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:

So, you’ve put a logo together and slapped a few bullet points down on paper. Does that count as a brand strategy? Not really. Business owners should know why they choose certain strategies, and they should make a detailed outline of what their strategies will be.

The more detailed you are in your branding strategy, the easier it will be to succeed when you execute those strategies.

Here are three things every brand needs to define:

• What is your brand’s objective?
• Who are your customers?
• How does your brand define long-term success?

Knowing the answers to each question will help determine what your goals should be, how you should approach your customers, and how you’ll track results and ROI.

In addition to having a solid strategy, here are a few more steps you can take to help build your brand:

Advertising is a key part of business, but unless your messages are effective, you’re spinning your wheels. For an ad campaign to truly connect with your customers, you must create messages that are both memorable and powerful. You must also clearly communicate how you help make the consumer’s life better.

To better illustrate our point, here are three of the most powerful, effective advertising campaigns ever created:

Think about it. If you’re going to try and attract more business with a juicy offer, that offer needs to be something that people simply can’t refuse. Because even the most powerful call to action won’t work unless your offer is practically irresistible. Regardless of what you’re selling—and even if you’re giving something away—there are some things that go into creating a really effective offer.

Marketing success depends, at least partially, on the strength of the creative in your advertising. You may have the better product, the lowest price, or a longer history in the market than your closest competitor, but if your marketing messages are boring or weak, people aren't going to give you a second look or listen.

The world’s most brilliant marketing teams always think BIG. Thankfully, as a business owner, you can ask the same questions they do about your company, your audience and your approach. Here are those questions:

It’s America’s most popular ice cream flavor and gives your common cup of coffee a tasty punch. Vanilla. Somewhere you won’t find this flavor? Strong marketing campaigns.

If you walked into an ice cream shop with 50 different flavors, would vanilla be the first one you asked for? Probably not, because it’s not as flashy as Double Brownie Chewy Chocolate Chip. (This sounds amazing, by the way.) 

Here are a few ways to help you be bold in the World of Branding:

Brand­ing and posi­tion­ing almost always involve theft and warfare.

The mean­ing of your brand and the “posi­tion” you want in the minds of con­sumers is usu­al­ly already occu­pied, or at least con­tested, by another brand. Some­body else owns, or is try­ing to own, what you want because there are only a few posi­tions worth own­ing. If you want to plant your flag on a certain piece of men­tal real estate, you’ve got to remove the flag of your competitors first. Either steal the land out from under them or fight for it:  theft and warfare.

Two million. That’s the number of commercials the average American will have seen and heard by the time they’re 65. So how in the world do you make your ads pop, sizzle and stand out in this mess of a world we call marketing? Here are three simple ways to make sure you’re reaching the right people and generating more traffic for your business!

In a world where the human brain is bombarded by hundreds of ads per day, how is it that you can separate and stand out from your competition? First, you should have a solid marketing plan in place, and you should know exactly how you’re going to measure your return on investment. Once you have that strategy nailed down, then you can begin crafting your marketing campaign.