A little about me
Introduction
I am a marketing consultant based in London, I work with a wide range of clients helping them to take a strategic view over their marketing, and aligning their activity to business objectives.
Many businesses, and of all sizes, struggle with creating a clear marketing strategy because they often:
- Don’t have the time or mind space to look at the business objectively and strategically
- Struggle with prioritising marketing over their core business product or service
- In-house marketing teams are consumed with tactical marketing and channel activities
- Find it hard to articulate the business objectives in a way that marketers can grasp
- Don’t have the strategy tools and experience to do it correctly
If any of these resonate with you, please read on and find out how I might be able to help.
Overview
What is a marketing strategy?
Simply put, marketing strategy is the process of describing how a business will go about achieving a set of business goals. It takes account of the marketing activity that has already taken place, as well as consumer research and behaviours, the audiences the business is trying to reach, as well as what the competition is doing.
At this point, it is then possible to start articulating how, through marketing, it will be possible to achieve these goals through pricing, product, channel marketing, content and brand voice. A good marketing strategy will identify who your best customers are, highlight their problems and identify consumer gains for each market segments.
Business Benefit
Why is a marketing strategy so important?
The marketing landscape is changing fast and is predominantly being driven by technological innovation. To achieve long term success every business needs a strategy that is adaptable and able to flex with new innovations, as well as customer behaviours. The main reasons marketing strategy is so important are:That a good strategy will give you an organisational edge over your competition
- It will align the goods and services that you produce with specific consumer need
- It helps mitigation when things change or go wrong
- It provides coordination between the marketing function and the rest of your business
- Ensures that financial and other resources are deployed in the right way to reap the maximum benefit
- Fixes spend and budgets in advance associates them with expected outcomes
Essentially a good marketing strategy will provide a roadmap of how your business will achieve its goals.
Insight
Start with consumers
I truly believe that all good marketing strategies always have to start with customers or consumers. Without it, it is impossible to construct an effective strategy if you do not understand the pains and gains your customers have. This can take many forms, sometimes a business already has a wealth of consumer insight that just needs synthesising, other times additional research needs to be commissioned. The following sources of insight can be very useful when pulling together [customer value propositions]:
- In-house surveys and research
- Commissioned research
- Customer interviews
- Customer service data
- Sales data
- Omnibus surveys
Whatever your situation, if need help designing your value proposition then drop me a line.
Marketing Mix
Channel Strategy
The art of a good marketing strategy is the selection of the right promotional mix of marketing channels to achieve your business goals.
Each channel is complex and ever-changing in itself, so building a good strategy is both reflective and predictive.
It should capitalise on new opportunities but does not rely upon historical performance. The main channel pillars of a modern marketing plan will include:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Email Marketing
- Content Marketing
- Public Relations
- Events & Experiential
- Paid Media
I have an in-depth knowledge of most channels but also know my limitations, so I also work with a network of specialist marketers that I can draw on supplement your strategy.
For many channels, I provide my own marketing services, so if this is of interest please get in touch.
Content Strategy
Not just words and pictures
Increasingly content is becoming a key part of the marketing mix, this is because it is so central to other channels, for example, SEO. Articulating how content will connect and compliment each of these channels, and how they produce the optimum amount of content to service all marketing activity is now becoming an art in itself.
Having worked in media for over 15 years, content strategy has been part of work-life since the early days of the internet. Working out how content integrates with your marketing strategy is probably what I do best. I’ve growing brands from a couple of million monthly online audiences reach to over 380 million people globally.
Translating words into budgets
Marketing Planning
A key part of a marketing strategy is digesting and planning all the potential activity that could be undertaken and formulating a specific plan that marketers than then build tactical plans from. These days flexibility is paramount together with delivering on business objectives.
So if you need someone who is very familiar with excel and is adept at translating strategy into tangible numbers and outcomes, then book a free consultation.
Marketing Mix
HOW I CAN HELP YOUR BUSINESS?
ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS
You will learn more about your customers and potential customers than you ever imagined. Having an insight-led strategy will always meaning that you are aligned with your consumers and that you are making the most out of your budget.
BETTER DECISIONS
You will have the benefit of someone who is on your side and will help you work through thorny issues, and support you in making hard decisions. You’ll also have the security of knowing that every decision that has been made is back up with insight or is data-led.
BETTER RESULTS
Once implemented a new marketing strategy will start yielding results straight away. Often the best way to approach rollout is an agile methodology where feedback is gathered from every piece of activity, then refined and iterated upon.
SECURITY
Knowing that you have a robust plan around your marketing plan will help you sleep better at night and knowledge that when things do change or go wrong, that you have a mitigation plan at hand to overcome these obstacles.
Drop me line if you have any questions or want to book a no obligation consultation.