What exactly is “Marketing Strategy”
To some, it means putting together a marketing plan where to focus your resources for the best return in results.
To Wikipedia, “Marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. A marketing strategy should be centered around the key concept that customer satisfaction is the main goal.”
To Ad Ventures it means all that plus deliberate, thoughtful focus on a client’s company growth objectives, putting one’s feet in the targeted person’s shoes, and then strategizing how to lead that Business to Business, or Business to Consumer through a series of steps and decisions, and through the “buying cycle” stages: awareness, interest, desire and action. A good strategic process is one of resourcefulness, putting a client’s budget to use in the best, most cost-effective way to achieve short-term and long-term results for the benefit of complete client satisfaction today and tomorrow.
Implementing Marketing Strategy into Website Design
When we design websites, a large portion of the audience research and strategizing is implemented at the front end. I’m not just talking design strategy, but marketing strategy. We automatically include the marketing strategy in our website design process because we can’t imagine doing it any other way. (Our ultimate goal is to achieve complete client satisfaction.) The end result of a well-planned website is ease in interface navigating, a call-to-action placed in view on every page, visual graphics that support the messaging and text – all elements flowing in a connected way. A well-strategized website looks like something a visitor can quickly “get their hands around.” It doesn’t come off as a website that someone will instinctively want to bookmark for later reading, but something that draws them in immediately for a quick scan, that quick scan providing them the most important information they need to know.
The other important strategic approach that Ad Ventures uses is planning how to present the information in a clear, concise way. For example, the top three – five most important benefits to a website’s offering should be well-highlighted on the home page. And the competitive edge (these benefits or positioning statements) are repeated throughout the website, so that there is consistent flow from the start, through the body, to the end.
How we get to the end of succesful marketing strategy is how we begin. We start the entire marketing strategy process during the discovery stage, when we sit forward taking notes on our laptops and listening to our clients and their employees. A client will tell you how to sell them, without even always realizing it. Same goes with telling you how to “sell” their company product or service. Our job is to take a look at the information with fresh eyes, and interpret the information so that it “sells” to the website’s target audience. We not only use strategy in how to present the information, but also in a way so it speaks to multiple audiences, i.e., the first-time web visitor who knows little about the company’s service or product, and the repeat visitor, gathering updates or additional information from your website.
Next article: When is the best timing for organizations to gather RFPs, before screening applicants or after screening applicants? The answer depends on what kind of RFP will achieve the best, desired results.
