How to create a marketing strategy | A 5-step guide to campaign success
A marketing plan is at best a structure to keep your organisation on track, but at its worst it’s essentially just a very official sounding wishlist. As a company, we’re going to launch this product, advertise it, and deliver this many sales. In isolation it doesn’t contextualise itself with a “Why?” Make no mistake, your marketing plan is important, as it lists the steps you’ll take to achieve specific results, but it needs its foundation: the marketing strategy.
A marketing strategy positis a theory that aims at an outcome. It should be simple. Here’s where we’re focusing our efforts, here’s where we’ll see our biggest wins, here’s what we need to achieve this, and this is the logic by which it’ll all work. From this, you can build a detailed marketing plan that fills in the gaps and carries your business from campaign launch to calculating its return on investment (ROI).
The actual difference between your marketing plan and your marketing strategy can get a bit messy, and you can find yourself scratching your head over where the former begins and the latter ends, but know that they’re the yin and the yang of campaign success, and you need both to succeed.
Here’s our step by step guide to creating your strategy, with practical tips to connect it to your marketing plan.
1. Draft your brand’s story
What are powerhouse brands like Nike and Apple doing with their marketing that not only got them to their lofty position in their respective industries, but keeps them there, product innovation after product innovation after product innovation? They’re telling stories. “Just do it” and “Think different” – every story those brands tell leads off those headlines.
If you’re heading into a physical challenge, “Just do it” is as much a mantra as it is a brand’s slogan, and if you’re looking to be creative or intellectual, “Think different” is a great place to start. They’re direct calls to action, they’re written in simple, plain language anyone can understand, and they sell a lifestyle as much as they sell products. Any story those brands want to tell can be built off those slogans.
This is at the heart of your marketing strategy. This is how you contextualise your unique selling proposition to your audience, and something that should resonate throughout any marketing campaign that gets the green light.
If you don’t already have your brand’s story, or you feel like your current brand’s story isn’t moving the needle, here’s what you’ll need to consider to get the best result:
- What’s your mission statement? Most stories tend to start at the beginning, so consider why you got into business in the first place. What user problem did you set out to solve? (If you don’t already have a mission statement, write one down.)
- What does your business do better than any of your competitors? What does your brand bring to the table that nobody else does?
- How do you connect steps 1 and 2 to your target demographic’s emotions and aspirations?
Remember, you’re not selling them a product, you’re selling them a solution, or a lifestyle, or an aspiration. Your story should connect your product to what they want. This is as much a part of community building as it is a lynchpin of your marketing strategy.
2. Don’t pluck objectives out of thin air: do your due diligence and select relevant KPIs
A big part of devising a marketing strategy is knowing where your business is. What does it need? What are its current challenges? How can marketing help?
Check in with all departments and do a thorough audit of your overall business health, compare that with your road map and mission statement, and from that, identify your business objectives for the next 12 months. When you know what the business as a whole is trying to achieve, you can define marketing objectives that will serve the broader business goals on top of that.
Depending on how much information and data you have available, you may need to do some or all of the following:
- Research your target audience (customise, publish and distribute Surveys easily with Drimify)
- Research and estimate your market size
- Run a SWOT analysis: analyse your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as a business
- Run a detailed competitor analysis
- Evaluate your marketing distribution channels and evaluate more effective options
- Re-evaluate your 4 Ps: product, price, place, and promotion
- Determine what budget you’re allocated or determine what budget is necessary and appropriate
Once you land on your marketing objectives, and you’ve outlined the strategy you’ll use to achieve them, you need to set down informative and relevant key performance indicators (KPIs). Relevant key performance indicators allow you to evaluate your marketing plan and strategy, giving you the quantitative data to make informed decisions, such as adjusting your strategy if it’s not performing as expected, or doubling down on particularly effective tactics.
3. Choose the right marketing channels
This step is a key pillar of your strategy. Your objective might be to achieve X, and this will be front and centre of your marketing plan, but choosing the right marketing channels, alongside your business model and unique selling proposition, IS your marketing strategy. This is tactical. This is HOW you achieve your objectives. This is the means by which your business can be victorious.
When selecting the appropriate marketing channels for your campaign, it’s crucial to consider your target audience and their preferred platforms (see step 1). Conduct an audit of your existing channels, identify areas for improvement, and explore new avenues that align with your objectives.
Estimate the reach and potential impact each channel can have, and don’t underestimate the power of paid social media ads in reaching your desired audience. Remember to adapt your content and format to each marketing channel for maximum engagement and effectiveness.
Pro tip: Test any new marketing channels before committing them to your marketing plan for the year, and focus your efforts on the one that works best. If you change up all the marketing channels from one campaign to the next, it will be more difficult to assess the impact of individual changes.
4. Create value-adding marketing games and interactive content
Interactive marketing techniques like gamification are very much tied into the notion of strategy. Traditional content which audiences passively absorb – like images and videos – saturate the headspace and social feeds of most demographics. Introducing interactivity into how you deliver marketing content is a strategic way to improve engagement, and as a result, give your marketing a better chance of making an impact.
What’s gamification? People aren’t passive when they’re playing a game or trying or trying to win a prize – they pay attention. When you gamify content, you’re harnessing and redirecting that attention to either focus on your targeted messaging, or to encourage users to take a desired action.
Pre-made marketing games can easily be customised on the Drimify gamification platform. You could create contests to deliver excitement, branded classic games to deliver a fun challenge, or customise experiences that educate users about your offering. Whatever your approach to incorporating marketing games in your strategy and plan, all allow you to include customisable contact forms to facilitate passive lead generation.
Gamification works best when applied long-term – every user action on a Drimify-created game generates data, meaning it’s far easier to assess how gamified marketing content is performing than more traditional content, and this makes it easier to improve your approach from one gamification project to the next.
Pro tip: Plan your strategy in advance by creating a marketing calendar so you can make the most of peak trading periods. Mix different experiences throughout these to offer variety and rhythm through the year, ensuring that your campaigns resonate with your audience and stay fresh and exciting. People love to play, love to be challenged, and love opportunities to win prizes, so gamify long-term to cultivate a playful and innovative reputation that encourages long-term loyalty.
5. Put together your implementation schedule
This leans more into the area of the marketing plan as it’s essentially putting all your actionable customer-facing steps into a precise and timed order.
Among other things, your implementation schedule should include:
- The cost of each marketing action
- How it will be supported operationally (think staffing and automation)
- Special considerations, such as assigning priority levels to different tasks and other ad-hoc information that could be key down the line
While the implementation schedule or timeline is more a part of your marketing plan than marketing strategy, there is a lot of overlap. Primarily, your implementation schedule should be informed by your strategy, and furthermore should be executed strategically – what do we mean by that? We mean every little detail should be looked at and addressed to maximise success. For example, social media posts, particularly on the organic side, should be timed to coincide with high-traffic times of day. Nothing on your schedule should be vague, or added as an afterthought.
Additionally, when your campaign (or campaigns if the schedule runs over a longer timeline) is over, it will become a document that will be analysed against results and KPIs to help update your marketing strategy.
Key takeaway
A well-defined marketing strategy is the foundation of a thorough marketing plan and executing successful campaigns.
The key is to stay adaptable and responsive to the evolving needs of your target audience and the ever-changing marketing landscape within your industry.
