Marketing Strategy: Why you need one

Clients often ask us about marketing strategy, what it is and why they need one. Here we answer four of the most common questions we get asked about marketing strategy.

What is a marketing strategy?

In simple terms, a marketing strategy is a set of key questions, that when answered correctly, shape how you structure your marketing efforts to achieve business goals. The challenge lies in identifying the right questions to ask and in discovering the right answers to inform and drive forward your marketing activities.

More often than not, the answers are already hidden within your business, but extracting and refining them isn’t always straightforward. Collaborating with a professional marketer or agency like you.marketing will help to uncover those critical questions and answers that shape your marketing plan and drive results.

Why do I need a marketing strategy?

A robust marketing strategy helps your business understand your marketing goals and objectives, ideal customer personas, overarching message, competitors, brand positioning and which marketing channels to use.

Why can’t I just start marketing without having a marketing strategy?

Marketing without a marketing strategy isn’t really marketing, it’s guess work. How would you know how to target the right audience or what marketing activities (marketing tactics) to try in order to reach them? How would you know how to measure the success of your activities? How will you know how to adapt your efforts to achieve your goals? Businesses that forgo the strategic work often end up spending lots of money for little, to no return on their investment.

I want to start actively marketing my business now, I’m worried that by working on a strategy I’m wasting time and missing opportunities.

In theory there’s no real harm in getting your message out there to potential customers, but focussing efforts on pushing content out for the sake of getting it out there is not recommended and could even damage your brand; it’s a lot of effort for little gain. Working on a marketing strategy can take a little time, but it means you will end up with a robust plan from the get-go. Do this and the opportunities will come.

Challenging markets 

Markets are saturated and full of competition, making it challenging for brands to be seen and heard, but with a strategic plan in place, we can measure, adapt and move closer to success. We’ve got you.