Entrepreneurs who understand marketing appreciate the importance of a clearly defined marketing strategy and established objectives.

In short, effective marketing creates demand for the company’s products or services. It is an opportunity to identify potential customers and convince collaborators that the company’s services have the value they are looking for. Marketing provides the opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition.

The problem is that most business owners are too busy running their company and do not allocate the necessary time for research aimed at improving the marketing strategy. A good marketing campaign starts with understanding customers through marketing research.

Research reveals what customers want, new ideas for improving existing products and services, and ideas for attracting new customers. Your marketing research does not have to be elaborate or expensive. Small business leaders can conduct their own research by collecting feedback received from customers, or by analyzing the competition (campaigns, prices), and staying up to date with the latest trends and industry studies.

Initial market research is a very important step. It must be very well organized and implemented respecting all rules, so that the result is coherent and useful. If you want this step to be handled by a team of experienced professionals, check MKOR services.

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After an initial market research has been conducted, try these six steps to improve and polish your marketing strategy:

1. Identify and clearly define market opportunities. If you haven’t already, determine what opportunities exist and how they could be used and turned into profit. Does your marketing plan work based on these opportunities? If not, make the necessary changes so that the company can take advantage of the present opportunities.

2. Build a strong, well-differentiated brand. How well are the brand values used when it comes to the company and the products or services offered? It should be easy for you to answer this question. If you can’t, start the entire branding process by finding a single attribute or value that can define your company and differentiate it from the competition, which you can implement immediately and introduce to the market with minimal effort.

3. Establish a competitive cost. Research the prices charged by the competition. Customers want value and benefits for all the money they spend. When all things are equal, customers look for products and services with the lowest price. Therefore, companies must differentiate themselves if they want to charge a higher price.

4. Personalize your marketing strategy according to the target audience. Is your marketing campaign targeted at potential buyers? A marketing strategy can be good, but if you don’t have the right target, it will prove ineffective for its intended purpose. Analyze your marketing campaign to discover if it might be addressing an audience that is too broad, or if it is not addressing the target audience at all. To spend the budget successfully, you just need to identify the correct audience.

5. Test elements of the marketing campaign for efficiency. One way to have successful campaigns is to determine which components produce the most positive results. Change each component one at a time – for example, special offers, radio ads, direct mail, or cold calling – to check the impact on profit. You will be able to determine how each applied marketing strategy works with each component.

6. Look for new ways to get marketing ideas. Are you the only one taking care of all your company’s marketing efforts? There’s nothing wrong with that, but most of the time, ideas are not generated by the same person who is constantly in charge of the company’s marketing. If this is your situation, look to involve other people in this process. Of course, you can turn to marketing firms, but often your employees or customers can give you excellent ideas.

Don’t waste the company budget. Hit the target directly every time and make the money work for you!