Certainly, you still need good messaging and a compelling value proposition that will speak to your target audience. But equally important is understanding where your current and potential customers are, what lifestyle habits and values they have, and how they interact with brands and various media channels.
Once you figure that out, you need the systems and tools to reach customers on their preferred channels – often a mix of both online and offline media. Your company likely has to create multiple touchpoints for customers, all while ensuring your meeting different needs at each stage of the buyer’s journey.
What your company really needs is an integrated marketing + technology strategy that combines marketing expertise with the proper systems and tools to deliver the right message to the right audience using the right channels.
When your business begins working with Moving Minds, our team of experts will take a holistic view of your business and marketing operations to develop an integrated marketing + technology strategy. By incorporating the following five principles into your strategy, your business will maximize efficiency while also achieving higher return on your marketing investments.
As obvious as that may sound, we’ve seen plenty of companies who are permanently caught in “fire-fighting mode.” Staff are always focused on tactical execution, or putting out “fires,” rather than looking at the whole picture.
The marketing strategy should flow directly from your marketing goals, which are based on overall business initiatives. It’s also important that they are well-defined. A vague goal like, “I want more website visitors,” will likely lead to an unclear marketing strategy, whereas you will see more success with a specific goal like, “We would like to increase web traffic by 50% over the next 12 months in order to achieve our revenue goal of $500,000 from online sales.”
Closely linked is your competitive advantage. What is it about your good or service that sets it apart? While some brands exist in their own specific niches, the vast majority of businesses are competing with multiple brands for market share.
Do you offer a unique product? High-quality customer service? Easy online ordering and delivery?
Whatever it is, you need to understand your unique value proposition when creating an effective marketing strategy. This is especially true for startups and tech businesses. Marketing is the lifeblood for startups and SaaS companies, and in a highly competitive market, you need to establish and effectively communicate your value proposition to customers as soon as you launch.
Competitive analysis is often part of this process. You need to know the position of other competitors, so that you can develop your unique proposition. Even if you’re in a highly specialized niche, viewing what other companies in similar niches are doing can help you find out what works or discover untapped opportunities that can be incorporated into your marketing + tech strategy.
Yet, 40% of marketers are not satisfied with their marketing technology, and nearly three-quarters think they are only realizing up to 60% of the potential of their martech.
At Moving Minds, we think a lot of this dissatisfaction is because martech is adopted and implemented piecemeal. Rather than developing an integrated strategy, businesses see a martech need and get a solution. See another need and get a different solution.
This fragmented approach can lead to your organization having a growing number of marketing technology solutions that don’t work together. Instead of simplifying your processes, you may add more confusion and discordance among your team.
That’s why we always include martech into the marketing strategies we develop for clients. During the discovery process, Moving Minds completes an audit of existing technologies. We determine if there are any quick issues that need to be fixed or any tools or systems that should be implemented.
Often, some of the smallest adjustments to your martech stack can quickly make the biggest difference.
For example, one of our clients was already generating a significant number of leads when they came to Moving Minds, but they were having trouble converting them. After our review process, we developed a systems-driven strategy that included updates to the lead management form on the website, as well as implementation of an online chatbot to supplement the call center. These small changes gave the company the ability to significantly increase their conversions without increasing ad spend.
You should be as familiar with your prospective customer as you are with a good friend. Their values, needs, and lifestyle habits are crucial information – and don’t just leave it to conjecture. Market research is often needed to gain a full, accurate picture of your target audience. This information can then be used to develop one or more buyer personas, which help you understand the marketing tactics, messaging and channels that will work best in reaching your audiences.
Buyer personas should inform every aspect of your strategy. If your value proposition or marketing tactics aren’t going to meet the needs or interests of your buyers, scrap them and find out what does.
How is this done? It starts by creating a marketing + technology strategy that is measurable. You need to include systems and tools in your martech foundation that will allow you to collect data and gain new insights.
Once you begin running marketing campaigns and executing day to day (Link to MM blog), you will be able to gather new data, analytics and information. With an agile marketing strategy, you are open and responsive to change based on what info you find.
A marketing strategy that is measurable and agile will allow you to fine-tune your marketing initiatives and uncover new opportunities for your business.
The original version of this page was published at: https://www.movingminds.io/marketing-tech-news-and-insights-blog/five-essential-components-of-a-successful-marketing-tech-strategy-roadmap
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