Components of Great Marketing Strategy: Plan, Execute, Measure, and Adjust

Most startups and early stage companies spend all of their time developing products (and they should). Marketing products fall on the back burner and when the time comes to actually doing it, it is often done with haste.  In this article, I’d like to outline a simple marketing strategy that will allow entrepreneurs to successfully market their products. The strategy is comprised of four parts: plan, execute, measure and adjust.

Plan:

The planning stage of a marketing strategy is all about educated guess work – in other words, making hypotheses.

Identify your target demographic – The first step is to identify your target demographic. The more precise one can get, the better. To do so, one has to answer the following questions:

What does a potential customer look like? Are they a man or a woman? Are they young or old? What is their income level? Where do they live? What are their interests? etc…

At the end of this exercise, having a fairly precise demographic is key. For example, “Men and women ages 25 -35 living in the San Francisco Bay Area who are outdoor enthusiasts and have a household income of at least $80K” is a much stronger targeting statement than “Adults living in big cities.”

Identify how to reach that demographic – Once the target demographic has been identified, it’s time to figure out the best ways to reach it. Considering that money is likely to be a constraint, one must look for the most effective ways to reach his/her  demographic.  Whether through digital or traditional (TV, Radio, Print or Billboards) advertising, one must strive to be effective. In order to do so, one has to answer the following questions:

What are your customers most likely paying attention to? Do they watch TV or do they spend their time online? Are they searching for similar products or are they engaging with specific apps? Do they commute to work or do they attend school? etc…

Answering these questions within the realms of a budget will illuminate the most effective path to market your products.       

Execute:

The execute stage is where you get things done.  The most important step here is to act and not get boggled down in the details. There is never a great time to start doing something and an ad campaign will never be perfect. The copy could always be better and the design can always go through more iterations. However, the sooner one kicks things off, the sooner he/she  will see a result and begin to iterate.

Measure:

Technically, the measuring stage kicks off during the planning stage, as two things need to happen: first, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) need to be defined - how exactly will you measure success? And second, measurement mechanisms need to be put in place.

KPIs: Defining success prior to execution is crucial. Ultimately the goal is to sell more widgets and make more money. However, those are not the only metrics that can be measured. One can look at how many leads were generated, how many unique visitors came to the website, or how inbound calls were generated. Whatever the KPIs may be, they must be defined and tracked.

Once the KPIs have been defined, it is imperative to make sure that your business is capable of measuring those KPIs. Have you signed up for a web tracking service such as Google Analytics? How do you plan on tracking your leads? Who will be tracking your inbound calls? All of these questions need to be decided prior to launching your ad campaign.

If you have done your part in preparing for the measurement stage, the actual measurement is relatively easy. Of course challenges will arise and you won’t solve your attribution problem right off the bat but you will begin to see results.

Adjust:

Finally, just like in product development, in marketing one must iterate quickly and often. Did you meet your goals in regards to the KPIs? Did you reach the right demographic? If the answer is yes, great! Keep going or increase your goals. If the answer is no, adjust! If your target demographic was not ideal, change it. If your marketing channel was ineffective, try a different one. It is all about making changes in response to what the data shows.

Following the strategy outline above does not guarantee overnight success but rather it puts you on an actionable path towards data-driven marketing.

By Ilya Letuchy a consultant on HourlyNerd.

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