Is your marketing strategy working? You might be just starting out or you may have an established brand already, either way, are you seeing the sales numbers you deserve?
Having a solid plan in place isn’t simple. There are more than a few crucial things to consider when deciding when, where, and how to spend your marketing dollars.
The “why” though, is easy.
What is a marketing strategy?
A marketing strategy is a process businesses use to determine where to spend (often limited) resources to maximize an increase in sales and to achieve or maintain a high competitive advantage.
A good strategy is all about using proper targeting to convert prospective consumers into long-term customers.
Why long-term customers? Well, not only does it cost more to attract new business, but repeat customers spend more, are easier to sell to, and eventually, they become part of your strongest marketing tool: Word-Of-Mouth referrals.
What are SMART Marketing Goals?
Just as no ship sets sail without a heading, you should always know what the end goal of your marketing strategy is. It could be sales, awareness, or breaking into a new market. Whatever it is, make sure it’s SMART:
Specific
Your goal should be stated clearly with no room for ambiguity.
Your marketing goal should never be something flimsy like “create brand awareness”. It needs to be specific. Instead of “Improve our social media channels” it should be “Gain more Instagram followers by posting 3 times a day and engaging in the comment section”.
Measurable
You need to be able to measure the success of your current marketing plan.
Did you achieve your goal? If not, how off the mark were you? If your goal is to “Increase monthly sales by 300 units”, you will know exactly how well your plan worked. Then, you can adjust the next goal or budget accordingly.
Achievable
Always set goals that are reachable.
Every business doesn’t have endless cash reserves to throw into marketing. Never set yourself up for failure. On average, it takes over a year to achieve 1000 subscribers on YouTube. If your channel is sitting at 300 subscribers, it is unrealistic to expect a 100% increase in a single month.
Set a goal you can reach, then shoot for the stars.
Relevant
The goal you’re setting should help improve a specific aspect of your business.
At the end of the day, making your business viable is the name of the game. Whenever you set a goal, ask yourself “So what?” You’ve increased your followings across different social media channels. So what? If you aren’t leveraging that extra publicity into your business, it isn’t relevant.
Make sure your marketing goals always feed into the overall goal of your business.
Timely
You should have a specific timeline, a start and a finish date, to complete your goal.
If you have followed all the other steps in creating a SMART goal, it should not be something that goes on forever. You need to be able to take stock of the goal you set and move forward with a new one.
This is also important due to something called Parkinson’s Law: An adage that states “work expands to fill the time available for its completion”. So, if you give yourself a month to complete something, it will take a month. If you give yourself three months, it will take three months.
Creating SMART goals is the first step in a long journey. Creating a strong marketing strategy is a deep and complicated process.
It’s a good thing Siva is here.
Siva creates plans with one thing in mind: The profitability of your business. A partnership with us means we can focus on the marketing, while you continue doing what you do best.
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