What is a marketing strategy?
The easiest way to explain this is to explore the differences between marketing strategies and marketing plans.
| Your marketing strategy will define what you’re going to do to reach your objectives. Your marketing plan will detail how you’re going to get there. |
It needn’t be a complex spreadsheet or an expansive document, it’s more an acknowledgement in writing of how you plan to approach and achieve your objectives – so it can be as short or as long as it needs to be.
But before you create your strategy, firstly there’s the need to set the business objectives. This is most likely to be a revenue target but could also be market share, social followers, number of new customers, and so on. (You can have more than one, and different ones for different parts of the business – but don’t over complicate things). Objectives should always be S.M.A.R.T.
- Specific – What exact result do you want to achieve?
- Measurable – How will you know when you’ve achieved it?
- Attainable – Is it possible to achieve it?
- Relevant – Is it the most important thing to achieve right now?
- Timely – When do you want to achieve it by?
Try not to get caught up in not knowing the exact details of how long the objective might take to reach and if it’s achievable in that time. The important thing is to set a S.M.A.R.T. objective. It’s a target to aim for the future (so you can’t possibly know exactly) and there will have to be a certain amount of guesswork that’s based on the information that you have access to.
Let’s take a look at a business example of marketing objectives, strategies and plans…
Yellow Leaf Hotel is a ten bedroom boutique hotel based in Cornwall and has been running for four years.
Business objective: To increase turnover by 15% every year – this year £350,000. To do this they’d like to increase the average length of stay from 2 to 2.5 nights and average spend per booking from £180 to £220.
Marketing strategy: Increasing average length of stay and average spend per booking by encouraging guests to turn their short break into a longer holiday. They’ll do this by focusing on communicating how much there is to do in the area, targeting the type of people likely to take longer trips, and offering promotions and special packages for longer stays.
Marketing plans: The hotel’s marketing plans detail the marketing techniques and tactics, including communication channels and promotions to reach customers, with budgets and timings.
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Market research
What does the overall market look like? Where are the opportunities?
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Competitor research
Who are your competitors and what do they do well/badly? Conduct a SWOT analysis.
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Customer research
Who is your target market? What are their typical demographics and common behavioural traits? Who are your buyer personas?
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Product research
What products offer the best value to your target market and your business the highest sales and profit margins? What is your niche or USP?
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Communication research
What is the most impactful and efficient way to reach your customers? Consider the different marketing communication channels – are there ways you can advertise for free or cost-effectively that will deliver a good ROI?
Yellow Leaf Hotel
Yellow Leaf Hotel’s strategy to reach their revenue targets this year is to increase the average length of stay and average spend per booking.
Yellow Leaf Hotel are investing in a video for their website and social to showcase the amount of things to do in the area. In selected periods they will be giving a fourth night free when you book three and they’re working with the local surf school to put on two four-day ‘learn to surf stays’ in the spring.
Bob's Your Uncle Salon
Bob’s Your Uncle Salon wants to hit their quarterly targets by increasing average customer spend. They’re reviewing their pricing strategy and adding higher value services to their range.
The salon hasn’t increased prices in two years so is taking this opportunity to redo it’s price list and also review the services offered. They will be adding higher end colour services and optional additions like head massages, with a focus on females who tend to spend more. In line with the new services and increased prices they’ll be investing in the look and feel of the salon, updating their logo, and customer service training for the staff – hoping to attract a more affluent customer longer term.
Sadie's Riding School
Sadie’s Riding School fills all of it’s after school classes so is looking to increase the number of customers by targeting new markets. They’ll add daytime and weekend classes for adults who want to learn to ride.
Sadie’s will be focusing on advertising it’s new adult classes in the local press, to their email database and on their Facebook page. They’ll be running ‘bring a friend’ days for adults who have never ridden before and are partnering with local accommodation providers to offer riding lessons to guests.
The Indian Coffee House
The Indian Coffee House has noticed people tend to only visit on average once a week and aims to increase repeat purchases to grow the business.
They know they need to give their customers something new and a reason to return. Firstly they’ll be dedicating time to customer research, to find out what their customers want and how they can improve service. Ideas suggested by the team that they want to research before launching them this year are – a loyalty programme, coffee making classes, and new products – cold coffees, bags of coffee beans, healthy snacks and boxes of donuts.
