The 5 golden rules for a successful marketing strategy

As the person in charge of your company’s marketing, you know that having a relevant and well-structured strategy can be a real springboard to boost your brand’s image, provided that this strategy is well executed. To help you, let’s see in this article the 5 golden rules for a successful marketing strategy.

✅ Make a clear assessment of your internal situation

Developing and creating an effective marketing strategy is not an easy task. It is a long and demanding process that requires large amounts of information, good analytical skills, and a willingness to act.

At this stage, start by analysing the internal situation of your company from different points. The idea here is to audit your brand at all levels. This includes an evaluation of your performance and an analysis of the processes in place in the department, all of which are compiled in a clear and detailed final report on the internal situation.

Your strategy must consider how your marketing strengths and weaknesses affect your business. To do this, write an initial SWOT analysis. Don’t hesitate to involve your teams by asking them for their opinions and feelings about the current situation and the improvements that could be made in terms of strategy. You can also solicit your customers to know more about their perception of your brand and set up a media monitoring system to monitor your reputation.

✅ Analyse the external environment

Once the internal environment has been scrutinized, it’s time to tackle your brand’s environment. This second analysis starts with an in-depth study of the competition. Thanks to this step, you can list all the players present on the market, position yourself as a brand, but also see how your offer stands out.

New competitors are constantly emerging, so you need to use new strategies to differentiate your brand from the competition. By seeking to renew and differentiate yourself, you can only gain an advantage over the competition. Don’t neglect competitor analysis and benchmarking, as it will help you refine your brand image and strategies and propose an optimal marketing positioning.

Now it’s time to evaluate your opportunities and threats. In terms of new opportunities, you can consider an increase in demand by optimizing your website, expanding your community on social networks as well as improving your strategies through new technologies. Finally, for threats, you can try to anticipate them by monitoring, the appearance of a new competitor with a more attractive version of what you offer for example.

✅ Clearly define the objectives

Before reviewing your strategy, it is important to go back to basics and ask yourself which objectives you want to achieve in the short, medium, and long term. After a detailed analysis of your external and internal situation, one of the most important steps in implementing an effective marketing strategy, but also one of the most difficult, is to define your marketing objectives.

Your objectives are linked to your company’s business strategy and should range from the most general to the most specific. It is only then that you can define your action plan, based on these predefined objectives. When formulating your objectives, keep in mind that they must be precise, clear, and understandable by all quickly. They must also be quantifiable thanks to the performance indicators.

✅ Measuring your performance

Now that you have defined your objectives, it is time to measure your performance. By measuring the results of your marketing efforts, you will have a better understanding of your audience and will be able to design more relevant campaigns.

Collect and analyse your key performance indicators (KPIs) on a regular basis to calculate the return on investment and ensure the profitability of your marketing campaigns. The collection of this data is necessary to know your strong points and thus to be able to capitalize on them, but it will also allow you to see your areas of improvement and thus, to implement solutions quickly.

✅ Make an action plan

Once your strategy has been measured and analysed, move on to the action plan. The action plan is an essential part of a successful marketing strategy. Thanks to it, you can reach your objectives over a specific period without making unnecessary mistakes.

To have an effective and relevant marketing action plan, each of the steps explained above must be carefully executed. It is only by considering the analyses that you will be able to establish a good action plan. Don’t reduce your plan to a simple sequence of tasks to be accomplished: think about making it functional and understandable to everyone. Actions should be linked as a coherent whole to your marketing objectives. Don’t hesitate to prioritize and plan each of your actions according to certain elements such as the degree of priority of each action or the time required to complete them. The marketing action plan should be seen as your plan of attack: don’t forget to classify each of your actions according to its degree of priority.

Behind every brand, there is often a well-tried marketing strategy. In this article, we have outlined the 5 golden rules for making good strategic decisions. As you can see, making the right decisions depends on a good analysis of your situation. Without an in-depth study of your marketing, it will be difficult to develop a coherent and effective brand strategy. Keeping your objectives in mind, don’t hesitate to evaluate your performance, but also that of your competitors. By carefully following each of the steps explained, you will be ready to develop a relevant marketing strategy to connect with your consumers and create a strong community that reflects your company.