How to create an effective 2023 marketing strategy for your purpose-driven business: Part 3
This is part three in my blog series: How to create an effective 2023 marketing strategy for your purpose-driven business. Here is part one and part two if you haven’t read them yet.
In this blog I’ll be sharing the final steps of the process; evaluation, building brand, and frequently asked client questions.
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Step seven: Evaluation, refining and adapting the marketing plan
Evaluation
Taking your objectives from step five, and tactics from step six, define metrics that you will measure success against. For example:
Awareness objective
Tactical metrics:
Number/quality of co-branding partnerships established
Number of events planned and hosted
Reach/links/awareness gained from digital PR campaign
Number of paid search impressions and click throughs
Number of social impressions
Reach from publications
Number of events sponsored
Increase in website traffic
Number of multi-channel campaigns launched
Conversion objective
% increase in conversion across all channels - search, SEO, social etc.
Loyalty objective
% increase in customer retention
You should be tracking these metrics quarterly, as well as at the end of the year (as this is a 12 month marketing plan).
Refining the marketing plan
By tracking performance quarterly, you can find opportunities to refine the marketing plan. If something isn’t working, you can stop doing it, or make some changes to how you are executing the plan. For example, if you need to change your targeting to another market segment because you think your messages are not resonating, you can.
It’s important to always bear in mind your whole marketing strategy, including the segmentation, targeting and positioning you did at the start. If something isn’t working, a quarterly review is a good time to question each element of the strategy.
Marketing is a sum of all its parts, so if your STP (segmentation, targeting and positioning) is incorrect at any point, the resulting plan will have errors.
Step eight: Building brand
Building a brand is the result of executing your positioning through your marketing tactics. It’s about continually reinforcing what your business stands for, and creating a feeling and association among your target audience. As Professor Mark Ritson says, “brand only truly exists in the head of our target customers, they’re the only ones who can tell us what it means.”
On one end of the brand spectrum, you have commodity brands. These are brands which are solely known for price and function. The fastest way to commodify a brand is to run price-based promotions.
On the other end, the qualities of very strong brands are price, function and meaning. Apple is a good example of this, as their brand continually reinforces their difference from other computer manufacturers.
Brand equity is what your brand has over the generic commodity equivalent. Building brand equity takes time, and for smaller businesses takes years. Brand tracking is one way to measure brand equity. Learn more from Survey Monkey about creating brand tracking surveys.
Frequently asked questions
Do we have to go through the whole marketing planning process?
No. This is a guide for if you were starting from scratch. Most businesses have already done some of these steps already, but are not sure how it should all fit together, or have forgotten to do some key parts, e.g. segmentation. Every business is different, so just apply the most useful bits.
Will following this process guarantee sales for my business?
No, that’s impossible because there are so many factors that influence sales performance - the quality of data used to make decisions, any assumptions that are made, the economic climate, time dedicated to marketing etc. This guide acts as a framework to help you identfify where to focus your efforts.
I don’t have all the data to hand. Does that mean I won’t be able to create a successful marketing strategy?
The better data you have, the better decisions you can make. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out! But we all have to start somewhere, and smaller businesses don’t have the resources of huge organisations. The idea is to take what you have, create a plan, execute it, and keep turning the refinement wheel to improve the quality of your strategy as you go.
I don’t know where to start. Can you help me?
Definitely. Please book an introductory call with me and we can briefly chat through your challenge.
Final thoughts
With a well planned marketing strategy, everything you do afterwards will make your marketing more effective and grow your purpose-driven business faster.
Need help creating your marketing strategy?
Book a Marketing Impact Hour with me, or get in touch for a bespoke proposal.
