When you get started trying to develop a marketing strategy, there are a number of core questions you need to ask yourself first.
Asking the right questions will help you develop hypotheses of the best marketing strategy to begin with.
These are the core areas and questions I would recommend.
1. Get clarity on your target audience
It’s impossible to set a marketing strategy without a clear sense of where you are going. It’s essential to know WHO the goal is.
Ask yourself:
- Who is our target customer?
- Are we targeting enterprises, SMBs, or something else?
- Are we targeting specific industries, or individual departments within larger organizations?
- What are the specific pain points and needs of these customers?
- How do our partnerships address these needs?
- How does our audience typically consume information?
- Are they more likely to respond to online content, in-person events, webinars, etc.?
These questions will help you set the foundation.
Next, we need to understand the context that your company exists in within the mind of your audience.
2. Understand your competition & market position
To truly reach your target market, you need to understand your environment. To do that, try asking these questions:
- Who are our main competitors?
- What differentiates us from them?
- What is our unique value proposition?
- How can we communicate this in a way that resonates with our audience?
3. See if you can build on strategic partnerships
Relationships are king when selling professional services and that means, your strategic partnerships can be particularly helpful. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to. Consider some ways to align with your partners with these questions:
- What are the key features and benefits of our partners that resonate with our customers?
- How can we leverage these in our marketing materials?
- What resources and support does our partners offer for marketing and sales?
- Can we utilize co-branded materials, joint events, or other collaborative efforts?
- What are the compliance and branding guidelines set by our partners for its partners?
- How can we ensure that our marketing aligns with these?
4. Begin setting goals & defining success
So, at this point, you’ve narrowed down your audience, you understand the context of the business, and you have a sense of how helpful your partners may be.
You have a better sense of what you’re starting with and now it’s time to set realistic goals based on those resources. Now it’s time to define the destination.
Ask yourself:
- What are our specific goals and KPIs for our marketing?
- How will we measure the success of our marketing initiatives?
- What resources (budget, team, tools) do we have at our disposal?
- How can we best allocate these to achieve our goals?
5. Keep the strategy alive
At this stage, you’ve done the bulk of the work, but you don’t want to stop there. It’s important that you don’t think of this as a static work that can’t change.
I recommend planning an ongoing reevaluation to think about whether things are working or not so that you can course correct as you go.
This can be a recurring calendar reminder or meeting or something else, but the goal is to make sure you don’t stick to this initial plan so rigidly that you don’t account for changes happening around you.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 other ways I can help you:
- The Expertise Edge: My newsletter that is dedicated to sharing insights on marketing high-ticket professional services.
- Consulting: I work with a limited amount of professional service providers to help them set the right marketing strategy for their brand. If you’d like to see if we’re a good fit, contact me.