The Importance of Marketing Strategies
No matter what size a business is, it is important to implement some marketing activities in order to make people aware of your organisation. You cannot simply do nothing and expect to be inundated with customers. Similarly, you cannot engage in a very brief and simple campaign and expect to generate a loyal customer base that way.
Marketing must be taken on as a long term commitment, not only to build up the brand of a business but also to secure a steady stream of customers and constantly appeal to potential ones. A marketing strategy is a detailed plan of the marketing initiatives that you intend to conduct during a set period of time. Supported by a constant system of evaluation, a marketing strategy will help you to determine areas that you need to focus on more, those you are wasting your time on or which methods work best against certain consumer groups.
When putting together a marketing strategy it is important to evaluate some key elements of your business. For instance, you must underpin and clearly define your unique selling point or business mission statement; this may seem a simple task, but defining your statement allows you to see the point from which your marketing will develop and it provides all employees a consistent point of reference when dealing with customers.
A difficult task when determining your marketing strategy can be defining your target market, but it is imperative that you do this. It is obvious that all businesses want to attract as many customers as possible, however it is naive to label your target market as ‘everyone’; the products or services you provide will not appeal to everyone and it is not practical or cost effective to try and target your marketing materials towards so many different kinds of people. You must be selective and choose those consumer groups that will be more likely to be interested in your business.