Everything A Small Business Needs To Know About Marketing Strategy

Do you have a small business?

Everyone knows how important it is to plan ahead – and, there’s no difference when it comes to marketing.

Unfortunately, small and medium-sized business owners can often find themselves struggling to just keep up, let alone planning marketing campaigns. So, what usually happens is ad hoc marketing or on-the-fly promotions.

However, this can make your SME directionless and unsustainable, hindering you from reaping long-term success.

Relying on reactive marketing rather than sticking to a well-planned marketing strategy can only do so much. So, if you haven’t created a marketing strategy yet, it’s not too late to consider it.

Here are reasons why you should spend time on marketing strategy and everything you need to know about how to do it.

What is Marketing strategy?

Marketing strategy is a complete plan or roadmap that details out what your overarching goals are and how your business will reach them using marketing.

A marketing strategy is like a blueprint that guides your marketing efforts, activities and resources in the right direction to achieve the best possible outcome.

For more on this, read: The Six Pillars Of A Complete Marketing Strategy

Why is Marketing Strategy important for small businesses?

Every business needs to have a sense of direction to achieve great results such as strong brand recognition, profitable campaigns, higher revenue and business growth.

Marketing strategy gives you the basis to work out how to take advantage of opportunities through strengths and how to avoid threats. When planned out correctly, this can help you gain a competitive advantage that will lead to achieving a greater market share in your industry.

When planned out correctly, a marketing strategy can help you gain a competitive advantage that will lead to achieving a greater market share in your industry.

For example, a local agency is not going to make significant progress by promoting itself randomly every day. This can lead to sloppy marketing and a confusing brand identity.

Additionally, management may quickly become disheartened by the lack of results and pull marketing altogether (which will make matters worse).

However, if they sat down and considered:

• Why the business exists
• Why customers like it
• What the brand stands for
• How you want to promote it, and so on…

Suddenly, there is a cohesive plan of action to the way the agency promotes itself. Now, everything the team does is to strengthen and contribute to this strategy.

No more random social media posts or mixed messages. Now, we have a clear marketing strategy and this will help your target audience understand and relate to your brand much better.

What are the benefits of Marketing Strategy for small business?

Planning and strategising your marketing prepares your SMB (small to medium business) in the long run by aiding in utilising and distributing your resources, budget and products according to when they’re needed the most.

A well-planned marketing strategy doesn’t just determine what marketing efforts, promotional activities and ads a business like yours should do - it also helps in keeping everyone united, giving your staff direction.

For small businesses like yours who are still in their critical stage, this can make a big difference to your ongoing success.

What makes up a marketing strategy? How can you do it?

Many small businesses overlook the importance of marketing strategy because they think it’s all too complicated.

You probably imagine hundreds of papers and countless presentations when planning and strategising is brought up, right?

But you don’t have to worry.

The truth is, marketing strategy is not that complicated – you just have to know about the key factors that make up a marketing strategy for small business.

Here are the important elements involved:

Vision Statement

Define your overall purpose for your business.

Mission Statement

Explain how you will act as a business to realise your Vision.

Goals and Objectives

Next, break down your mission into smaller goals and objectives for both the long and short term what will achieve your business Vision. In a Marketing Plan, it can be daily campaigns, weekly promotions, monthly content pieces, quarterly events and so on.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

This kind of analysis assists your business in determining where you are now, what should be improved, what should be maintained and what should be replaced. In marketing, this helps you see what makes you different from your competitors and how to act on this.

Target Market

This step is so important. Knowing your target audience in great detail will help you tailor your marketing efforts in a way that will attract and engage them, and inspire them to act.

For more, read: The Guide To Content Marketing Success: How To Meet Your Customer’s Obsession

The Complete Marketing Mix

This is the core of your Marketing Strategy, and it involves what’s known as the Marketing Mix.

There are 8 parts to a modern marketing mix today:

1. Product: the benefits and features of your product or service offering
2. Price: the amount you charge
3. Promotion: how you advertise
4. Place: where you distribute and communicate
5. Positioning: what makes your brand unique
6. People: how your team behaves
7. Procedures: your standard operating procedures
8. Physical Evidence: what your environment says about your brand

Your Marketing Plan must define how you use each of these 8 “Marketing Ps” to achieve your objectives.

For more information, see: how does copywriting help a small business grow successfully?

Monitoring and Measurement

It’s just as necessary to set key performance indicators that you can use to measure the effectiveness of your plans. Remember, not all Marketing is a science – so, measuring and adapting is a way to keep your marketing on track.

Determine a measurable level of results in a defined time frame, such as the results of your promotional period, sales figures, profit level and the number of leads and customers you obtained in a quarter. Then stick to this review period and act on your findings.

Now it’s your business’ turn!

Now that you’ve seen the importance of marketing strategy, you can move your business forward by actually doing it.

And if you’re finding it hard to do a marketing strategy on your own, you can always rely on experts and marketing professionals to guide you along the way.

There’s no room for excuses! Remember, “failing to plan is planning to fail”!

See: Why You Should Hire A Copywriter Who Knows Content Strategy

How Can Melotti Media Help You? 

We understand that you want to achieve business success by developing a comprehensive and effective marketing strategy.

We also know that you’re time-poor and spread thin, and it’s possible you still have a lot of unanswered questions.

But you don’t have to worry!

At Melotti Media, we can assist you with your content marketing needs while you focus on what matters most to you – growing your business.  

Let’s start getting the results your business deserves by building a quality marketing strategy!

For more information or to speak to a trusted copywriter, contact us now at [email protected]

We can sharpen your words to achieve your goals today!