What is a Marketing Strategy

Marketing Strategy is the foundation of your marketing plan, and the blueprint for achieving your marketing goals. It has the details on where you want to go, and how you are going to achieve those goals. Most importantly, your strategy comes before your marketing plan.

What Is Marketing Strategy?

A marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan formulated particularly for achieving the marketing objectives of an organisation or business. It provides a basic concept for reaching these marketing objectives which are the building blocks of a marketing plan. A marketing strategy helps an organization or business to use its scarce resources on the best possible opportunities to help increase brand awareness, sales and traffic to your website.

The Difference Between A Marketing Strategy And Marketing Plan

People often get confused with these two terms and they are often used interchangeably. There is a big difference between a plan and strategy, and although they work together, they are two separate elements of a business.

The Strategy

A marketing strategy is the foundation on which a marketing plan is built. Implementing a good strategy helps businesses identify their best customers and helps them to better understand consumer needs. When you have a good strategy, it is possible to implement the most effective marketing methods. In other words, it defines your goals and lays out a basic plan of what you want and need to do. Basically the “why” and “what” behind your business.

The Plan

A marketing plan is basically driven by your marketing strategy. So that makes your marketing plan is the execution; the treasure map of tactical marketing efforts that help you achieve your marketing goals as set out in your marketing strategy. A marketing plan is a detailed campaign of “what” you will do, “where” you will do it, “when” you will implement, and “how” you will execute. You track your success against your strategy – In other words, without a strategy, you can’t determine how successful your marketing initiatives were.

Why is a Marketing Strategy Important?

There are a lot of business owners out there who have yet to discover the importance of a strategy. The fact is, having a strategy is like having a road map to guide you in just about every marketing decision you need to make.

So, what does a marketing strategy entail exactly?

Basically, your strategy will help you with the road you’re taking to achieve your specific objectives and goals. This may sound relatively easy, which it is. But it’s sometimes difficult to ask the hard questions that come with creating a marketing strategy. That, and the fact that most business owners don’t understand the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan, make up the main reasons why many owners don’t realize how important it is to have one.

Having No Marketing Strategy Can Impact Your Business Negatively

Have you ever wondered why most small businesses fail? What is the reason why 50% of companies fail after 5 years? How about a more relatable question. Have you ever wondered why your marketing initiatives fail? Even when they look promising, they still don’t seem to measure up to your expectations. That’s because, without a strategy, your marketing is ‘blind’.

Benjamin Franklin said it best when he said: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Not having a strategy, or understanding how important it is, can negatively impact your business and carry consequences like:

Losing out to your competition
Losing market share to existing and start-up companies
Gaining and retaining less customers
Missing out on opportunities to improve targeting and optimization
A lack of planning often the reason to suboptimal execution. This means that your competition companies will pose more of a threat, filling in the gaps of the service you offer.

Having a good marketing strategy in place helps businesses identify their best customers. It also helps them understand what consumers want. With a good strategy in place, it is definitely possible to implement the most effective marketing methods.

Time To Act!

Are you ready to start marketing your brand? We have a range of services that integrate into our strategic marketing services.

We understand that it can be difficult to decide on a marketing partner – you want the best for your business!

Contact us to schedule a 30 minute online meeting to discuss your marketing goals, and find out if we’re a good match for your business.

Why Choose Anima Digital?

At Anima Digital, we understand that a cookie cutter approach doesn’t work. Every business, every industry, and even every service or product, might need its own unique approach. We create a marketing strategy for you that is formulated specifically for achieving the marketing objectives of your business. This includes:

Executive Summary – Outlines your marketing strategy.
Background – Analysing your business goals, marketing goals, and challenges.
Market Analysis – Describes the opportunity, market segments and impacts that could affect your market (trends, economic, seasons).
Target Audience– A detailed version of your market segments and their characteristics. Here we include the examples of segments you are not targeting and how your offering is better than competition.
Competitive Analysis – We do a comprehensive analysis on different categories of your competition and their characteristics. This includes any threats, market share comparison, differentiation, barriers to entry, etc.
Offering – We make sure that what you deliver or offer to the market, what the need is, the feature and benefit for each segment, and how you plan on delivering those features or benefits.
Message – We take the time to uncover what the audience knows or believes about your company. What do they say? When have they bought, and when haven’t they? What resonates with your target audience?
Channels and Platforms – Where have clients heard about you and your services? What key channels are useful and relevant? What are the most effective channels?

Do You Have An Online Presence?

Do your clients know where to find you online? Without a website, you are losing out on business that are going to your competitors. With our powerful web design and SEO packages, clients can find you exactly when they need to!