Create a step-by-step marketing strategy and boost your sales

26/05/2021

Marketing can become your best ally, as one of its main objectives is to help you increase your sales and improve your image and projection. All businesses today need marketing.

★★★★★ 4.2/5

“Marketing is not an expense, it’s your best investment”

Marketing is responsible for generating profitability for the business from a corporate perspective. It is also responsible for creating positive purchase experiences and consequently achieving customer loyalty. However, many businesses today still fall into the trap of selling their product or service at any cost, without selling what’s truly important: the need to acquire that product.

Don’t be afraid of marketing

In both traditional and digital marketing, the most important thing is the CUSTOMER. Years ago, products and services were created and produced and then sold, regardless of consumer needs.

Marketing is tasked with finding the needs users have and then satisfying them in the best possible way. Marketing is the connection between the consumer and the business. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to understand your consumer. It is essential not only for your company’s success but also for its survival.

“Capturing, retaining, and fostering customer loyalty is what you need, and for this, your best ally is marketing”

In Spain and the globalised world we live in, many large companies have succeeded thanks to implementing a marketing strategy. Small businesses and startups must take part and realise that, without considering this essential business aspect, they will hardly be able to find a niche in the market.

Marketing should not scare you, even if it’s not your area of expertise. The first thing you should do is conduct a preliminary analysis by following these steps:

Identify your business objectives.
Define your marketing goals.
Analyse your business internally (strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities).
Analyse the market and environment (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors).
Define your target audience.
Define your unique value proposition.
Establish your brand positioning.
Study your 7 Ps of the marketing mix (product, price, promotion, place, people, process, and physical evidence).

Once you have conducted this in-depth study, you must select the strategies that best suit your business type. Remember that there are both offline and online marketing strategies; the fusion of both will give you the formula for your business to shine. What are the most suitable strategies for you?

People meeting to draw up a strategic marketing plan.

Offline marketing

Although the world is becoming increasingly digitalised, there is a key aspect: the screen deprives us of the senses. Street or in-store campaigns with real people allow for experiences involving sensations, smells, and tastes. Such physical campaigns will ensure that customers remember your products more vividly.

Did you know that, in less than a minute, consumers receive over 300 commercial stimuli in a supermarket? 55% of the information received by the brain is perceived through the eyes; this overstimulation that your customers are exposed to has created a significant need for you to differentiate yourself from your competitors. How can you do this? One option not to overlook is offline marketing. People still prefer physical emotions and experiences, but it is crucial to complement this with digital marketing by having a strong online presence.

Offline marketing strategies

Traditional marketing techniques are still very much needed to make your marketing strategy comprehensive and effective. There are a myriad of resources to achieve your business objectives. Here are the twelve most effective and common ones you can start implementing right away:

1. Advertising on television, newspapers, and radio

These are the traditional media par excellence. They allow you to reach a broad audience and the specific audience you desire, as they are highly segmented. Moreover, there are numerous options in terms of time slots, formats, and prices.

You can hire the services of an advertising agency or use your creativity to create a commercial, a radio ad, a newspaper announcement, or even a placement in your consumers’ favourite magazine.

2. Business directories

This is one of the most underrated options but offers numerous advantages. Since businesses are organised alphabetically and by specific sectors, it is easy for users to find your company when conducting a search.

3. Trade shows and events

Participating in trade shows and events is truly effective for attracting new customers, establishing relationships with suppliers, and enhancing your positioning. Make yourself known at all the trade shows and events in your sector. Be visible. Use roll-ups, banners, and flags… Leverage all the corporate decorations, as they will provide greater visibility. Your brand will benefit, and you’ll make valuable contacts.

Mutua Madrid Open.

4. Sponsorship of Events and Social Causes

Associating your company with a cause or sponsoring a social, cultural, or sporting event will help you gain greater popularity and showcase your company’s values. It is advisable to choose organisations and causes that align with your company and with which you want to be associated.

