Ultimate Guide to Design Marketing Strategy to Boost your Brand Presence.

A successful marketing plan is imperative towards achieving the business ideas and goals of any organization. An efficient marketer or a marketing team formulates the best plan that helps them in spearheading their marketing processes in their right and result-oriented direction.

A marketing plan is basically a roadmap that helps the different marketing divisions to work in tandem to achieve common business goals. It is a strategic layout developed and used by a marketing team to organize, implement and track the performance of the different marketing processes.

In simpler terms, if you are planning to boost your online presence and establish your business for the long haul, a marketing plan is indispensable. It helps you write down and track the performance of your marketing tactics and strategies in an organized way.

Forms of Effective Marketing

Digital marketing has come a long way since its email marketing stage. Today, we have the social media and video marketing that has taken the industry by storm. However, there are still some of the traditional forms of marketing that continue to bring qualitative traffic and quantitative sales lead for businesses.

Some of the best types of marketing include the following:

Traditional Marketing

• Television

It is undoubtedly among the most popular forms of traditional marketing along with Radio.

The cost of advertising or marketing on TV depends on a variety of factors such as demographic of viewers, live viewership, time selection (primetime are the costliest) and geographical location.

Some of the leading TV channels can charge up to Rs. 3, 50,000 for a 10-second slot of advertisement.

• Radio

It is yet another popular traditional marketing medium that offers a great ROI for businesses. It is important to choose the right ad campaign for Radio which needs to consider the ad duration, ad frequency on-air, ad tenure, and time selection (primetime or all day).

• Newspaper & Magazines

Space occupied by the ad or the ad size (length and width) is an important factor that decide the costs of advertising in newspapers and magazines. Newspapers have a wider and diverse readership. Newspapers are widely popular and part of the daily readership, hence, it has greater ROI.

Modern Marketing

Today, marketing is all about the right use of the Internet and the various channels of digital marketing. Social media advertising is the growing and the most popular trend in digital marketing.

• Search Engine Marketing

There are many SEM services in India that help you select the right mix of search engine marketing activities for your business. Some of the popular SEM practices include text ads, Google Shopping Ads, responsive ads, local service ads etc. PPC Services are specialized part of search engine marketing that lets marketers yield the best results from Google ads and similar campaigns.

• Search Engine Optimization

SEO practice can easily catapult your business website right up the ranks on Google SERPs. However, you need an expert and reliable SEO Company in India that will improve your search rankings . The use of age-old SEO practices now needs the push of influencer outreach, guest authors as well as brand mentions on major platforms to improve your brand reputation.

• Social Media Marketing

As mentioned, Social Media is here to stay and how! Today, social media is flooded with influencers, small businesses, and just about anything that you can imagine to be sold online. From startups to the biggest brands, use Facebook advertising, Instagram marketing and so on to build and further their brand reach. Social Media Marketing Services include community management, profile setup, social media strategy development, social media content development etc.

• Video Marketing

We all know how big YouTube is! Similarly, all video sharing and marketing platforms have brought a whole league of influencers and branding strategy into the digital marketing domain. A Video Marketing Company can help you create as well as market your business videos such as ad films, corporate films or clips, explainer videos, YouTube video etc.

• Mobile Marketing

The use of push notifications has become the latest marketing trends with due credit to the incredible popularity and widespread use of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

From the times of SMS, MMS, marketers are now focusing on the benefits of using application marketing, marketing through QR codes and the like.

• Email Marketing

This is an age-old digital marketing technique and one of the first marketing techniques used with the advent of the Internet. However, email marketing trends and practices such as newsletters, emailers such as brand story mails and promotional emails such as coupon mails, latest event mails, discount mails, sales and seasonal discount mails are all in trend for both prospects and loyal customers.

Information You Need To Have Before Deciding Your Marketing Plan?

There is certain important information to consider before you decide on your marketing plan. These help to prepare your business for performing in the next 5 years. These include a rundown of the detailed activities that you have performed in the past 5 years along with market analysis.

Some of the required information includes:

• Compiling and tracking data on business policies undertaken in the last 5 years.
• Analysis and accessing the profit ratio achieved by the different departments in the organization.
• Details regarding SWOT Analysis – Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threats Analysis.
• List of activities conducted in the last 5 years that help to understand the performance of your marketing campaigns.
• Lastly, you need a detailed report on the competitor and market analysis. This includes the activities undertaken by them in these years and their outcomes.

Conduct a Market Research for Your Business

While conducting market research for your business, it is critical to consider the following factors for a holistic plan that caters to the varied marketing needs of your business.

• Identifying your target audience with respect to the different market regions. This helps you to develop the right communication strategy.
• Understanding customer demographics – age, gender, economic strata, culture, and language are some of the important considerations.
• Buying power of the target audience determines the price and availability of the product or service.
• Taste and cultural preference of the customers help in shaping your brand strategy and the communication to be used in the marketing campaigns.
• Decide on the different activities to be performed as part of the marketing plan. Each activity will have its own set of tracking and performance analysis.
• Finalize budget and allocate it to the different marketing departments.
• Regular monitoring of each activity in the marketing plan with respect to the budget allocated.

Choosing the Marketing Plan Covers Various Things:

The right marketing plan takes into consideration the following aspects of your business:

• Size of Your Business
• Capital Of Your Business
• Revenue Your Business is earning.
• Future Goals of Your Business.

Common Marketing Strategies Which Will Surely Benefit You

Most startups and fresh establishments find it hard to decide on the different aspects and factors important for their online marketing plan. Some of the key marketing strategies that are effective in giving you the right start and are a sure-shot way of gear-starting your business are discussed below:

• Use a referral program

Letting your customer refer you to a friend or family more often than not helps in increasing your customer size. It lets you gain more business using your loyal customers. And, as it is said people trust personal recommendations over advertising, any given day.

• Visit trade shows

It is a tried and tested formula to grow businesses! Most startups to date swear by the ‘goods’ of attending trade shows to build a huge following for their product or service. There are many influencers participating in these shows. The rapport that you build with them at these events goes a long way in helping you promote your business online and even through word-of-mouth marketing.

• Find influencers on relevant forums

This is yet another age-old trick to find the best customers and voices for your business on related forums. There are many users active on forums who can easily share your products or services with the online fraternity.

• Run a contest and turn heads in your direction!

A well-executed online contest that offers a nice prize can create the right buzz for your business. If you are planning to start a writing community or platform, how about launching a poetry contest to help your readers test their skills and win some quick cash prize as well!

• Give away free merchandise!

Now, everyone wants a free t-shirt right! Most customers love the idea of having a nice T-shirt even though it has your company logo or motto on it.  This helps you reach out to a wider audience and your prospects become your advertisers too!

These are some of the many tricks and tips that you can use to build a strong online as well as offline presence for your startup or your established business. It is important to plan and execute in the right direction. At the end of the day, creating the right impact is all that matters!