15th September, 2017

4 components of a successful marketing strategy

Marketing has never been so dynamic, and marketers have never had such powerful tools at their disposal. Technology is continuously providing marketers with new opportunities. But if there’s no long term strategy underpinning your thinking, chances of success are significantly reduced. So it’s time for our blog on:

Successful Marketing Strategy

Regardless of what components your digital marketing strategy is made up of, one thing is for sure, marketers are interacting with consumers across multiple devices and numerous digital channels.

And if you still haven’t implemented cross-channel communications into your digital marketing strategy, you need to put it on the top of your to-do list.

So, how can you make sure your digital marketing strategy is on the path to success?

We liked a recent article by business.com suggests following four key components:

1. Set measurable targets for your Marketing

Rule 1. Align your Marketing goals with the commercial KPIs for your business. A million Facebook likes is great…but how does that translate into commercial performance?

Having this conversation will ensure you get buy-in for your plan across the business, and usually buys you a bit more time if things don’t go exactly to plan!

Ensure your targets are measurable, and keep an eye on progress. Even if performance is below par, you can do something to turn it around. Failing fast and moving on is a key skill in managing your marketing plan.

2. Conduct an audit of current activities

Before planning for the future, you need to understand where you are right now. You (presumably) carry out audits for other areas of your business, so why wouldn’t you also do one for your company’s marketing?

An audit will help you identify any previously unnoticed weaknesses in your campaigns, show any areas that worked out better than others, and reveal where you’re getting the best return on investment.

All of this will give you a good idea of where to go next, letting you set key targets and metrics to ensure your strategy is moving forward.

3. Build trust with quality content

In today’s era of “fake news”, trust has never been such a highly valued commodity. But how can you build trust when you ultimately want to encourage consumers to buy your products and services?

The answer is to share high-quality content, with quality – rather than quantity – being the operative word.

Content creation helps to show who you are as a company, positions you as a leader in your sector, and helps bring together other elements of your overall digital marketing strategy.

The overwhelming majority of marketers (89% of B2B and 86% of B2C) include content marketing in their digital strategy, and 46% believe their content marketing is now more effective than it was a year ago.

Use social media to engage with consumers

You aren’t going to be able to build relationships with your customers if you just use social media as a way of pushing sales messages. Consumers want to be able to converse with brands and, thanks to technological advances, they expect to be able to interact with them one-on-one.

In fact, research from Sprout Social revealed that brands are now receiving 146% more social messages that require a response compared to just three years ago.

The more you engage with customers and their queries on social media, the more you’ll win their trust, and the more traffic you’ll drive to your website in the long run.

4. Regularly review your results

You can’t assess or improve your campaign if you don’t analyse the results.

To be a successful marketer, you need to plan, launch, review and test. And you need to follow the mantra that you can always improve campaign performance.

Marketers have more data to hand than ever before, and we need to utilise it. Not only to ensure we are targeting consumers with engaging content (which will ultimately lead to campaign success), but also to keep track on how our ever-more complicated campaign plans are performing.

If you’re struggling with your marketing strategy, speak to Fireworx. We can help improve your understanding of customers, create quality content and measure performance — things you’ll need to master for the future.

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