The Importance Of Strategic Marketing Planning
Would you like to be the sole business in your industry that has no plan of action for strategic marketing? If that is the case, then feel free to avoid this post. For those of you who are keen on understanding what strategic marketing is all about and how you can gain a competitive advantage with it, please continue reading!
A strategic marketing plan can be defined as an outline created by a brand to get a sound understanding of the business goals that must be achieved. It summarizes the strategies required for improving brand image and increasing sales & revenue. This article will discuss in detail why it is important for any business that plans to boost its outreach.
Before getting started, you must understand what is strategic marketing.
Strategic marketing involves using what you already know about your brand to establish the most profitable means for advertising it.
There are multiple reasons why your business needs a strategic marketing plan in 2023 and beyond. We have explained 5 of them in detail below.
1. Developing A Coherent Brand Message
Your employees already know the kind of values prioritized by your organization. But what about your customers? It’s more important for them to understand what your brand encompasses.
Strategic marketing planning helps a company to identify clear brand messaging—including its vision and mission, and core values, according to the types of products or services it offers. It also enables you to create a unique value proposition for making your business stand out from the competition.
2. Establishing Business Goals
A meticulous strategic marketing plan can also help you set clear goals for your business. Having well-defined goals is vital in order to execute a marketing strategy successfully. With a plan of action in development, you can easily identify the most important objectives, such as –
- improving brand awareness
- increasing client loyalty
- building revenue
- improving profitability
Apart from goals, you can also identify key performance indicators that will help you understand how well your organization is performing.
3. Determining The Target Audience
It is important to understand which market segment you can most effectively reach, and with what product or service. Businesses must understand their audience segments and take the time to conduct thorough research before marketing their product. Strategic marketing planning proves indispensable when it comes to establishing an organization’s target market.
The marketing plan also helps identify any barriers to reaching the target market and how your company plans to overcome them.
4. Ensuring That Your Business Has A Defined Marketing Mix
The marketing mix is an integral part of any strategic marketing plan. It includes product, price, place and promotion. A cohesive brand image can be achieved by ensuring that each element of the marketing mix is aligned with the others in a well-planned strategy.
5. Eliminate Redundancy
Strategic marketing planning helps to eliminate unproductive initiatives, those that are not related to the company’s original goals,and enhances focus on increases increased profitability. By investing more time working on ventures that bear tangible results, you can mitigate and even avoid significant losses.
Many Businesses Shy Away From Strategic Marketing Planning. But Why?
Here are a few common reasons why organizations don’t engage in strategic planning.
- This is not a simple task. The process requires an objective look at your business goals, as well as an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses.
- Creating a strategic marketing plan can be labour-intensive. It takes time to execute, track and review the results. However, investing the up front will only set you up for success for the future
- Executing on a marketing strategy may require additional external resources. Hiring an agency or freelancer can be an effective choice as they can do the heavylifting for you
TAKEAWAY
To have an effective marketing strategy, it must be an integral part of the business plan, have measurable objectives and action steps to ensure it is achieved. Customers must be identified and qualified by looking at who will buy from a particular company, the reasons they they’ll buy as well as how frequently. Marketing and advertising plans should also address pricing, distribution channels, and communication plans for product launches or other promotional campaigns.
Hopefully these tips helped with getting you started. Now comes the fun part- happy planning!
Contributed by: Parkyd Digital
A digital marketing agency that specializes in integrated, cost-effective marketing solutions tailored to your business in order to establish a strong online presence and foster profitable customer acquisition
