The importance of strategy in your marketing activities
The importance of strategy in your marketing activities
Having a marketing strategy is not only important,
but essential for your business.
Often, having a formalised marketing strategy in place is seen by business owners as a luxury and for bigger businesses. It has been known for business owners to have the opinion that they don’t get any return from investing money into a strategy. They would rather spend on marketing activities such as social media or advertising activities such as Google Ads. Generally, it’s the need for instant or tangible results. Marketing managers within a building product manufacturer will appreciate the importance of a strategy to underpin the business’ marketing activities, but often not enough resources are allocated for the creation and implementation of a strategy. And often, sticking to the strategy is difficult especially in uncertain economic conditions where marketing budgets are often reduced, or when stakeholders within a business want to push a different direction. But why is having a marketing strategy important within a business?
The value of a marketing strategy
Do you post over social media or send out an email campaign without any thought behind it?
What do you want to say?
Who do you want to tell?
Why do you want to tell your audience about your business?
You could be carrying out those marketing activities because you want to be active in the construction sector, and you see many of your competitors active. But will you get noticed by the right people and for the right reasons?
Having a marketing strategy in place gives you something to work from on a consistent basis, underpinning all of your communications. It ensures whether you are posting over social media, sending out email campaigns, or writing and distributing PR, they are all working together and working towards the same business goals.
A disjointed marketing campaign would look like this. Social media posts about team members’ birthdays or talking about industry news. An email campaign about a case study you have recently supplied your product for. A content piece written about your business’ sustainability values.
Individually, they all have value and make for a good mix of content. However, the adhoc nature of how often they are produced together with a lack of focus means it isn’t clear how your brand helps your audience.
Creating a marketing strategy for your business ensures you’re targeting the right people, with the right message, at the right time.
“My business isn’t big enough to have a marketing strategy”
As a marketing agency, it isn’t uncommon for us to hear this from business owners. And we appreciate businesses have limited budgets and want to maximise their marketing investments.
A common misconception is that a marketing strategy is for large businesses.
However, to counter this we would say that the business is large because it has a marketing strategy in place. Obviously, there will be other factors involved e.g. great product, efficient distribution, good technical aftersales; but businesses grow because they have a structured and clear plan to follow.
Tactical activities such as content writing, emails, social media, SEO, and video production are very important within a business’ marketing campaign, but they need direction and goals if they are to work for a business.
Considerations for your marketing strategy
If you are a business owner of a building product manufacturer, and looking to grow your business within the construction sector, a marketing strategy is your plan of action to help achieve your business growth plans.
A marketing strategy should include the following:
- What are your business goals?
- Do you have any specific objectives for the next 12 or 18 months, for example, launch a new product, enter a new market, increase awareness, or increase leads through your website?
- What does your ideal client look like? How do you reach them?
- Who are your competitors and why do your customers choose you?
Importantly, your marketing strategy will save you money in the long run. When there is no plan in place it is tempting to spend money on adhoc activities such as an advert in a magazine or a boost in social media advertising. The “let’s give it a go and see what happens” approach doesn’t work and will often cost you more money in the long run.
Having a marketing strategy and a plan in place means you will stick to a schedule where your marketing investment is clearly laid out. And by sending out consistent communications it will build trust in your business, and ultimately will convert some of your audience into customers.
Time54 can help you set your marketing strategy
If you run a building product manufacturing business or are a marketing manager within a product manufacturer, and looking to build or develop your marketing strategy, we can help.
As a first port of call, book a power hour with us where we will deep dive into your business – factors like why customers buy from you, what makes you unique or distinctive within the market, what are your strengths, and other questions.
Once we have this information, we can build a 12-18 month schedule which contains strategic and tactical marketing activities.
Book your power hour using the calendar below.
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