Developing an informed marketing strategy is essential to success. Most businesses look at marketing strategies with one of two goals:

• For new startups, the goal is often to promote awareness and interest in the company, product, or service.
• The goal for established companies is to analyze what's worked, what hasn't, and what can be improved.

While each business is unique, the following five basic steps will apply to any company's marketing strategy review process:

1. Target Market & Demographics

Determining the target market and customer demographic to reach is essential and takes research and analysis. Regardless of industry, a company must:

• analyze the target market
• who is the ideal customer
• what are the demographics of ideal customers
• determine the best methods & channels for reaching the intended base

Analyzation of the customer demographic can include everything from:

• gender perception
• to locality
• economic statistics
• and more

Each business and its needs for determining that industries demographics and target market will be different and should be approached in a unique, custom fashion.

2. Building Brand Identity

Brand identity defines a company, its business, and public image. Branding helps to differentiate itself from the competition, and is imperative to a company's success in today's crowded marketplace.

Whether online, and offline, having a definitive corporate image helps a company to stand out from the rest.

Once a brand has been developed, it must be integrated across all forms of advertising the company uses including:

• the website, social medias, & online profiles
• business cards & stationary
• marketing collateral (brochures, flyers, etc)
• anywhere the business is mentioned

The company's brand must be incorporated into all aspects of the business image.

3. Campaign Copy & Messaging

There are many factors that come into play when creating copy and messaging for marketing purposes:

• Determine the message the business wants to send, and implement this in all campaigns
• Write appropriate copy (content) for corresponding media types (online vs. offline, visual vs. auditory, print vs. digital, etc)
• Notate legalities that must be observed
• Create informative content, use emotional appeal, persuading the reader to take action

Each aspect must be observed to create truly unique and remarkable content that readers and search engine bots find useful and valuable.

Not only must content be human readable, understandable, and engaging; in today's world, online content must be search engine optimized (SEO) so as to attract as much qualified traffic and leads as naturally possible.

4. Lead Generation Techniques

Effective lead and sale techniques can differ from business to business, and from industry to industry. The following are a number of basic techniques that apply to most any business, regardless of industry:

• Opt-In Email Marketing Solutions - It's all about targeting the right demographic base with a clear and concise message.
• Referral & Upselling Campaigns - There's always an untapped revenue stream within a company's existing database of clients.
• Promotional Item Campaigns - Keeps the company image in front of prospects far longer than emails or letters.
• SEO - Search Engine Optimization helps to generate free traffic from qualified search results.
• SEM - Search Engine Marketing generates paid leads from qualified traffic & searches.
• SMM - Social Media Marketing helps generate new business from social platforms matching target demographics.

5. Measuring Analytics & Performance

Measuring and gauging the success of marketing and campaign efforts is essential to make sure a business is utilizing effective techniques. It's necessary to review all the data and results from each campaign segment, both as its own piece, as well as how it relates to the whole.

By analyzing marketing performance, trends can be seen, and improvements made to increase rates of return.

Conclusion

By reviewing the above five basic tenants of marketing strategy, businesses can continue to improve their overall marketing performance, and in-turn increase return on investment and growth.