Marketing Strategy: make it all about you
Aimee Carnwath
7 September 2022It’s hard to believe we are at week 6 of our Summer School of Marketing already! Over the past six weeks we’ve been exploring different elements of marketing and sharing ideas that we hope will help you to get better engagement with your customers. All of the aspects we have discussed, such as your website, social media, sending emails andmonitoring your performance, all contribute to this week’s theme: building a marketing strategy.
My colleague Megan has created a brilliant guide for you about how to establish a marketing strategy and looks in detail about what exactly a marketing strategy is, why it’s important to have one and how to get started on creating one. I’d highly recommend that you take a look at this here.
Rather than repeat the content of the guide, I’m going to keep it (fairly) short and sweet this week. Using a marketing strategy, you will be able to ensure that your marketing activities are really focussed on the objectives you’re trying to achieve. Having a strategy which is written down can also help ensure that everyone within your business understands and can work with you on the strategies, helping to keep everything ‘on brand’. It can also have time-saving benefits for you, as having a clear strategy in place should eliminate the chance of you spending time on activities that won’t help you reach your goals.
It’s so important to keep in mind two things:
- your target audience (existing and prospective customers in particular) and
- your own business.
Point one is fairly self-explanatory but point two, maybe not. I believe it’s immensely important that you use your marketing strategy to convey who you are as a business, and to reflect the people, values and the culture at the heart of everything you do. Ultimately, this is what makes you different from your competitors and might make the difference to one customer. We’ve probably all heard the quote: “People do business with people they know, like and trust” and I think this is highly relevant when developing your marketing strategy.
This week we’ve also released a video which discusses – amongst other things – the importance of language and tone of voice, emphasising the importance of using simple language that is easy for customers to understand when you are creating communications. Click here to view the latest video interview with Laura Mitchell from Guardian.
So how exactly can you put this in to practice, and help your customers get to know more about you? Here’s a few suggestions to get you started…
- ‘Meet the team’ photos, videos or articles
- Blog articles giving your opinion on the market, economic issues etc.
- Newsletters showcasing what’s going on
- Sharing photos from team events or charity initiatives
- Hosting your own local event
- Getting involved in other events, for example having a stand at school fairs, community events etc.
- Using your social media platforms to raise awareness on issues/topics that you consider important
- Sharing ‘real life’ stories about customers you’ve been able to assist and why they were important to you (of course you can keep the customer anonymous if they prefer)
- Use of posters or advertising in local community
Of course, it’s also very important that you don’t engage in woke-washing, as explained in our Week 4 Blog here.
We genuinely do hope you’ve found our marketing insights over the past six weeks helpful, and we look forward to hearing how you got on with any new activities. Good luck!
