What is a Marketing Strategy?
You need to know your destination before you set off. Creative marketing strategies work in much the same way – the strategy defines what success looks like and how we’re going to get there.
A detailed marketing strategy will be based on detailed research, data analysis and competitor research. Having and interpreting this information will mean that whatever is proposed for the marketing activity will not be based on guess work. This gives us a base-level of expected results before the marketing budget is spent.
Before the strategy phase begins it is important to have a clear vision of what the business objectives are – whether it’s selling more products, raising awareness or increasing business leads. All strategic activity will have this end goal at its core. How success will be measured and ensuring that reporting metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are established needs to be built into the campaign plan from the beginning.
The strategy will be refined in collaboration between the agency and the client so that reasonable budgets and expectations can be set.
In addition the strategy may define a phased approach, which can help to optimise and adjust subsequent phases once results from early phases are analysed. This is especially useful in long term campaigns and can help to focus future activity on known successes; delivering further results even more economically.
Why is a Marketing Strategy Important?
The marketing strategy will define where budgets will be spent in both the short and long term.
With business pressures on marketing budgets requiring a positive return on investment, it is essential that the strategy is carefully researched and planned to take the guesswork out of where that budget is spent.
Basing the strategy on data and research means that campaign teams can clearly define an expected result, one that can be agreed prior to any further activity starting. This clearly prevents wasted budgets, both in the creation of content and creative and in advertising spend.
