How to develop an engaging marketing & communication strategy

Marketing is an integral part of your business activities. Branding and marketing build the brand experience within the mind of clients. Your marketing plan is designed to help you find the most effective ways to engage your prospects to then convert them into clients. To improve your marketing efforts, it requires defining an effective and creative plan to communicate and promote your brand, products and/or services. Below are a few points to ensure your business implement and run a successful marketing strategy.

Conduct research

Start by choosing and analysing your niche market. The more specific you are, the more you are likely to succeed with your marketing activities. Define how your services or products will benefit your potential market is essential. Then find your unique selling points. Offer a solution to a problem that is not currently solved. Understanding the market that you want to reach gives you a strong competitive advantage.

These are some of the questions that should be included in your research:

• What niche market should I focus on?
• What are the current issues or pains of my prospects?
• What is currently offered and how?
• Who is the decision maker? Then define your buyer persona
• Who are my competitors? Then develop your SWOT analysis
• What are the opportunities and trends our business can focus on?
• What are the hot topics and issues my clients have?

Implementation of your marketing plan

The next question, (which is the most important), is what do you want to achieve:

• Brand awareness
• Build your brand community
• Product or service sales
• Brand experience growth
• Something else

Choosing the objective of your campaign will guide your strategy and action plan. If you are building brand trust, then you want to focus on your brand, not your products or services, which means stories sharing valuable content, etc. If you focus on selling your products or services, when your campaign will be focused on product/service promotion, special offers, etc.

When the marketing strategy is confirmed, develop your marketing activity plan with inputs from all the invested parties and ensure that the budget is sufficient to deliver the objectives set in the campaign.

We recommend to combine:

• 5 Inbound activities
• 3 outbound activities

Including social media in your marketing campaign

It is very common to get caught in the trap of opening a page on every single social media platform. It is counterproductive as you will need to upload data on every platform. Focus on the platforms where your prospects are. For example, if you have a luxury brand for young women, choose Instagram. But if you are a financial services company, LinkedIn or Twitter are more appropriate. Also clearly define how often you post, the tone of voice and content, ensuring that these elements are in accordance with your brand’s core values. This opens up the communication routes with clients, so make sure that you interact with them regularly. This is how you can build your community.

Set your KPIs, roles and responsibilities

Finally, continuously measuring your marketing activity against KPIs helps you evaluate if your marketing campaign is performing well or if you need to reevaluate. Schedule weekly meetings with your team to report progress.

Example of good KPIs:

• Inquiries received
• Warm and hot leads
• Turnover
• Engagement (likes, follows etc.)

Create a project plan system that lists all the tasks allocated to which person in the team. This needs to be completed within your timeframe, by visually mapping out the execution of your strategy you are able to divide responsibilities between staff members, and even alter who does what in accordance to the knowledge gained in the meeting.

To summarise

• Understanding your target audience's needs & pains
• Set your business goals & deadlines
• Choose your channels of communication
• Set an appropriate budget

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