Substance and Style

    Five First Steps to Developing Your Marketing and Communications Strategy

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    1. Know your target market and audience. It probably goes without say, but you should put as much of your early efforts as possible into researching your customers. You should know about your market as a whole (size, growth, and demographics) and you should know about individual behaviors, wants, and needs. What makes life better for your customers? What makes their jobs easier or their families happier? Where are they physically located and where do they spend time online?
    2. Know how your products or services meet your customer’s needs. What can you give them that no one else does? The entire basis of your business or organization should be something that brings value to some segment of the population. Know that value and keep it in mind throughout all of your marketing and communications endeavors.
    3. Know all about your competition. Who else is providing the services or products that you provide? What do they get right? How can you improve on their business model? What are you already doing better than they are?
    4. Know how will you connect to and build relationships with your customers. Even in industries where most transactions are online, relationships remain the most important part of marketing, and even if you exist only in an online space, you need to connect to your customers. What events will you attend, if any? What traditional advertising (print, radio, TV) will you use, if any? What social media channels will you use? What type of content will you provide? What will be the focus of your website?

      You don’t have to do everything, and you shouldn’t do everything, but you should carefully think about where and how to reach your core customers, and what you should say to them when you do. Focus on the value you bring to their lives. Have someone to manage content and keep it on brand.
    5. Know how you will measure your success. What will your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) be? Are you strictly measuring sales, or will you focus on followers and engagement? There are many, many ways to measure marketing success. Choose 3-5 and tweak your marketing and communications efforts until you see the numbers you want.