Making Sense of Marketing Strategy

Making Sense of Marketing Strategy

Marketing is hard. There are no two ways about it. Back in the day it was relatively straight forward. You identified your audience and looked at the best way to reach them. The media choices were far simpler and considerably more limited. To some extent I would suggest it is easier if you have a large budget – (it has always been easier) – but even then, the choices are mind-boggling and the levels of data and information demand intense scrutiny in themselves. And that’s before you look into the wider landscape of CRM, UX, website development and customer journeys.

How many strategies?

If one is to believe the “gurus” we are all supposed to have a Paid Strategy for social media; an Organic Strategy for social media; an Email Strategy (which may or may not linked into a CRM or broader platform like Hubspot or Sharpspring). Then there is Media and PR Strategy; not to mention online and offline promotions, discount planning and influencer development. If the concept of website as “mothership” is still valid (and I believe it is) then we need a plan for SEO, website content development and a variety of strategies to address a variety of customer journeys.

Sitting underneath all of that someone, anyone; someone good one would hope has to write all the content; keep it current and engage with the customer responses that are generated.

Platforms & Analytics

All of these platforms have their “partner” analytics and data. So, at the simplest level there is Google Analytics. This can demonstrate the numbers visiting your website, their routes through your site, how they arrived, where they came from and the page they left from. It will show how long they stayed, how long they stayed in particular pages and whether they bought anything.

Testing & Email

In email marketing there is data on opening rates, unsubscribe rates and timing advice. The best time to send, the best time to re-send….it goes on and on. Then if you’re looking at A/B testing you can immediately double all of that. Paid ads generate data and insights too. The numbers of impressions, the numbers of click-throughs and the cost of each (CTR). Free platforms are no different with weekly, monthly and quarterly reporting. Generating numbers of accounts reached, accounts engaged, total followers, most popular post, reel or story. But then each post, story or reel will reach a different segment of your audience at any one time so in all cases they’re not really comparable.

Making Sense of Marketing Strategy

If you have taken the leap into E-Commerce that opens up a whole new world of insight and data.  If they were thinking about buying something, you can see what they left in their basket and ask them if they really meant to leave? Would an offer tempt them to come back and complete a purchase? When do people buy, what products do they buy, what products don’t they buy? What are the characteristics of your best buyers? Then, of course you can create avatars.

Who really has the resource to handle all that? The answer, we do.