Marketing Strategy: What Everyone Needs to Know

Key elements of an effective marketing strategy that everyone must know.

1. Targeting the Right Audience

Your customers are not anonymous numbers; they are people with specific needs, dreams, and challenges. It’s up to you to find out how you can bring them value. It's important to segment the audience based on demographics, behavior, and preferences. Even if you're convinced your target group is broad and cannot be easily defined, the more detailed you go, the more accurate your data will be.

Action Plan: We recommend tasking your team with defining two primary target groups. For each of them, create a representative persona (download the template). This way, you’ll understand them better and define nuances that will help in the next steps. Then, set up a reporting process to update and fine-tune your target groups. For example, every six months, have a financial impact report prepared. Only after you’ve worked through these two target groups should you move on to others.

2. A Strong Brand as a Foundation

Your brand is much more than just a logo. It’s the experience people have when interacting with you. A marketing strategy should include a consistent and authentic brand across all channels. From our experience, many projects that decide to focus on their brand end up succumbing to visually creative designs by skilled graphic designers, without regard to the brand’s value. To avoid this in our projects, we first define the brand DNA (check out our article).

Action Plan: Define five to ten things that currently make you better than your competition. Next, define 3-7 pillars that have always been and will remain part of your company (for Volvo, it's Safety). Then, create a proposal for how to communicate these pillars and advantages, where, and why. The next steps are specific and should be incorporated into your brand structure and a standalone brand strategy (read our article on brand strategy).

3. Clear Goals and Success Metrics

Without goals, you’re lost. Think of them as a map guiding you in the right direction. You should know which metrics are key for measuring the success of your campaigns, whether it’s increasing awareness, conversions, or return on investment (ROI). Goals should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), ensuring they are realistically attainable.

Action Plan: Create a concise one-page document with analytics and reporting. For most projects, key metrics on the website include site traffic, time spent on the site, and top-performing pages. In Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics, experts can generate practically any numbers you need. For digital campaigns, compare ROAS (return on ad spend), CTR (click-through rate), and impressions (how often something is shown). These are basic metrics but are crucial for a successful marketing strategy. ROAS tells you if you’re in the black, CTR indicates which creatives and target groups are working, and impressions help you define how much attention costs.

4. Multichannel Approach

In modern marketing, relying on a single communication channel isn’t enough. Successful companies use a combination of online and offline tools, such as social media, emails, websites, PPC campaigns, or traditional media. All these tools should work together like a well-coordinated orchestra. The key is also consistent messaging to the target audience within the marketing mix.

Action Plan: Email has an average open rate of 8%, and a successful online campaign can reach a CTR of up to 1%. Despite being cost-effective, the gap between open rates and actual clicks is significant. How can you handle spam and improve these results? One effective approach is constant testing and experimenting with different strategies, including A/B testing of email subject lines and content optimization. Google, for instance, captured attention in the digital age by sending physical vouchers through the mail, offering an interesting alternative to online campaigns. It's crucial to find the right approach for each channel. We recommend holding a meeting every six months to evaluate each channel and, based on analytics, decide which to adjust, replace, or supplement.

5. Adaptability and Innovation

Markets change, and customer preferences evolve. Your marketing strategy needs to be flexible and able to respond to new trends. Companies that are open to innovation and testing new approaches are more likely to stay ahead.

Action Plan: Define your innovation process, outlining how your product or service can evolve. An important parameter is a SWOT analysis, which we recommend creating as a starting point. For tips on how to perform a SWOT analysis, read our article.

6. Analysis and Optimization

A successful marketing strategy is never static. Regular data analysis and campaign performance reviews allow you to optimize activities and improve the strategy in real-time. Your team should have relevant data and understand how to use it to enhance overall performance. It's essential to set goals, evaluate, and continuously adjust.

Action Plan: While everyone focuses on different things, it’s important to consider both soft and hard metrics. In other words, success isn’t always about sales but also about the value a company generates, which can be monetized in the future in ways you’ll discover through this process.

Conclusion

We hope this simple overview has helped you. And remember, you can always turn to us at Delicate Crime for advice on any of the topics discussed.