How can you design a complete marketing strategy?

Companies that want to get better results in their businesses focus their efforts on developing a complete marketing strategy to guarantee they get to a wider and more loyal audience.

Efficient marketing begins with a complete marketing strategy. A good marketing strategy helps you define your vision, mission, and commercial goals and describes the steps you need to follow to achieve these goals. 

Your marketing strategy has an impact on the way you run your business, so it needs to be planned and developed together with your team. It's a comprehensive strategic planning tool that: 

• Describes your business and products or services.
• Explains the position and role of your products or services in the market. 
• Outlines your customers and competitors. 
• Identifies the marketing strategies you'll use. 
• Allows you to make a marketing plan and measure its efficiency. 

A complete marketing strategy sets the general management and the goals of your company; therefore, it's different from a marketing plan that describes the particular actions you'll take to implement your marketing strategy. Your marketing strategy could be developed for the following years while your marketing plan usually describes the goals you have to achieve during the year. 

Your complete marketing strategy will help you achieve your business goals and build a solid reputation for your products. At the same time, it helps you target the people that are more likely to buy your products or services. In general, it involves the creation of one or two powerful ideas to develop awareness and sell your products. 

Developing a complete marketing strategy that includes the elements described below will help you take advantage of your marketing investments and, at the same time, measure and improve your sales results. 

1. Identify your commercial goals 

To develop your complete marketing strategy, first, identify your commercial goals so you can define a group of marketing goals to back them up. Your commercial goals can be: 

• Increase the knowledge about your products or services
• Sell more products of a particular supplier
• Get to new customers 

When you establish goals, it's very important to be as specific as possible so that you can measure their results effectively. A simple criterion for establishing goals is the SMART method: 

• S pecific - state what you want to achieve clearly. 
• M easurable - establish concrete measures for your results.
• A attainable - establish goals within your scope and budget. 
• R elevant - establish goals that will help you improve particular aspects of your company. 
• T ime-bound - establish the time in which these goals can be achieved. 

2. Define your marketing goals 

Define a series of specific marketing goals based on the commercial goals previously set. These goals will motivate you and your team and will help you compare their success. 

Examples of marketing goals include a greater penetration in the market (selling more existing products to existing customers) or market development (selling existing products to new target markets). These marketing goals can be long-term and can be achieved in several years. However, they have to be clear, measurable and with a deadline. 

Make sure that your general strategies are also practical and measurable. A good marketing strategy won't be changed every year but it will be revised when you achieve your strategies or your marketing goals. Moreover, you may need to modify your strategy if the external market changes due to a new competitor or new technologies, or if your products change considerably. 

3. Develop a marketing plan 

Your complete marketing strategy provides a general description of the reasons why your marketing team will need certain resources, you will make certain decisions, and establish certain goals during the year. Your marketing plan refers to the specific actions you'll take to achieve that strategy. 

4. Do some research on your market

Research is a very important part of your complete marketing strategy. You need to gather information about your market, such as its size, development, social tendencies, and demography (population statistics such as age, sex, and type of family). It's important to pay attention to the market so you know about any changes in time to guarantee your strategy keeps on being relevant and specific. 

5. Create your buyer persona

Use your research on the market to develop a profile for the customers you want to target and identify their needs. 

The profile will show you their buying patterns, such as how, where, and what they buy. Once more, check out the tendencies regularly so that you don't lose new opportunities or become irrelevant in the market. 

While you manage to find new customers, make sure your marketing strategy also allows you to keep your existing customers. 

6. Identify your competitors

At the same time, and as part of your complete marketing strategy, you should develop a profile of your competitors, identifying their products, supplier chains, prices, and marketing tactics. 

Use this to identify your competitive leverage, what distinguishes your company from others. It's also possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your processes to help you improve their performance comparing them to your competitors. 

7. Choose the right tools

Once you've identified your commercial and marketing goals, developed a marketing plan, created your buyer persona, and identified your competitors and market, make sure you have the right tools to measure the success of these goals. A digital software tool, as well as social networks programmer, helps you do a follow-up of what your audience likes and dislikes. 

8. Think about the existing resources 

Decide what resources that you already have can help you create your complete marketing strategy. To make this process faster, divide your assets into three categories: 

• Paid media: remember that paid media are those in which you invest money to attract your target audience. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn offer some paid media options that increase your exposure online.

• Owned media: owned media are the media you create: blog posts, ebooks, images, and infographics that your marketing team has created are examples of owned media.  

• Earned media: earned media involve another way of spreading user-generated content. Resources shared on social networks, tweets about your business and photos published on Instagram that mention your company are examples of earned media. 

Gather the information about these areas and consolidate them in one tool so that you have a clear vision of what you have and how you can integrate it to maximize your complete marketing strategy.

9. Put your ideas into practice to assess their results

When you decide your tactics, search online and, then, try a few ideas and approaches with your customers and employees so that you can assess what works and what doesn't. You'll have to choose tactics to satisfy your customers' needs, get to customers in your target market and improve your sales results. 

In conclusion, to develop a complete marketing strategy you must have your commercial and marketing goals very clear, your market identified, your buyer persona created and your target audience and competitors identified. You will also have to design a marketing plan that implements that strategy, and define the channels you'll use to spread your strategy.