Strategic Marketing For Small Businesses
If you are a small business owner or Internet marketer, there is a need for you to have an effective strategic marketing program. This is needed for many reasons. In short, a comprehensive strategic marketing strategy is needed to achieve your business goals. Let’s look at these reasons why you need a strategic marketing plan.
A strategic marketing plan incorporates selected, carefully studied marketing concepts with various common objectives; while applying one marketing tactic alone is typically low-cost action without goal. This is necessary because sometimes it takes a combination of several marketing techniques to get any work done online. In fact, it can be expensive to hire several professionals for marketing your business as a small business. Therefore, a comprehensive, integrated marketing strategy should include the best online marketing concepts with several common tangible goals.
The top 10 marketing strategies are: Content marketing, Search engine optimization, Social media, Email marketing, Affiliate marketing, Web video marketing and mobile marketing. In addition, the top 10 marketing concepts should also be incorporated into the strategic marketing plan. Each concept is explained below. This should help you get a clear idea of what each concept means.
Content marketing helps you build and promote your brand online. This is achieved by providing users with information about your products, services, and company in an informative way. For example, you can write an informative article about your products and submit it to article directories, web 2.0 websites and social media sites. Your article can be repurposed in blog posts, forum posts and other content forms and it can reach thousands of people. This is a strategic concept that should be included in your strategic marketing program.
Search Engine optimization (SEO) involves making sure that your website appears at the top of the search results page whenever a search user searches for a particular keyword or key phrases. To achieve this, strategic marketing plans should involve strategic keywords and phrases that optimize your site’s content. SEO efforts should be backed by well researched and appropriate content articles. Other SEO marketing techniques such as link building, article marketing and blog marketing can also be incorporated into the strategic marketing plan.
An advisory board is another useful concept that should be part of a strategic marketing strategy. An advisory board provides the marketing manager with a variety of opinions and suggestions. This allows the marketing manager to develop a custom-made, effective marketing strategy that fits your business needs. In addition to providing helpful input, an advisory board will also help you stay compliant with local marketing standards and regulations. The composition of the advisory board should include people from different aspects of your industry.
The main goal of an effective strategic marketing plan is to reach the ultimate consumer – the prospective customer. Consumer research should always be a priority when developing a marketing plan. If you want to use consumer research to your advantage, you should always ask questions before signing a contract. Your contract could include mandatory consumer surveys that are not helpful and do not provide the information that you want. It would be better to work with a consultant who understands your industry and has a proven track record of successfully negotiating favorable consumer agreements.
An online presence is critical to reaching potential customers online. To make your business known online, you need to have a website. Having a website brings in more potential customers than you realize. With a little ingenuity, strategic marketing plans can become a success story and make online marketing easy, fun and profitable.
You may feel apprehensive about applying strategic marketing plans to your own company. A good example of an applied strategic marketing report is the following: We’ve all heard the stories about companies going under because they were too flexible with their advertising. We hear horror stories about companies that lost thousands of dollars a month because they did not stick to their advertising contracts. A good applied strategic marketing report addresses these concerns head on by showing you how flexible advertising can actually hurt your business.
Applying these strategic concepts to your company will not only ensure your survival but also give you an edge on the competition. You will learn about strategies that other companies overlook. Applying some of these strategies may mean a rethinking of some aspects of your strategy or advertising. Applying the concepts to your business can mean a more aggressive approach to marketing and other elements of your strategic planning. This means that you might actually find new things that you can do to grow and expand your company and become more successful.
Marketing and advertising are the most important components of strategic planning, but there is so much more that goes into it. Applying applied strategies can help you make sure that you do not miss out on any opportunities that may arise. Applying different strategic marketing concepts and turning them into practical ideas is just the beginning. You have to get a firm grasp of the concepts before you can apply them effectively and come up with an effective marketing plan.