5. Workshops and Open Training

Another smart way to promote a product or service is through workshops and training sessions. If you add the opportunity to provide this training or workshop at an event or trade show for the right audience, you have a high chance of success.

Otherwise, there are now many options in cities with spaces you can borrow from the Council or other entities or rent for the occasion.

6. Merchandising or Promotional Material

Whether you have a presence at a trade fair, a customer visits your store, or you visit a supplier, it’s always helpful to have some material gifts to strengthen and nurture the relationship. Merchandising is effective in making you memorable. It can take many forms: from a pen, folder, or notebook to a t-shirt, trainers, or cap. This way, each time it’s used, it will promote you to other audiences for free and ensure your business is positively remembered.

7. Direct Marketing

Reaching out to customers directly, as the name of this marketing strategy suggests, is an effective and low-cost action. After studying your target audience, launch commercial campaigns. Use special dates and offer your customers some kind of incentive that differentiates you from the competition. For example, you can launch a discount, a voucher, or a promotional gift. This strategy will make a good impression and help you build customer loyalty.

Resources you can use include:

- Emails
- Phone calls
- Coupons
- Brochures and catalogues
- SMS messages

8. Printing Flyers and Promotional Leaflets

Grab attention with a special offer or design. The leaflet should contain all the information you want to announce, but you must be as original and creative as possible to capture your customers’ attention.

Examples of original information brochures.

9. Guerrilla Marketing

Implement creative street actions that generate buzz about your business. It’s a highly effective way to use resources with low cost and high impact. You just need to choose the right area where you want to carry it out and the type of action that represents your company. It could be a street performance, a flashmob, or an optical illusion.

10. Street Marketing

Street marketing is one of the marketing trends that businesses and consumers love the most due to its high creative and imaginative power. These actions are characterised by creating a significant impact on users so they can easily remember what was promoted and the brand.

Promotional action for the premiere of the movie IT, anchoring a red balloon in a sewer.

In this case, there are no set guidelines, as street marketing actions can vary widely. Generally, it involves leveraging street resources, for example, integrating the brand with urban furniture, placing giant banners on iconic and busy buildings, utilising technology by creating interactive elements where passersby can participate, etc. As always, imagination is key to positively impacting users.

Street marketing action carried out by the Bates Y&R agency to promote the Copenhagen Zoo.

11. Loyalty Cards

Another often-overlooked resource is rewarding and encouraging loyalty from regular customers with loyalty cards. By knowing their personal data and preferences, you can offer exclusive services and personalised products.

12. Take Care of Your Store’s Image

Image is everything. You may have a great product, but if it’s not presented well, its sales potential decreases. Every detail in your store should be carefully considered to provide the best experience for your customer. You should pay attention to the design and decoration of your storefront, establish a pleasant and spacious furniture arrangement that encourages walking throughout your store, ensure your product placement is studied to stimulate sales, use lighting to help visualisation and highlight certain items, establish attractive and surprising decorations, highlight impactful promotions, and incorporate visual communication elements such as signs to grab the passerby’s attention.

Digital marketing

The importance of marketing in businesses is undeniable, but due to technological advancements, digital marketing has become an indispensable tool for business success.

Digital marketing is of vital importance due to its numerous advantages. Thanks to digital marketing, you can have your business accessible 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and best of all, from anywhere in the world. Another significant advantage of digital marketing is the measurement, control of results, and analyses it provides.

“You know, renew or die”

Digital marketing is here to stay, and any business can find a place in the technological sector.

Digital marketing strategies

1. Website

The website is the main element of any digital marketing strategy. It is your business’s presence on the internet and the tool through which you will convert users into leads or potential customers.

The website should be well-structured, interactive, and easy to use. Additionally, it is recommended that the website includes information about the company, what it does, and its main services, including keywords. These will help your website appear in the top search engine positions. You can also include links to your social media profiles to offer interconnection.

2. SEO

The acronym stands for Search Engine Optimisation, which means Optimisation of Search Engines in English. The most well-known and widely used search engine by most users (in Spain, across Europe, and internationally) is Google.

