Building a Strategy Starts With a Thorough Review
1. Review Historical Performance
Start by analyzing historical performance. Ask yourself: “How did the company and marketing perform last year and the year before?” This lays the foundation for informed decision-making, showing you what works and what doesn’t.
Key Metrics to Review:
- Year-over-Year Sales/Leads: Compare YoY sales/leads to understand marketing’s impact on revenue and profit. Document your conversion rates.
- Campaign Assessment: Evaluate past campaigns for their ROI, repeat purchase rates, and overall effectiveness.
- Customer Audience Strategy: Examine how your target audiences performed and if they remain the right focus.
- Channel Review: Identify the most effective platforms to prioritize efforts and budget.
- Cost Analysis: Assess Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) to determine cost-effective channels or a change in trends.
- Website Performance: Analyze website-driven sales/leads and other metrics like unique visitors, time on page, and engaged users.
- Email Programs: Evaluate the conversion, customer retention, and engagement rates of your email campaigns.
- Social Media Engagement: Look at conversion, engagement rates among your audiences across social media channels.
- PR Impact: Measure the effectiveness of media efforts (podcasts, news, TV, magazines) on sales and brand awareness.
- Offline Channels: Assess the impact of events, direct mail, and print/billboards on sales and brand awareness.
- Other Channels: Review the outcomes from your Affiliate, Referral and Partnership efforts.
Save these details for step 2.
Effectiveness Review
Identify which channels and campaigns were effective and which were not. Understanding why something didn’t work is crucial—was it the talent, budget, offer, or technology? This review helps prioritize future efforts and resources efficiently.
2. Align with Company Goals
Your marketing strategy must align with the broader objectives of your company.
Understand the Strategic Focus
- Company Focus: Ensure your marketing setup supports the company’s 1-3 year plan.
- Product/Service Launches: Plan marketing efforts for new product/service launches.
- Business Milestones: Consider upcoming acquisitions, IPOs, or other significant business changes.
Economic Considerations
- Spending Changes: Analyze how economic factors affect your target audience’s spending behavior.
- Positioning: Position your product/service effectively in the current economic climate.
Forecast Revenue Bottom Up & Top Down
- Bottom up - leverage your historical data (from website traffic to sales) to identify your conversion rates and revenue numbers.
- Top down - The growth targets that leadership has set for the company.
Define the gap between your bottom up and the top down number to better define the budget you'll need to meet the growth goals.
3. Define Your Budget Requirement
Work with your Finance and Sales teams to ensure you have the right budget to meet the growth goals (and based on the forecasted numbers). The budget should be inclusive of:
Programs
- To drive new sales and growth from existing customers.
People
- Headcount Assessment: Ensure you've budgeted for team growth if the goal is to increase profits exponentially.
- Skill Gap Identification: Identify skill gaps and decide whether to upskill, outsource, or hire.
- Collaboration Assessment: Facilitate collaboration between marketing and other teams including; Sales, customer service, and product/service owners.
- Supporting Budget: Allocate budget for upskilling, outsourcing, or hiring.
Technology
- Tech Inventory: Ensure you have the right technology to support your marketing programs.
- Enhancement Budget: Allocate budget for necessary tech enhancements.
Other notes:
- Project QoQ Spending: Help Finance understand spending peaks throughout the year.
- Prepare Alternative Budget: Have a backup plan with adjusted outcomes for different budget scenarios.
4. Review Your Audiences & Messaging
With historical performance in mind, revisit the basics of your marketing strategy.
Target Audience: Accuracy Check
- Assess if target audiences are still accurate: Compare your original Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) to the profiles of your top customers from the previous year.
- Define New Audiences: Identify any new segments that emerged from recent campaigns or sales data.
Brand, Key Messaging & USP Review
- Relevance Assessment: Ensure your brand’s key messaging and Unique Selling Proposition (USP) are still relevant in the current market.
- Audience Resonance: Adjust messaging to better resonate with your audience or new segments.
5. Craft the Marketing Plan
With all the ground work laid, it’s time to build your plan.
Programs
- Define Key Programs/Campaigns: Outline the key marketing programs that will help meet the company's objectives. This could be:
- Expanding into new audience segments
- Introducing new retention and growth programs
- Expanding messaging into new territories or geographies
- Channel Focus: Prioritize channels with historical success while allocating budget for testing different ones.
- Timeline Setting: Establish timelines with key milestones and deadlines. Keep product/service seasonality in mind!
- Success Metrics: Determine metrics for each program to measure success.
6. Set Marketing Goals & Success Metrics
Build marketing targets and success metrics that support the company goals, leveraging last year’s sales numbers to set new targets.
Examples of Success Metrics:
B2C:
- New Customers and Sales: Total number of new customers and sales.
- Cost per Acquisition and ROAS: Measure cost-effectiveness.
- Sales Cycle Length: Track the duration of the sales cycle.
- Customer Lifetime Value and Retention Rate: Evaluate long-term customer value and loyalty.
- Existing customer sales revenue and profit
- Overall ROI: Evaluate return on marketing investment
- NPS: Evaluate customer satisfaction
B2B:
- MQL to SQL Conversion Rates: Measure the efficiency of your lead generation and sales collaboration process.
- SQL to Opportunity Conversion Rates: Measure the quality of the leads and sales conversations
- Opportunity to Closed Deal Conversion Rates: Track the rate of low funnel conversion.
- Closed Deal Revenue: Assess revenue and profit from closed deals.
- Cost per Acquisition and ROAS: Measure cost-effectiveness.
- Sales Cycle Length: Track the duration of the sales cycle.
- Customer Lifetime Value and Retention Rate: Assess long-term customer value and loyalty. Track how profits from existing customers change year over year.
- Overall ROI: Evaluate return on marketing investment
- NPS: Evaluate customer satisfaction
Ensure the right systems are in place for tracking and sharing these metrics. Regular updates keep stakeholders informed and engaged.
Building an effective marketing strategy is meticulous. It requires understanding past performance, clear target audiences, alignment with company goals, and a structured plan for execution. By following these steps, you can create a solid marketing strategy that aligns with business objectives and drives tangible results. Stay adaptable, review regularly, and keep evolving your approach to stay ahead in the competitive market.
