Every year business heads meet with their sales and marketing teams to take a time to review their successes and failures throughout the past year. While they’re taking the time to review their past, it also serves as the perfect time to readjust their focus on their efforts in the future with a new marketing strategy for the coming year. By doing this at the same time, they can readily see which trends have been working for them and which ones need to be readjusted or eliminated altogether. Before you can develop an effective strategy for the next year, it is a good idea to conteplate a few things before you begin.
What Direction Are You Going?
As you look back over the previous year your record of successes should become very clear. You should be able to see a pattern that shows how well you did in each area of your previous marketing strategy. In order to do this, you may need to define your market clearly by dividing your consumers up into clearly identifiable groups with similar characteristics. This market segmentation can help you to create a marketing mix that will best match the expectations of customers you expect to service. The world is full of marketing opportunities but few businesses have the available resources to cover them all. By segmenting your audience you can narrow down your marketing options to focus on areas that promise to deliver the best results.
Determine Your Goals
Once you have this clearly defined, your next step in developing your marketing strategy is to set your goals down in black and white. This is very important when it comes to marketing for small business as it makes it clear what direction you want your business to follow. If you have a vision for your company in the coming years, it will help you identify the steps needed to reach that point. You’ll foresee obstacles in your way and develop an effective method for dealing with them.
Size Up the Competition
No matter what kind of business you’re in there will be competition striving to gain hold of the same market share you’re reaching for. Your marketing strategy needs to include your strategic approach to compete with them. Here is where you can develop some unique marketing ideas for small business that can set you apart from the competition. To do that, you need to know how to combat the marketing efforts of your competitors and find innovative ways to win market share. Check out their profiles in social media, Google them to find out if they have been mentioned in the news or press, and even keep track of how their website is ranking in comparison to yours. You want to know how your business differs and how to make those differences work to your advantage.
The key to marketing small business interests is in the knowledge and awareness of this type of data. It would be impossible for a business to create an effective marketing strategy if you are unaware of what has worked in the past, where you are going, and where your competetition is . Learning what is trending in the market, identifying who your customers are, and knowing the look of your competition can make a major difference in the success of any marketing plans you can have for the coming year.