However, there are others, such as Yahoo or Bing. There are even specific search engines that can only be used in certain countries, like Yandex in Russia or Baidu in China.

These search engines work with “spiders” that filter and prioritise web pages according to the keywords that have been entered into the search engine, displaying hierarchically those web pages whose content matches the keywords the user typed. In short, SEO is what helps us find what we’re looking for. In reality, it’s much more complex, as the spiders use algorithms in search engines that are beyond our control.

Therefore, applying SEO on your web page or through content creation (Content Marketing) doesn’t give you full control over your web page’s ranking position but helps improve web positioning.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is similar to SEO in that it aims to improve the positioning of a website in search engines. This content can take different formats, such as a testimonial video, a corporate blog with current news, podcasts, etc.

The primary goal is to create original, relevant, and engaging content, but above all, the content must be highly specific to reach the desired target audience.

Social Media Marketing

A very modern and effective way to connect with your audience is to create marketing campaigns on social media, known as Social Media Marketing. Additionally, this strategy will increase your sales, enhance your company’s branding, and attract new leads.

Like SEO and Content Marketing strategies, running campaigns on social media has a very low implementation cost. However, they yield low levels of control over the results, so all of them must be considered with different types of campaigns.

3. SEM

Another Digital Marketing strategy for your business is Search Engine Marketing, which involves placing ads on search engines so that your website appears within the top three results. Paying for ads on search engines is very effective, as it offers greater control over the strategy being implemented and the results obtained.

4. Display marketing

SEM ads should not be confused with another type of paid online advertising: Display Marketing. Through this Digital Marketing strategy, banner ads appear on search engines. This type of advertising is very creative, as it aims to get the user to click on the banner and access your website directly. The banner can take many forms: from a game to a video, an image, or an audio.

5. Social Ads

On the other hand, it can also have the support of Social Ads, which are ads on Social Media platforms or social networks. These options include Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, or YouTube Ads as the most well-known platforms. They are highly effective as they give you the option to segment the audience you are targeting. With them, you get good result reports that help you improve your future campaigns.

6. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful strategies for making money due to its high return on investment. This is because it only requires promoting a product while its creation and distribution are handled by the manufacturer.

Much like the classic commission system, affiliation involves receiving a payment for each product or service that a company sells thanks to your promotion or recommendation on your website. The best part is that both parties win: advertisers gain new leads while you can continuously generate income.

7. Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the most effective strategies with the best return on investment. Furthermore, metrics can be accessed to evaluate the campaign results. They can be scheduled periodically and have a very low cost.

Results analysis

A fundamental step in the marketing strategy is to measure the results obtained from your campaign. Knowing the growth level through precise and reliable indicators will give you the guidelines to take the necessary subsequent actions. Analysing the results will allow you to configure future tactics and get them right.

Imagine running an SEO campaign but not paying attention to the results; it could be that the campaign is inefficient or has long lost its potential. It’s likely that when new competitors appear in the market, you will need to modify part of that strategy and adjust your goals to the new reality.

A goal can and should be improved as you progress. The environment is so changeable that it’s impossible to plan long-term without making mistakes. You must always be attentive to the evolution of both the market and your own company so that you can detect errors and resolve them to maximise your benefits. Who said we should never look back? We learn from the past and our mistakes, so you shouldn’t fear them.

Now that you know all the marketing strategies you can implement in your business, don’t be afraid to start creating Online and Offline Marketing campaigns.

Remember, a good campaign is not 100% online or 100% offline; only by combining both will you find the formula for success. No one is born knowing, but as you implement these strategies and with professionals by your side, the results will come to you.

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Create a step-by-step marketing strategy and boost your sales

Don’t be afraid of marketing

Offline marketing

Offline marketing strategies

Digital marketing

Digital marketing strategies

Results analysis

How to increase your sales with...

Customer loyalty: 4 techniques and strategies...

Brand activations that boost your sales

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