This is one of the main differences between business owners who experience success and those who are just trying to stay afloat. All successful businesses have a clear marketing strategy that makes everything they do more effective.

Many small business owners get overwhelmed with daily marketing tasks like sending emails, tweeting, advertising, blogging and so on, so they aren’t taking the time to work on the decisions that’ll improve the performance of their tactics.

Strategy is simply the decisions you need to make so your tactics work better. Your marketing strategy is the foundation for creating awareness, generating interest, closing new sales, and continuing customer engagement.

Your marketing strategy guides your company culture, your products and services, and your pricing.

Here are a few keys to consider when creating a strong marketing strategy:

Who is Your Target Customer?

The first decision in any marketing strategy is to define your target customer. “Who do you serve?” always needs to be answered clearly before you can execute any tactic effectively.

This means you have to say “no” to other potential customers who might buy from you but who are clearly bad fits for your narrow focus. This takes time to develop the discipline, but you can’t do effective marketing without it.

What Do You Do?

Being able to simply explain what you do for people, what product you provide, and how it benefits the customer is HUGE. Make sure potential customers can describe your business in a few short words. They might say that KFC provides “family-style chicken meals" or that GEICO “helps you save money on car insurance."

Business owners will sometimes over-complicate their company descriptions. This leaves people unsure of what you do, which weakens your marketing effectiveness.

Here’s a simple rule: If someone can’t clearly remember your category description a month after you meet them, they were never clear about what you do in the first place.

What Unique Benefit Do You Offer?

Your unique benefit should highlight the one (or two) main things your product or service actually delivers (benefits) that your target customer really wants, not a long list of all the things your product does (features).

Focus on the simple benefits your product or service provides and keep it short. The easier it is for potential customers to understand, the better your marketing efforts will work!

Creating a clear, concise marketing strategy isn’t always easy, but if you need help, reach out to us at Zimmer Communications. Our team of marketing consultants, designers, writers, social media and digital marketing specialists would be more than happy to help your business boom in the coming years!