So, What’s Your Marketing Strategy… Do You Have One?

I don't know about you, but starting out in the world of online marketing, (or digital marketing as it's more commonly referred to today) I found myself all over the board when trying to define my marketing strategy. If you're having trouble identifying your strategy, the first thing to do is to make sure you have an understanding of the difference between strategy and tactics. Many of us tend to confuse the two.

Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy refers to a business's overall game plan for reaching prospective consumers and turning them into customers of the products or services the business provides. A marketing strategy contains the company’s value proposition, key brand messaging, data on target customer demographics, and other high-level elements (as defined by Investopedia).

Marketing tactics

Tactics are defined as strategic actions that promote a product or service to attain specific marketing goals. For example, your strategy could be creating content that promotes your product or service while your tactic could be blog posts, white papers, and videos.

Here are some strategies you might consider:

1. Educate with your content

According to Content Marketing Institute’s 2019 trends report, 77% of B2B marketers use content marketing. The majority of B2B content marketers use informational blogs, white papers, or quizzes to educate and nurture leads and customers building audience trust. It's important to create content that is relevant, authoritative and, of course, educates your audience.

2. Personalize your marketing messages

Personalization goes beyond adding the first name to your email greeting. Rather, really digging into your prospect’s mind and discovering what they fear, wish, and want. Timeliness should also be part of your strategy. Your audience doesn't want to bombarded with content, especially if it isn't even relevant to them. It's important that your content be concise and understandable and should provide your recipients' value with each communication.

3. Be sure to update your content

Another strategy is to update old content that has been well-received especially since Google has a freshness ranking factor and content that's been on your site for a while will experience a decline in views. Making simple updates and tweaks and, most importantly, changing the date of the article to represent the newest revision can get you a jump up in Google's rankings.

4. Use more video

Videos go a long way in the “know, like, and trust” factor which makes consumers more likely to purchase a product. Videos can include tutorials, testimonials, and even demonstrations of what goes on behind-the-scenes in your business. With the rising interest in streaming, more and more businesses are creating longer video content to build brand awareness and attraction.

5. Livestream

Live streaming was on the rise in 2019 continues to dominate in 2020… reasons?

It's free
Doesn't take a lot of time to produce
Has a broader target audience reach
And provides users with genuine engagement

So, brush up on your Live Video skills!

6. Training Videos and Courses

More and more training courses are done with short videos allowing the viewer to complete the training in bite-size pieces. Google algorithm continues to favor websites with video content, which makes these incredibly important both for marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

7. Set up automated email marketing campaigns

Automated email also allows for testing, infographics, sequences, delivery times, and CTA buttons, and content optimization.

For more ideas, head over to WordStream and an article by Lisa Smith on “The 16 Best Marketing Strategies to Try in 2020″

Best advice given to me by several mentors and trainers, pick one strategy that works for you and your product or opportunity. Then master that strategy before you try your hand at others.