Within all industry sectors, it is essential to have a marketing strategy when it comes to the wider business strategy. It’s key in communicating your organisation’s offer, reaching your target audience and is critical for business growth. With a whole host of options both online and offline for marketing strategies and how to market your brand, it can be tricky to know where to invest to maximise your budget and make an impact.   

As a marketer, you’ll understand that the key to earning results is to ensure you have a strategic plan in place, rather than using different tactics sporadically. However, strategy development can sometimes be difficult to justify as business leaders often want to see tangible evidence of where their marketing budget is being spent.   

Of course, fancy business cards and state-of-the-art websites are much more impressive to look at than a text heavy word document outlining your plan but these things can cost money if they aren’t informed by strategy. This article can help you explain to your senior managers why it’s well worth investing the time and resource in strategy development so you can focus on tactics that will contribute to achieving overarching business objectives without veering off course.  

Connect with your audience  

Creating and maintaining relationships with your audience is key to business success. In order to build such relationships, you must have a detailed understanding of what makes your target audience tick on an emotional level. An early stage of your marketing plan should be to build buyer personas. These will give you the knowledge you need to tailor your marketing tactics, prioritise budgets and keep your whole team on the same page. When you communicate in a way that is relevant and engaging, you’ll see relationships improve and an increase in buyer advocacy (and therefore the bottom line). 

Your marketing strategies best foot forward  

Your marketing materials, brand identity and tone of voice all work together as the face of your business. Approaching your identity strategically will enable you to position your brand how you want it to be perceived, without wasting resources on having to adjust it. Your marketing strategy should be considered as part of the business-wide strategy alongside personas, competitors, your industry landscape and any current trends so none of your decisions are based on guesswork. When your brand creates a brilliant impression on the world, people will take notice and engage with your products and services.   

Boost the bottom line  

The purpose of your marketing function, like any other part of your business, has a massive impact on your finances and is an essential function for driving profits, bringing in revenue and building your brand. An excellent marketing strategy and putting some thought into where your budgets are allocated will ensure a maximum return on investment. From sharing company news, advertising products and gaining audience insights, marketing influences every business function and definitely isn’t one to be underestimated.   

Empower your marketing team  

Your marketing strategy isn't just intended to impact your customers. When you invest in meaningful internal communications, your marketing team will feel and demonstrate the benefits in equal measure. Make sure your company values truly reflect your brand’s culture and involve everyone in the process. This will boost their passion for the business and will mean they are more likely to feel a sense of belonging and pride for the business, in many ways acting as walking advertisements for the work your organisation does. 

Achieve goals and outline priorities   

Building a marketing strategy that’s focused on both long-term and short-term priorities allows you to focus your efforts on tactics that will contribute to meeting your wider business goals. A marketing strategy that is integrated with key priorities enables your business to be reactive, measure what works and scale efforts alongside business growth.    

At Fabric, our approach to building an integrated marketing strategy is based on decades of experience in the industry. To take your marketing career to the next level and deliver real value to your organisation, check out our course programme. 

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