The Importance of a Marketing Strategy for Businesses Today

What Is the Importance Of Marketing?

Marketing is essential to any good business. It helps you reach and connect with your target audience and ultimately is how you will grow your business in the long run.
Marketing is important because without it, your business simply will not go anywhere because it won’t be seen. 
But it’s one thing to market your business without any direction, and it’s another thing to market your business with a clear plan. The results are quite different.
That’s where a marketing strategy comes into play.
The Importance Of A Marketing Strategy For Business
Many business owners haven’t discovered the importance of a marketing strategy. In fact, having a marketing strategy is so useful that you can think of it as having a road map (or a cheat sheet). It will guide you in just about every business decision that you make.
But what exactly does a marketing strategy entail?
In short, your marketing strategy will highlight the path you’re taking to achieve your specific objectives and goals.
This may sound simple, and it is. But it’s not always easy to ask the hard questions that come with creating a marketing strategy.
And this is the main reason why many businesses don’t recognize the importance of a marketing strategy.
Consequences Of Not Having A Marketing Strategy
Why do most small businesses fail? Why do 50% of companies fail after 5 years?
Remember that common saying? Failing to plan is planning to fail.

If you fail to recognize the importance of a marketing strategy and don’t fully integrate digital marketing into your marketing plan, then these will be the consequences:

•    losing out to competitors
•    losing market share to existing and start up competitors
•    gaining and retaining fewer customers
•    missing out on opportunities for better targeting and optimization
•    Lack of planning often leads to suboptimal execution. This means that competitors will pose more of a threat, filling in the gaps of the lackluster service you offer.

And finally, given the effectiveness of digital marketing, many businesses don’t allocate enough resources towards it. This presents an opportunity for the wise business owner.
Knowledge is power, and after you finish reading this post, your business will have a leg up over the competition. You’ll also be ready to overcome the initial hurdles that are common when trying to come up with a marketing strategy.
Challenges Of Creating A Marketing Strategy
The most common challenge that business owners face when creating a marketing plan is “where do I start?” In fact, this is the most common obstacle for just about any goal in life really.


Importance of a Marketing Strategy for Businesses

1. Find Your Target Demographic
It’s common marketing knowledge that you should create a marketing strategy focused on specific audiences and serving their needs. In order to do this, you have to identify your target audiences’ interests as well as their pain points.
Your target demographics will also dictate what social media marketing strategy you use.

For example, if you’re targeting seniors, then boisterous Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat accounts likely won’t work very well.

If you aren’t sure who your customers really are, then try the following:
•    review all your product orders
•    do an assessment of your followers on social media
•    “eavesdrop” on social media to build up an accurate Buyer’s Persona
And if you think that Google Analytics is sufficient for learning who your target demographic is, then think again.

2. Utilize The Proven SMART Strategy
SMART is a useful acronym to know and it has taken on many different but similar meanings over the years. This is particularly so with marketing (just try doing a Google image search of SMART marketing).

In this case, we’re referring to the traditional meaning of SMART:

1.    Specific
2.    Measurable
3.    Attainable
4.    Realistic
5.    Timely

Without a SMART marketing strategy, you’ll be directionless. You’ll have no actionable path to follow for gaining new customers or maintaining relationships with existing ones.
Your goals must also be SMART-ly translated into marketing initiatives. Otherwise you likely won’t put enough resources into reaching your goals, or you’ll put your resources into the wrong things. That’s what happens when you don’t set goals and measure your success through analytics.

3. Keep Everyone On The Same Page

One of the key parts of the importance of a marketing strategy is keeping everyone in the organization on the same page. This means that everyone should understand the marketing strategy.
That way no matter who’s in charge of the social media posts for the day, they will all have the same consistent message.
When everyone is on the same page, your organization will also be able to effectively utilize the skills of all employees and stakeholders.
But what happens when everyone isn’t on the same page? One word: duplication.
What is duplication? In the worst sense, duplication means inefficiently doing the daily tasks that need to be done.  
Duplication will waste your time and money. If everyone in the organization purchases/uses different tools and different agencies, but are performing similar online marketing tasks, then duplication is probably happening.
Staying on the same page also means keeping everything integrated. This includes your digital marketing activities and your traditional marketing activities.
You want your traditional media marketing and response channels to remain consistent along with your digital marketing channels. This requires integration and embracing the importance of a marketing strategy for your business.

4. Keep Everything Timely

Following the train of thought with keeping everyone on the same page, you also want to keep everyone on the same timeline. And you must create a timeline in order for this to work.
The importance of a marketing strategy is highlighted by the timeliness of its plans. As we all know, timing is critical when it comes to business.
But before you can create a timely marketing strategy, you have to fully commit to digital marketing. You must accept that it will require consistent and constant attention. If you think that don’t have the time or patience, then hiring a digital marketing agency is always an option.

Consistent and constant attention implies the following:
•    Being responsive to questions and messages.
•    Being responsive to likes and tweets.
•    Putting yourself out there with your own likes and tweets. In other words, being social on social media!
•    Always responding to feedback, whether good or bad.
•    Responding in a professional manner.

You must also be adaptable enough to keep up or catch up with the newest trends.
See how the top companies do this? They keep up with newest methods to increase or maintain their target audience.
When you’re committed to staying adaptable, then you’ll be all set on the path to optimization.
And with the right marketing strategy you’ll get the basics right. Then you can continue to improve upon the key aspects of your digital marketing strategy. For example, search marketing, social media marketing, etc.

Now, to tie all this together, it’s of course essential to write down dates/deadlines and your objectives. It’s best to do this on a marketing calendar. It will detail your timelines to achieve your objectives. You should check this calendar on a weekly basis at least.

Finally, you’ll want to integrate real world events that relate to your business into your marketing strategy. For example, you could run a promotion off of Valentine’s Day or National Donut Day.  Even though Edible Arrangements doesn’t sell donuts, they capitalized on National Donut Day by offering cored out granny smith apple slices dipped in chocolate.