How to Formulate a Winning 2017 Marketing Strategy

With 2016 in the history books it is time to create a new and robust marketing strategy for 2017. This blog entry will discuss how to approach formulating a successful marketing strategy and tactics to correct, adjust or build on 2016 lessons and accomplishments. So let’s jump right into it.

Make Use of Your 2016 Data

With all of the types of analytical software available to marketers today, there is simply no excuse not to analyze the data collected. By looking at the results of 2016 and the marketing data, marketing teams can identify what worked well, what didn’t go as projected and even uncover trends or customer behaviors not anticipated or foreseen. With your 2016 data analyzed, you can build a better strategy and more fruitful tactics.

Start with the End in Mind

With your data crunched, analyzed and summarized, it is time to move on to the most important part of your plan. What do you want to achieve?

If you don’t know where you want to go, how will you map and plan your journey to get there? So, step one is to state clearly what exactly you want to achieve. Saying “Increase revenues” or “increase profit margins” mean nothing unless you attach a number to it so that you can measure progress. It is also better to be somewhat more specific as to your goal.

Yes, we all want to boost profits but here is a better way to approach it. Identify the items or services that generate the highest profit margin for your organization. Now let’s quantify it. The goal is to increase website traffic by 40% year over year and increase revenues for product XYZ by 20%. With these goals established, now it’s time for developing a plan.

Strategy

From analyzing the 2016 data, it is clear that both social media marketing and online marketing (PPC, AdWords, etc.) didn’t generate the results expected. Compared to competitor results and internal projections, the numbers fell short. The strategy for 2017 will be a renewed effort to generate high-quality leads.

And increase revenues by leveraging your social media and online marketing platforms to their fullest. To execute the strategy, tactics must be created and employed. This juncture is a perfect time to engage the expertise of an experienced Internet marketing agency with a track record of successful social media campaign creation and management and online advertising. With the ever-increasing number of platforms and best practices tactics, it can be challenging to determine which ones work best to reach your target customer.

Tactics

This is where the details come into play. There are a number of things to consider and evaluate. I’ll highlight our process and give you some ideas that you can put right to use.

• Choose your social media platform well. There is no reward for being anywhere other than where your customers and prospective customers are in cyberspace. If your customers are more likely to use Facebook (FB) than Instagram or Twitter, focus on FB for your online and social media marketing. Don’t dilute your resources with the commonly held belief that you must be everywhere online. Shotgun approaches rarely produce results. Focus, focus, and re-focus.

• Craft your ads so that the images and text/copy connect to your customers. Too often we see ads on the Internet that are either in the wrong space/site/platform or that are not clearly matched for their intended audience. Always view and read your ads from the eyes of your customer. If you can’t or don’t trust internal opinions, then get a small focus group together. There really is no substitute for getting direct customer feedback. Time and again, marketers are surprised by what they learn when they sit back and listen to their customers.

• Determine, from your existing data, when is the best time to advertise and which are the best social media, locations, sites, blogs, etc. for your ads. Use this information to establish your campaign schedule and don’t forget to link promotions to seasonal or holiday events to get more mileage out of your social media management and online marketing assets.

• Review your data and recalibrate based on your analyses. Yes, it sounds obvious, but I can’t tell you how many prospects I’ve met that don’t do this important step. Even with all the analytics and metrics that can be tracked with today’s digital technologies, remember that they really just function as a thermometer of human behavior. Furthermore, human behavior can often be unpredictable. The good news is that as your campaign is underway, you can get real-time reporting giving you what marketers in the past never really had – an opportunity to adjust tactics or campaign course as it progresses.

Marketing Strategy Conclusion

Now you have some ideas, suggestions, and examples to make your 2017 marketing plans more robust and end-results focused. Send us your questions or contact us with your marketing strategy ideas, plans, suggestions or needs. At IMPROZ we are passionate about helping businesses get the most out of their digital marketing.