Does Your Marketing Strategy Reflect Your Business Goals? | Simplemachine
Simply put, every marketing move you make should support and show your company’s business goals. If any part of your marketing strategy is not directly connected with at least one of your business goals, you are committing resources towards something that could actually be damaging to the business. And that’s not something you want your marketing strategy to do.
Alignment Between Marketing Strategy and Business Goals Is Critical
Every dollar you spend on marketing that doesn’t align with your business goals is a dollar wasted. That might work for a large corporation where resources are less constrained. For a small company, every marketing dollar counts. That’s one reason that alignment between marketing strategy and business goals is so critical.
In fact, a marketing strategy should derive directly from each year’s business goals. Let’s say your company is introducing a new product line in the coming year. Part of your marketing strategy promotes the new product, positioning it in the marketplace, assisting with the product rollout, and continuing marketing support afterward.
What should you leave out of your marketing strategy? Anything that distracts from your business goals. Anything that contradicts your brand and marketing message. Anything that wastes the marketing budget.
How to Align Your Marketing Strategy with Your Business Goals?
To make the most out of every marketing dollar, you need to get things in order.
#1 Define your business goals clearly
This is a step that you might already have under control. However, if not, you need to take the time to define the goals clearly. Each goal is specific, time-based, and possible. There is a clear way to measure each goal’s progress and completion.
Clearly defined business goals help define marketing goals and strategies. Without clear business goals, it’s difficult to know where to focus your marketing efforts and which strategies to leverage.
#2 Derive your marketing strategy directly from your goals
Let’s say one of your business goals for this year is to make $1 million in revenue from online marketing. How are you going to make that happen? Identify what you know and work from there.
To start, you need to know how much, on average, you make for every sale derived from online marketing. That information is available from your past marketing data. Using this information, answer the following questions:
- How many successful sales is it going to take to meet that $1 million goal?
- How many visitors do you need to drive to your website to get that many sales?
- What marketing tactics do you need to deploy to drive that much traffic to your website?
- Are there any changes or updates you need to make to your website to give visitors more incentives to become leads or paying customers?
This is only an example, but it illustrates moving from what you know and identifying the marketing strategy you should use to meet marketing and business goals.
#3 Know your intended audience
Before you can complete your marketing strategy, you need to know your target audience. How you market to a 20-something, single, no kids, fresh out of college is different from how you market to a 40-something, married, with two teenagers and a mortgage.
Developing a buyer persona for each member of your target audience helps focus your marketing efforts. A persona identifies the traits typical for someone who would want to buy your product or service. Information usually included in a persona: gender, age range, occupation, marital status, income bracket, number of kids, lifestyle, pain points, needs, etc.
The point of creating a buyer persona is to know who you are marketing to, how best to communicate your message, and where to find that potential buyer in the digital world.
#4 Identify your marketing tactics
You know what you are marketing, who you are marketing to, and why you are doing the marketing. Now, you need to find the how, meaning which tactics you are going to use in your marketing strategy.
Here are several potential tactics you can deploy:
- On-line banners and ads
- Adword campaigns
- Landing pages
- Backlink creation
- SEO
- Video marketing
- Whitepapers
- eBooks
- Infographics
- Client reviews
- Social media marketing
The exact mix of marketing tactics you deploy depends entirely on the goal you are seeking to fulfill and the audience you are targeting.
#5 Obtain necessary resources
Once you have a strategy, you need to decide if you have the resources you need or not. Can you plan, develop, deploy, and manage every aspect of your marketing strategy? Do you have the knowledge and experience to do it right?
It is time to look outside your company to help with some of your marketing efforts. Hiring an outside agency brings you that critical knowledge and experience. It also gives you the time to focus on what you do best.
Bringing your marketing strategy in line with your business goals will maximize its effects. If you need help with your marketing strategy, Simplemachine is here to help. Let’s get together and talk about your marketing needs.
