A marketing plan helps your company build brand awareness, boost consumer engagement, increase trust, offer sales support and foster lasting relationships.
A marketing plan is a roadmap to help businesses build a name and stand out from the crowd. An all-encompassing strategy is full-funnel marketing – capturing the widest audience and moving them through the journey until the end goal of making a purchase. Following are five steps for a plan that can set you up for success:
1. Examine Your Current Situation and Create Goals
Take a close look at your present strategy while setting goals for future campaigns:
- Reflect on your business’s strengths, challenges and opportunities.
- Set specific, optimistic and realistic short- and long-term goals for growth.
2. Identify Your Audience and Build Brand Awareness
Determine your target market and examine trends that may resonate with your audience:
- Design a demographic profile of your ideal customer, including age, sex, family composition, geographic location, lifestyle, etc.
- Build awareness with social media/blog posts, editorial content, videos/podcasts, etc., which can also help boost your SEO* and grow your online presence.
3. Drive Customer Interest
To narrow the funnel, drive consumer interest for a specific product/service:
- Create stories that show why your product/service differs from your competitors.
- Emphasize how your company can meet client needs, solve a problem and/or fill a void.
4. Convert Interest to Purchases
Guide consumers further down the funnel, from showing interest to making a purchase:
- Ensure that when prospects visit your website, their experience is as smooth as possible.
- Your website should include product pages with detailed descriptions/visuals, an easy-to-use click-to-cart process and customer service options.
5. Foster Relationships to Promote Retention
Keep consumers inside the funnel with strong customer service, a vital marketing tool:
- Nurture the relationship with your clients and keep them engaged with your brand.
- Build loyalty by continuing to tell stories that connect with your brand.
A marketing plan helps your company build brand awareness, boost consumer engagement, increase trust, offer sales support and foster lasting relationships. Stick to these five steps, and you can make it happen.
*Search Engine Optimization (SEO): the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results (moz.com).
Source: Entrepreneur.com, reported by Teresa Ciulla, freelance editor and project manager