Five Steps to Developing a Marketing Strategy

Your business may be ready to take the next step with a more strategic marketing plan and you may have many questions about how that works and where to look for those answers. That’s where we at Intergetik Marketing Solutions can help! We work with your company by providing marketing solutions which will help to increase sales for your business and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

Here we will discuss five steps to develop a marketing strategy.

Step #1: Identify your business goals and budget

In order to begin a marketing plan, you must first consider what your business goals are and determine your budget towards any marketing strategies. Is your main objective to increase sales, develop brand awareness or maybe to gain new customers? Once you have established your goals and your budget, we can then begin a marketing plan.

Step #2: S.W.O.T. Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)

Once we begin working on a specialized marketing plan for your company, we often make use of what is known as S.W.O.T. analysis. S.W.O.T. analysis helps determine a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It can help determine specific skills or assets that can provide a business with an advantage over competitors by identifying any problems or weaknesses that can be minimized or improved upon, allow to take advantage of any new opportunities, and identify and target any threats, such as competitor’s or changes to the market.

Step #3: Identify your target audience

Next, it is important to identify who your target audience is – what demographic audience will be interested in what you are offering?  One way to identify your target audience would be to step back and observe your company as though you were the customer. Viewing your company this way can help in addressing any specific problems or needs for change which can help you to be more effective in reaching your audience. Other factors to consider when targeting your audience are age, gender and location. Once you have a target audience, you can then have a more clear view of how to proceed with your marketing plan.

Step #4: Create your marketing goals

Now that you’ve determined your audience and are ready to get moving on your marketing plan, it is important to determine your marketing goals. These goals may be how to raise brand awareness, how to grow and maintain your business or how to increase customer value. Whatever your marketing goals may be, it is important to identify them as they provide direction, purpose and a vision for what you are being driven to achieve. 

Step #5: Build an action plan

At this point, you should be aware of your goals as far as moving forward with a marketing plan. The next step would be to prepare an action plan. An action plan identifies the tasks to be completed or resources needed to accomplish your goals. It is best to assign a timeframe for each task to ensure that your plan remains on schedule and can also help in determining if you need to modify the schedule in any way, making sure that each task is completed at its most optimal time.

If you need any assistance or have any questions about how our office can help in providing creative marketing services, please feel free to contact Intergetik Marketing Solutions at 314/749-0492. We look forward to hearing from you!