The goal in nearly every business is to increase sales and establish a competitive advantage. One of the most effective ways for any business to achieve this goal is to create a killer marketing strategy. But, what is an effective marketing strategy and can anything, like printing, affect your plan? Check out the specifics and determine just what you need to include in your next marketing plan.
What Is a Marketing Strategy?
Aside from a business plan, your marketing strategy is the next most important component to your business’s success. This strategy is the combination of all of your marketing goals into one comprehensive plan. Ideally, your strategy is to take from appropriate and relevant market research that includes a focus on your product’s niche market. Creating such a plan will allow you to achieve maximum profit potential as well as a sustainable business.
What Are the Most Important Components of a Marketing Strategy?
Today’s society presents a unique challenge to companies. Being in a digital age, consumers today are inundated with ads, material, and commercials. With that, it makes marketing especially difficult as companies have to work even harder to stand out. Thus making your marketing strategy even more important. According to Forbes, there are 4 things you must have in any marketing plan to make it effective in today’s technology era.
1. Clear Business Objectives – The basic foundation of the marketing strategy is your company’s goals. Probably the most important component of your plan is clearly written, impactful business goals. Without these, you’ll have no direction.
2. Innovative Research Techniques – In addition to effective goals, you also need appropriate research to identify new business opportunities. Think about how you can use teaming, evaluation, and other research strategies to situate yourself as a leader in the market. Include these components in your strategy.
3. Separate Strategy and Innovation – It’s common to want to pair strategy and innovation when it comes to marketing. You likely feel the need to put some of your most reliable, strategic thinkers and achievers in your group for innovation. But, the problem is those individuals are successful because they are strategic, not innovative. Create a team focused on using tried and true strategies as well as one designated to try innovative practices. Chances are your innovators won’t be as successful as quickly, but they’ll come up with new ideas that lead the market down the road.
4. Focus on Raising Brand Awareness – Consumers today have changed, so your marketing strategy needs to, too. 48hourprint.com says, “Instead of focusing solely on a compelling advertising campaign, hone in on how to raise brand awareness. By attracting your customers in this way, you’ll inspire them to participate in your brand and can then capitalize on the market.”
What Other Factors Influence Your Marketing Strategy?
When you’re considering the factors that influence your marketing strategy, it’s actually easier to use a little reverse thinking once you get past the basics. Obviously all of the fundamental components, mentioned above, have an effect on your campaign. However, you also need to think about what things will affect your marketing if they are not in place, take print for example.
Brochures, sales sheets, flyers, and the like were the primary drivers behind sales campaigns not too many years ago. While today is a digital age, think about if your customers never saw any print material for your company. There would obviously be something lacking, right?
So, obviously printing has a pretty large impact on your marketing strategy, but you just have to learn to leverage print in a new way. Focus on using print in new ways, capitalizing on innovative graphic design techniques and using new strategies like 3D printing.
When you combine all of the basic components of a killer marketing strategy with that of innovative printing, you’ll be able to blow your competitors out of the water.
