Marketing does not concern tactics, tips or tools – it is a question of having the right conversation with the right audience. Without a brand strategy first, all your efforts are only noise. Here’s how to move your approach, connect with ideal customers and generate real results.
Marketing without strategy is only noise
Marketing does not advertise. This does not require the tracks or tries to encourage people to buy. Marketing is a conversation. And this conversation only works if you know who you are talking to and understand what they need to hear.
But marketing specialists too often prioritize tactics and tools that do not reach empty promises: “If we make this tactic or use this tool, we will get all the necessary results.” It’s a lie.
Tactical marketing without strategy is like a dog flowing its tail. It is a waste of time and resources. Everything you produce is more noise for people to ignore. Worse, you create a noise that annoys your target audience, undermining your marketing efforts.
At the heart of strategic marketing is your brand. Your brand is who you are; This is what you are talking about. And that’s why your ideal customers want to talk to you.
If you continue with tactics and no strategy, you will continue to shout in the void, to see no results or, worse, flooding your reception box of requests that waste your time. During all this time, you will never connect with your ideal client.
A brand strategy first is the only way to move the needle and obtain the desired results. How do you do this? Follow these five steps and you will see the desired results.
1. Start with the brand, not the tactics
If you are a company established with excellent products and services, but do not see feedback, tactics such as SEO, PPC and content marketing without strategy will not provide you with anything.
Your brand is the foundation of everything. To guide all your efforts, develop a strong brand voice and a bold brand promise to guide all your efforts.
How do you find your brand voice? Here are some exercises that will help you:
Swot analysis: Understand your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to discover hidden truths that you may have neglected.
Interviews with customers: Talk to your ideal customers. Ask them why they work with you and what they appreciate in your organization.
Employee interviews: Talk to your employees, especially those oriented towards customers. What are customers concerned? What keeps them at night?
If you focus on these truths, you will no longer need to guess why your customers appreciate you. These truths are the basis of your brand voice. This is the reason why you count your ideal customers.
Build on them and develop a brand promise that meets the real needs of your customers. Be bold with your brand promise. Tell them what they need to hear and promise them something that makes their lives easier. For example, our brand promise is …
“We help companies based on 5 -star services to rethink marketing and double their income in three years without wasting time and money.”
If you know your ideal client and what keeps them at night, you will know what will motivate them to act. Stop guess and know.
Dig more deeply: Build a brand strategy: Essentials for long -term success
2. Eliminate the ineffective occupied work
Do your marketing efforts lead to real business results or do they simply take care of you? Perform a brutal assessment of your tactics:
Do your social media generate a return on investment? Do your paid campaigns convert the slopes in closed business? Is your SEO ranking for keywords that align with the intention of your ideal audience?
It’s time to ask you: do the results of these tactics are worth the efforts? Be honest. Until you focus on brand exercises above, how can you really know if these tactics will connect with your target audience?
Tactics without fundamental strategic support are nothing more than assumptions. Focus only on efforts that directly contribute to significant growth.
Dig more deeply: Strategic and tactical decisions: how to find the right balance
3. Back to your “why”
To connect with your ideal customers, you need to understand what they really appreciate. Why have they hired you or bought you at home? What problems have you solved for them? Your message, content and campaigns should approach their “why”.
Return to why forces you to focus on the customer. Why are you doing what you do for them?
Consider the concept described in Donald Miller’s “Building A Storybrand”, inspired by The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell. The idea is to position your customers as the hero of history, your brand serving as a guide that leads them to success.
If your content concerns you, you are wrong. No one cares about you. They care whether or not you will solve their problems. This is what the hero of your story means to do.
Show them how you will guide them towards their success. Your content should describe how you are successful. You will fail if all your content is talking about the quality you are.
This truth can be difficult to accept for many. But think about it for a second: when when you go back the last time you read something on a website on the quality of a business and you thought: “Wow, I have to work with them?” ” Never.
Everything you are interested in is if someone can solve your problems. Your customers are not different.
Dig more deeply: Why you should always ask why: the strategy must direct tactics in marketing planning
4. Redefine success measures
Traditional metrics like traffic and impressions do not always tell the whole story. Instead, prioritize:
Quality website traffic that motivates actions such as downloads or significant requests. Classification of keywords that reflect good intention and attract ideal customers. The commitment of social media which promotes real connections rather than automated noise. Advertisements leading to destination pages that cause conversion.
Your objectives must always be linked to growth and income, even for the brand awareness campaigns. Vanity measures do not always mean the success of marketing. Yes, they can possibly result in success, but it is rare.
Instead, describe the objectives that matter. Then work back from these goals to help you describe what a successful customer journey looks like.
Does this end with a telephone call? Or a form form? How do they get there? What will lead them to this result?
Write your success and map your marketing efforts to guide customers to them. Don’t guess. Have the customer route.
It’s time to have the customer experience part of your marketing strategy.
5. Offer exceptional customer experiences
It is rare for the customer experience to make efforts in a conversation on marketing. But it’s critical. Otherwise, you will find it difficult to understand what your ideal customer looks like and why they appreciate you as a business.
The customer experience is the place where the strategy really comes to life. Use travel mapping to assess each point of contact where customers interact with your brand.
For each point of contact, ask:
Do we make our brand promise? What do they think and feel? Where can we go beyond their expectations?
It may look like this:
Remember that, as mentioned in the first step, your customer -oriented team is a gold mine of ideas. Use their comments to fill the gaps, repair frustrations and create a transparent experience.
Exceptional customer experiences naturally generate the faithful defenders that each company aspires. This information will help you generate the authentic content that your ideal customers are looking for.
This means that you will no longer need to guess the content you need to create. You will know exactly what content they want and will motivate them to want more of you.
Dig more deeply: From conjecture to growth: how to build a customer -centered marketing strategy
Change your concentration
Tactical marketing can generate traffic, but strategic marketing establishes sustainable connections and generates real growth. Isn’t that the goal of marketing?
Focusing on your brand, your customer needs and significant results will create a marketing approach that stands out in a sea of similarity.
Everything else is only noise.
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