No matter what kind of business you do—you can’t do without marketing. If you don’t market your business, people will not know about it and they will not buy your business products and services as well. That means your business will suffer financially!
As you are thinking of growing your business or starting your business, you must consider developing a successful marketing strategy. If you do your marketing well, the sales will follow. But if you don’t do it well, you’ll have to struggle in getting sales opportunities.
There are 6 pillars of a successful marketing strategy.
In your planning process, you must have in mind these 6 pillars of a successful marketing strategy and develop your plan around it. Remember that if you plan well, you will do well. And the way to plan well is to wove it around the keys and pillars that will make it successful.
Well, let us now look at the six pillars of a successful marketing strategy.
Pillar #1: Problems
The first thing you need to plan your marketing around is problems. Your customers don’t care about you—they don’t care about your sales and financial goals. They care about themselves, their problems and how they are going to solve them.
So first of all, focus on the customer’s problems. Ask yourself: What problem do we want to solve for our customer? So you must be clear about the problems and needs of your target customer. Once you understand their problems and how to solve them, you have laid the foundation of your marketing strategy.
Pillar #2: People
The second thing you need to have in your marketing strategy is to develop a perfect profile of your target market. You must develop what is called a “buyer persona”—the profile of your ideal customer. You must know who your target market is, how he or she can be identified and how to fish him out.
These “buyer persona” must contain the geographic (location/residence), demographic (physical identifiers) and psychographic (emotional and mental identifiers). The way to get this information is to do a survey, study or observation.
Pillar #3: Product
Once you know the problem or need of your target market and why they need or have that problem, then you understand the importance or relevance of your product to them. You will understand how your products or services fit into their problems.
Remember that your customers don’t care about your products and services. They care about their problems and how to solve them. So your product or service must provide an exceptional service to them. This is the highway for business referrals and business growth.
Pillar #4: Place
You know your target market; you understand their problems and needs and you know how your products and services help them solve their problems. But the question is where do you find them to network with them?
Now, if you have done your homework well on the second pillar of a successful marketing strategy, you will know the place to find your customers. Your customer can both be found online and offline. Online—which forums, groups and social media platforms do they linger the most? Offline—which geographical locations can they be found and when can you find them?
Pillar #5: Positioning
Once you know where your target market can be found—online and offline—the next thing to do is to develop your positioning statement. You need to position your offerings in a way that will attract them and entice them to you.
Once again if you do your homework in the second pillar, it will be easy to position yourself in the mind of the customers. Here you use words, photos and logos to position yourself in their mind so as to attract them. This is where content creation, branding and brand message development comes in!
Pillar #6: Promotion
Promotion is the next step where you develop the ways and means by which you reach out to your target customer. You know who your customer is; you know his or her problems; you know where and when to find him or her; you know which marketing content will best attract him/her and you have created them as well. What next?
Promote your contents to your target market. Promote your brand message to them using digital and traditional promotional channels. Use blog, social media, forums, groups, radio, TV, magazines and many other channels that will best reach them to promote the contents.
Conclusion
As you put your team together and plan your marketing based on these 6 pillars of a successful marketing strategy, the next thing that will happen is profits. If you understand your customer, his or her problems, design your product/service to solve his or her problems, identify his/her place, know how to position and promote your offerings to him/her—the next thing that will happens is profits!
The 6 pillars of a successful marketing strategy when put in place, well executed and monitored will always lead to continuous stream of customers which will generate profits for business growth!
What do you think of the 6 pillars of a successful marketing strategy? Share your comments below!
For a strategy session to develop a digital marketing strategy to help market and promote your business online via digital channels—kindly get in touch with us. You can also get in touch for website/blog development, content writing, social media marketing and brand management activities.
Expand Ghana
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