17 Thoughts for a Marketing Strategy

Marketing takes your product to your customer or consumer. Without marketing, the reach of your product is limited and the profits may be low. But, marketing infuses life into the selling cycle and brings huge profits.

Let us look at few points to develop a good marketing strategy.

1. Identify your target market/customer: An useful acronym to remember is aeiog that stands for age, education, income, occupation, gender, and geographical location of your prospective customers. Describe your customer in about half a page and talk to this imaginary customer. You need to make a psychographic study and know the hobby, interests, and quirks of your customer.

2. Your USP: The next step is to identify your "Unique Selling Proposition", For e.g, the USP for Domino's Pizza is "a pizza at your doorstep within 30 minutes of placing an order."

3. Do a SWOT Analysis: Analyze your internal strengths and weaknesses and also external opportunities and threats. 

4. Pricing and Positioning: Narrow down your target customers and focus your efforts towards this target group. Keep in mind that 76% of people do not believe your advertisements.

5. Distribution : Decide if you will sell directly to customers or to distributors or use a combination of both.

6. Your Offers: Free offers, discount, packaged offers, guarantee offers, act now offers.

7. Marketing Material: All marketing material such as banners, blogs, newsletters, and paper advertisements will talk to the target customer.

8. Promotion Strategy: Decide if you will do Trade shows/ Direct mails/ WOM/ Podcasts / Radio advertisements or more.

9. Online Marketing Strategy: Identify keywords and do SEO. Pay Per Click (PPC)  works better than Search Engine Optimization(SEO).

10. Conversion Strategy: Improve your offers and sales script. Increase your social proof, nurture and never give up.

11. Look for Joint Ventures and Partnerships: Look for partners who will include your brand name in their marketing material or promotions.

12. Referral Strategy: Ask your existing customers to refer new customers. 

13. Strategy to Increase Transaction Prices: Raise your prices, up sell, cross sell, and offer product packages. Your primary goal is to close the sale, and second goal is to maximize the price of sale or increase order size. 

14. Retention Strategy: Ongoing communication, loyalty programs, and continuity programs.

15. Public Relations Activities: Advertising is a weak media unless supported by PR.

16. Draw a Marketing Calendar - Keep in mind days such as Mother's Day, Valentines Day, Children's day etc. 

17.  Make a Marketing Budget: And allocate funds for different activities.