The Marketing Strategy Process

Having a strong marketing strategy process in place helps to ensure that your marketing activities remain aligned with your business goals, maximizing the business return from your marketing efforts.

The picture on the right shows the process for developing and aligning marketing strategy.

These are the steps you should follow to create and execute a winning marketing strategy.

I’ll briefly review each step in turn:

1. Understand Your Customer

   Develop a clear picture of your target customer using market research and analysis. Understand their pain points and the benefits of your solution.

2. Analyze the Market

   Some basic market research should allow you to find market data such as total available market, market growth (historical numbers and projections), market trends, etc.

3. Analyze the Competition

   Ask yourself what other choices your target customers have to solve their pain point. Research and assess the strengths and weaknesses of each. Take a look at this article for more info on competitive marketing strategy.

4. Research Distribution Channels

   What is the best way to deliver your product or service to your target customers? This will impact your sales strategy and your financials, as well as your marketing mix.

5. Define Your Marketing Mix

   Check out this article about defining your marketing mix: Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

6. Analyze the Financials

   Put together your marketing budget and evaluate projected marketing ROI, customer acquisition costs, etc.

7. Review and Revise

   Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, and revise or extend as needed.

For help in developing a marketing strategy, check out this article on marketing strategy planning.

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