, I will provide you with recommendations as to the segments that are most valuable for you to focus on, with a rationale based on insight. This is where choices need to be made. It’s not always easy to focus on one or two segments to target, but it is a vital part of doing strategy well and I will guide you through this.

 

Proposition

Marketing proposition is called many things, but essentially it is what makes you special or different as an organisation. It can be your values, a uniqueness in your product, your standards of service, your vision, and many more permutations.

It’s important that your proposition is not based on ‘a whim’ or feeling. As such, I provide an independent view for you, that is based on insight and evidence.  Learnings from your competitors, your customers, and you as an organisation are all brought together and the key factors overlayed to identify the one or two elements that make you different to competitors, and are – essentially – what your target customers want. This is something that is true to you, and is core to your very being.  This is your proposition and something for you to champion and shout about.

 

Objectives

Setting objectives for your marketing strategy is definitely not a tick-box exercise, or simply stating that ‘we want to raise awareness’.

When we set measurable and meaningful objectives, everything else that you do with your marketing can relate back and contribute to these. They are key to providing structure and direction with your marketing, and hold it to account.

 

 

Services What is marketing strategy?