Whether you are in the B2C market, where you communicate with consumers, or in the B2B market, where you speak directly to your business partners, or in the labour market, where you apply HR marketing practices, the foundation is always the same: you need a meaningful marketing strategy, simply a battle plan or blueprint by which you will build your marketing. If you have nothing like that, it is like building a house in a swamp. You may succeed, but sooner or later it will fall on your head and your investment will be wasted.
What Is the Recommended Structure of a Marketing Strategy?
There is no universal recipe for a marketing strategy.
At Archetix, however, we believe that a meaningful marketing strategy contains, depending on the field, the following pillars:
– brand definition – why, my mission, vision, what my brand is, how I want to be perceived
– brand anatomy – a detailed definition of how the brand affects my customers
– definition of audiences and customers – general audiences as well as specific marketing personas
– definition of customer scenarios – where people come from and what their journey looks like
– a content strategy proposal – what to write about for the individual audiences and a framework communication plan
– definition of the products and services I offer to customers – above all with regard to the unique offer for your customers
– an indispensable part is also a SWOT analysis describing strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, not only with regard to marketing
– a measurement strategy proposal – micro conversions, macro conversions, what to measure, analyse and evaluate so that I can consider the strategy successful; simply put, goals, KPIs, metrics, where and how to get them
– a marketing budget – a proposal for investments in marketing, financial and human, taking into account the real work as well as the spend in the advertising networks’ wallets
– definition of the marketing channels used – which channels I have, who looks after them
– a proposal for pilot campaigns for PPC, display advertising, video advertising and remarketing – above all the approach and goals, not visuals and copy
In addition, we include mainly as a source of data:
– an assessment of the current state with regard to content, marketing, measurement, invested resources and results achieved
– keyword analysis
– competitor analysis
– historical web analytics data – an initial audit and basic analyses
– historical advertising campaign data
– historical customer data – customer analytics
The approach we use to create a strategy is based on the STDC framework by Avinash Kaushik and on our practice with clients.
Afterwards we can offer help with campaign management, where we are able to coordinate the activities set out in the strategy.
The key is to realise that a marketing strategy is not a static thing. As you start working meaningfully with your customers on marketing, their profile will become more precise, you will be able to manage your content marketing better, refine your measurement and so on. The marketing strategy thus becomes a living document that you use to plan your activities.
How Demanding Is the Preparation of a Marketing Strategy?
The time needed to prepare a meaningful marketing strategy:
– about 9 hours of joint meetings
– about 8 hours of work by a consultant and an analyst on data collection and verification of claims
– about 5 hours of work on finalising the outputs
– about 5 hours of further communication, a handover meeting
So we are talking about at least roughly 30 hours of time.
What Do I Get When I Have a Marketing Strategy?
– synergy from connecting marketing channels (cross-channel or even omnichannel marketing)
– a head start over competitors who are still floundering in marketing
– more efficient investment in the individual marketing channels
Not sure where to start? Try our intake questionnaire, which we use at the beginning of our consultation with a client!
Intake questionnaire for creating a meaningful marketing strategy
And then write or call us and tell us how you got on with the questionnaire.