Having a clever marketing strategy is great if you use it, though often a marketing plan or brand strategy gets left as a dusty top draw file and forgotten about once the business wheels start turning and the day to day activities take control.
Once you’ve established a firm sense of direction honour the original thinking and stick to the course. It won’t happen overnight but it will work over time, patience is key.
A business strategy outlines the direction in which you want your company to travel. It plays a vital role in establishing realistic goals and objectives that are in line with the businesses vision and mission statements. The business strategy provides you with a concrete foundation from which your company can grow, analyse its success and set up the framework for efficient decision-making. So believing in it and sticking to it is something that really needs to be driven through week on week to all business owners and staff members who will use the marketing plan.
Sometimes a basic marketing plan template assist small business owners get started. That is often the hardest part, getting started. A marketing plan template is a document that an individual can use to create a marketing plan. The marketing plan template will contain all the important elements and the various needed language with blank sections. A user can insert their own information related to their business in the blank sections to ultimately create their own marketing plan.
There are the basic fundamentals of marketing in the 7 P’s. The 7 Ps of Marketing are product, price, promotion, place, packaging, positioning and people. As products, markets, customers and needs change rapidly, you must continually revisit these seven Ps to make sure you’re on track and achieving the maximum results possible for you in today’s marketplace.
All business owners would aim to be proactive in their decision-making rather than reactive, and a great marketing plan will provide the right guidance for anyone involved in marketing to be proactive. If you’re attempting to increase your company’s market share, a business strategy will dramatically impact the way your company makes crucial decisions in regards to market trends, technological advancements, and unfavourable scenarios.
The terms marketing plan and marketing strategy are often used interchangeably because a marketing plan is developed based on an overarching strategic framework. In some cases, the strategy and the plan may be incorporated into one document, particularly for smaller companies that may only run one or two major campaigns in a year. The plan outlines marketing activities on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis while the marketing strategy outlines the overall value proposition.
Even though you might be starting up as a small business, a successful business strategy will work towards increasing its market share and ideally its profitability. Knowing that a business marketing strategy will provide – your company with valuable insights on market trends, customer segments, your products & services, market position and potential market opportunities. This information allows you to be more strategic in your sales and marketing efforts that in turn can help to increase your businesses bottom-line. It will also allow you time and space to consider how to advertise your small business, as this is not easy, often expensive and everyone seems to have the best solution or answer
A key behavioural element in what a good marketing and business strategy will do is create longevity around the broader plan and longer term goals. Day in and day out it’s easy to lose focus and drift towards opportunities or concepts that are immediately presented. With a solid marketing plan executing it will take weeks and months, and ideally the team involved in driving this through need to be aware it’s the long play made up of short games.
A business strategy plays an important role in identifying unique selling propositions (USP’s), and if the marketing plan is dynamic enough, executing it will allow key stakeholders to embrace it and put their own signature on some of the tasks within while executing it. USP’s are points of difference for your business that help to elevate your business above your competition, so let your team and yourself drive them through the business via their own unique style too where appropriate.
A great small business marketing strategy will focus on making these USP’s the hero of your strategy that differentiates your brand, adds value to your company and ultimately increases your bottom-line.
COG Branding executes your Marketing plan.
