A marketing strategy is a ‘game plan’ for a business to achieve its goals. Each business will have different aims, whether they want to attract new customers, promote their new product(s) or generally improve their brand awareness. A business’s marketing strategy is the basis on which marketing decisions are made. Without one, a business is unlikely to have a clear vision. This could lead to confusion and misalignment, subsequently leading to a confused and misaligned brand.
Any good marketing strategy will consider a variety of factors to ensure the fundamental components are covered. In this article, we will cover the main components you should consider when creating your marketing strategy, and if you are still struggling at the end, be sure to get in touch with our team today. We are happy to help.
Main components of a marketing strategy
Depending on your business, your aims, objectives and overall goals will differ not only between industries but from your competitors. Always take the time to personalise your strategy and consider how you want your image to appear to your consumers. There are a few main elements to consider. They include:
- Target audience
- Goals and objectives
- Competitor analysis
- Content creation
What is target audience?
Your target audience is the group of individuals who you want to identify with your brand, buy your products or services, and engage with your content. You should carefully consider who you want your target audience to be.
Top tip: On social media, content tends to do better when targeted to a more specific audience. Try using words like ‘you’ (the consumer) and ‘we’ (the company) to make it more personable.
It is paramount that you confidently establish your target audience to convert leads and subsequently turn a profit.
When defining your audience, you will want to consider their demographic, geographic and psychographic information. You will also consider their behavioural tendencies relating to their actions on a website, an app, or in a store. There are endless ways to gather this data. To begin with, we recommend exploring social media analytics, studying census data and creating online surveys.
Ensuring your target audience is evident throughout your company will help create a clear company message and assist you with content creation and product development.
Creating goals and objectives
As with any part of a marketing strategy, your goals and objectives will differ from other businesses. Of course, some will remain, like wanting to create a profit or grow your clientele, but most are likely to vary depending on the nature of your company.
What is the difference between goals and objectives?
A goal is something that you want to achieve long-term. It is broad and overreaching.
An objective is more specific. It is a short-term action that will contribute to achieving the goal.
A SWOT analysis is a perfect method to identify your goals and objectives as a business initially. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
For a law firm, a SWOT analysis may look something like the below:
| Strengths | Weaknesses | Opportunities | Threats |
| There is lots of interest in your company across the website and social media. | Despite high levels of interest, there are limited conversions.
| You could develop your marketing strategy to be more personable to ensure more leads are converting. | Your competitors may be one step ahead regarding their social media to generate leads, which is becoming increasingly common in the legal industry. |
Concrete goals and objectives are essential for a company outside a marketing strategy, so creating a SWOT is a valuable way to organise ideas and issues.
Using a competitor analysis
Competitor analysis is a helpful way to research your competitors and identify those that are a potential threat to you. You can analyse their products, sales, strategies, social media, website, etc. With this, you can compare and better your own strategy.
We recommend using your SWOT analysis, focusing on opportunities, to identify gaps in your competitors’ strategies so that you can outperform them.
However, always be mindful that you want to refrain from stealing ideas directly from others. Always project the qualities and niches that make your brand yours—using a competitor analysis will aid you in understanding the positives of your company further.
Content creation as part of a marketing strategy
If we had written this article only a few years ago, we wouldn’t be speaking about content creation as such an integral part of a marketing strategy, but it is becoming increasingly more so – and we are here for it!
This is not to say that getting started with engaging, interesting, and differentiated content isn’t really tricky. You want to keep the tone of voice, content type and content style consistent throughout all channels, so consumers are more likely to be able to identify when your content is your content.
Content marketing comes in various forms, and each method contributes to bettering a different element of your online presence. For some useful content writing hacks, click here.
Help with my marketing strategy
A detailed, developed, and concise marketing strategy, although time-consuming, will provide your company with many opportunities.
We understand that you may not have time to procure your marketing strategy, and you might need help figuring out where to start! At FireTap, we would be happy to assist you in creating your marketing strategy, covering all channels, to give you the best chance at achieving sales and ROI.
Please call us on 020 3911 9715, email hello@firetap.co.uk or fill in this contact form.
