Sometimes perspective is the very thing that illuminates truth. Like this, if a company produced an awful product but marketed that product perfectly, they would find success – at least for a while. If you doubt that just remember the last time you bought something that you quickly discovered was poorly made, constructed or conceived. How did that product even get to market, find the shelves of any store? The answer is marketing. Statistics like the ones from a recent article only provide more confirmation:
“Almost 90% of marketers say their social marketing efforts have increased exposure for their business…” and “40% of consumers have purchased an item online after seeing it used on Instagram, Twitter, Vine or YouTube.”
It really doesn’t take much imagination to envision the resulting success of combining your expertise and your quality product or service with the power of marketing. That only leaves one question…
How to Develop a Successful Marketing Plan
This could very well be a devil in the details type of situation but the actual planning of your inbound marketing and sales campaign should be very straightforward. The technical, content, creative and implementation aspects is where it can get tricky and why professional support is always advisable.
There are three primary considerations when making your marketing plan…
1. Trust Your Customer Data
The first and most important consideration of the marketing plan should be your customers, both current and future. Who are they? Where are they? What social platforms do they frequent most? What is hot and current within this target audience? This is one area where data and intelligence is irreplaceable. Knowing and not guessing what your customers want, where they are found and so on has empowered marketing to become the most effective tool for businesses.
“LinkedIn is the only major social media platform for which usage rates are higher among 30- to 49-year-olds than among 18- to 29-year-olds.”
If your business caters to those within the 30 to 49-year-old age range it might be advisable to consider utilizing the LinkedIn platform, right? This is only one example of why it is necessary to allow your customer data to dictate how, where, to whom and what you do with your marketing strategy. That LinkedIn statistic came from a site reporting on the demographics of social media, more of those insightful numbers can be seen here.
Information like this will enable companies to better manage their marketing plan, improve the understanding of their business and budget appropriately.
2. Budget and Scale
Speaking of budgets, that is the second priority and consideration of the marketing plan. Perhaps the most empowering attribute of technology and the digital age is the ability to reach so many in such a cost-effective manner. Regardless of what you do with your strategy from employing an email campaign to a full-on social media campaign, starting with what you have is all you need.
Marketing works and it doesn’t require much to get started, that is the layman’s translation. Using your current budget to implement a successful strategy will produce a ROI that will enable your budget to grow. As your marketing plan succeeds and the business grows it is important to not forget the third consideration of your marketing plan.
3. Goals
It is impossible to win a race without a finish line. Setting goals for your marketing campaign in light of what the company’s goals are will keep you on track. Again, we will find great benefits in using data-driven tools. Understanding where you are in the race, what you can do better and other insights will assist in refining your marketing machine. These perspectives will also help align the best marketing strategy to employ.
Sometimes perspective is the very thing that illuminates truth. Know what you want to say, where you want to go and where you see your business in five, ten and many more years down the road. Inbound marketing is the vehicle that will take you where you want to go – provided you know where that is.
To learn more about how to improve your marketing strategies, give us a call at 661-702-1310!
