As a business owner or leader in your company, you already know how important planning is. Myriads of computer software can help you analyze data based on your business model to help make plans for the future.
Data analytics software is like having chickens on a farm laying eggs. You only get out of it what you put into it. Feed the chickens (software) quality food (data), and you get quality eggs (results).
The same is true of your marketing strategy. Before you analyze the results of your efforts, you have to feed prospects quality content in your marketing funnel and then analyze how people interact with it.
Analytics helps you adjust the marketing strategy based on how your prospects move through your marketing channels. Remember that no matter how good your analytics tools are, humans have to make the decisions.
In this post, you will learn about a three-phase process that will give your marketing efforts the results you need!
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Back to the chicken metaphor. Let’s say you’re going to buy some new chicks to raise into layers for your farm. What breed do you choose? Brahmas? Silkies? Wyandotte? These are great for show, but do they deliver a lot of quality eggs? Consider Leghorn, Rhode Island Red, or Austrawhite hens when you want to produce an egg every day or two.
Similarly, you need to identify your target audience. You want your prospects to be willing to pay for your products or services. An existing business will already know some information about customers, like how much the average customer spends on a purchase, when the customer buys something, and how much repeat business you get.
What happens when you want to expand your business? Do you want to attract more of the same customers or branch out to new demographics?
Before you spend one cent on a new marketing strategy, the first thing to do is build a buyer persona. A buyer persona combines the demographics and psychological aspects of your ideal customer. Then, you can use a persona to get inside the mind of someone in that target audience to understand how to market to that person.
One key point: A persona is semi-fictional. It combines data you have on hand with what you think an average prospective customer in your target audience wants.
For example, you’re crushing it with Millennial moms in their 30s with a household income of $75,000+ who want to make their lives easier. But what about older generations that might have more buying power? Could you market something to them, too?
This is where psychographics come into play. What motivates those Millennial moms to invest in your company? It’s probably something different from a Millennial’s mom or dad.
Once you identify your target audience and develop an in-depth buyer persona, it’s time to set some goals.
2. Set SMART Marketing Goals
As a business leader, you’ve probably heard of SMART goals already, but here’s a reminder.
Let’s say you identify your target audience as Gen Xers (ages 40 to 55) with teenage or fully grown kids in the Greater Springfield metro. You already have a wide following with the younger generation at your brick-and-mortar store. But you want to expand into this growing customer base with your local business.
As a refresher, SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-Bound
Specific means the goal should be clear and state who will do what. Your goal is to increase your revenue by 10%. Your marketing team will need to do a lot of heavy lifting at first, but then the in-store employees will need to be ready to handle the extra foot traffic.
Measurable indicates how you plan to measure progress. You’ll need ten new customers every week to buy something in your store, and for that, you’ll need 25 new people in the door.
Achievable refers to how realistic your goal is. With Springfield Metro’s size, getting 25 new customers in the door every week is doable.
Relevant means the objective makes sense and fits your business’s purpose. Half of your customers sign up for loyalty rewards and buy something at least once every two months.
Loyal customers also spend twice as much as customers not in your loyalty program. So, of those ten new customers every week, five will give you their information and sign up for your loyalty reward program.
Time-bound is when you plan on reaching your new goal. Your objective is to grow revenue by 10% quarter over quarter for the next two years. So, it’s not just the first quarter you’re trying to do this. You’re trying to accomplish this for eight straight quarters.
Marketing is inconsistent and changes rapidly. Two years ago, TikTok was not the juggernaut it is today, and there was no mention of AI tools. Marketing tactics you would use in the first quarter of your campaign may not work next year.
That’s where choosing the right marketing channels can boost your strategy. However, you will need to alter your strategy as time goes on. That’s just the nature of the beast.
3. Choose the Right Marketing Channels
How about feeding the beast? Before feeding your metaphorical chickens, you have to choose the food they like. Are you going to choose rice? Insects? Cornmeal? Corn pellets?
Selecting the right food for your chickens is similar to picking the right marketing channels to attract customers. It’s not like throwing corn on the ground to see how much your chickens will eat. You do your research to find out what is best for your chickens and feed them the right amount of food.
You already understand your customer base is filled with Millennials. Their most popular social channels are Facebook (Meta), Instagram, and YouTube. So, if your company wants to spend a little extra marketing money to bring in Millennials, increase your investment in these three channels.
However, the target audience you want to bring to your door comprises the parents of Millennials. Gen Xers are also on the same social media channels as the younger generation. The difference here is why an older generation would walk into your store. So, you’ll need to market to Gen X differently than Millennials.
Gen Xers also listen to the radio, so consider having an advertisement on a relevant podcast. You can also tap into traditional media like TV or mailers. Yes, you can get people in the door using traditional media. Still, you can combine traditional media with digital marketing using QR codes, unique URLs, or coupon codes to help you measure ROI with these efforts.
Gen Xers love to find a bargain. A loyalty program would work well here.
Pro Tip: Do Your Research to Get More Data
As we said, you have to know your customers. The more information you get about your customers, the better. A loyalty program certainly helps because you’ll get an email or phone number, a name and address, and payment information with a name and debit card.
However, you can get creative when you want to obtain more data. The key is to have an even exchange. What can you give your customers in exchange for their contact information? How about 10% off their first purchase of $50 or more?
Everyone loves saving money. You can offer a special discount for a new customer who answers a simple, five-question online quiz. You could do the same for filling out a form, replying to an email, or scanning a QR code.
From there, you can tailor your marketing to the audience interacting with these marketing types. For example, if someone scans a QR code on a specific page, you can customize messaging based on that code.
There are endless possibilities for obtaining first-party data. Once you have data, you can move your target audience along an inbound marketing funnel until they become customers. Then, the funnel starts over to remarket to them.
Once your target audience is in the funnel, use your analytics tools to see how they move through it. Then, you can alter your strategy as needed.
Improve Your Marketing With a Three-Phase Approach
BigPxl can help you build successful marketing campaigns from start to finish. Contact us or call (417) 799-2233 to start the conversation. We’re happy to help in any way we ca
