Do you have a small- to medium-sized business (SMB)?
No matter what your business objectives are, you need an effective marketing strategy to achieve them.
81% of SMB owners credit the success of their business during the pandemic to their marketing strategy.
71% felt their marketing strategy was critical to the survival of their business.
In this article, we will look at how you can create an effective SMB marketing strategy and measure its results against your business objectives.
What Is A Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy encompasses what your SMB needs to achieve specific business objectives through marketing.
This includes:
- Goals that you want your business to hit.
- Snapshots of your current business to compare KPIs to at a later date.
- A clear definition of your target customers and where they’re located.
- Explanations of the steps behind getting your brand in front of your target audience.
- Plans to measure your marketing campaign performance against your snapshots.
- Ways to adjust your tactics accordingly.
Why Is A Marketing Strategy So Important?
According to a survey conducted by CoSchedule, marketers that documented their strategy were 414% more likely to succeed in achieving their goals through marketing.
What Is The Difference Between A Marketing Strategy & A Marketing Plan?
Your marketing plan exists within your marketing strategy, outlining the tactics that will be used to achieve your business objectives.
Step 1: Set Goals For Your SMB
Before you can create a marketing strategy and begin outlining the tactics that your SMB will use, you have to set goals.
What do you want to accomplish as part of your overall growth through marketing?
Most businesses want to increase revenue, so we’ll use that as an example.
While increasing revenue is a great place to start for SMB goal-setting, you must keep the rule of SMART goal-setting in mind.
Your goals should be Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely.
A great example of a SMART goal for SMBs is “increasing revenue by 33% by the end of the fourth quarter”.
This SMART goal would allow you to break down specific needs to achieve this goal, such as the number of additional:
- Customers you would need to generate this revenue.
- Leads you would need for your sales team to generate enough additional customers.
- Website visitors you would need from marketing to generate enough leads.
Now, you have a specific objective for your marketing strategy – to increase the number of website visitors to your website that are most likely to convert from visitor to lead and, ultimately, convert from a lead to a sale.
Step 2: Create A Baseline
Before you begin running marketing campaigns, you need to document key metrics that will establish your baseline, or starting point.
A baseline will allow you to determine which marketing tactics generate specific numbers, such as an increase in website visitors, callers, and leads.
For example, if your current marketing objective is to increase website traffic and generate more leads and you plan to run campaigns on multiple marketing channels, you need to know how many website visitors and leads you currently receive from each of those channels.
This allows you to create SMART goals and compare your success to where you began.