If you have not realized it yet, let me be the one to break this news to you, there’s no “silver bullet” or “one solution fits all” types of things when it comes to marketing strategy.
Marketing is way too dynamic, dealing with a vast number of elements that are then dependent on too many variables. By elements I mean:
- Buyer behavior, their perspective, journey;
- Product;
- Competitors;
- Market conditions, its trends;
- Marketing platforms, tools, tactics, etc.
So when I started to learn about marketing strategy, there was no simple answer. There were and are, however, many search results if you search for the term. The organic results you’ll see would tell you the definition of marketing strategy & then there would be some blogs that’ll have stuff like “The 4 Ps”, branding, audience, positioning, social media marketing, email marketing, blogging, and a lot of other random stuff. I say random because most of the articles & blogs I went through were randomly telling about marketing tactics, tools, etc., however, there were a few that were actually good and followed a process of teaching about marketing strategy. This one by Mayple is one of them.
Overall, I felt disappointed as it wasn’t what I was looking for. But to be honest, maybe it was my fault to go and look for a silver bullet answer to make a brilliant marketer in a day.
Another reason behind the disappointment was that almost all of the resources were talking about the tactics, and techniques and not strategies, that may or may not work for certain scenarios.
But again, as for many, it might leave you in a mixed feeling of awe and overwhelmed because as exciting as it seems while reading, you might not be able to implement such stuff in your specific case right away.
Now why’s that? Well, let me demonstrate it with a quick reference to the Jigsaw puzzle.
We’ve all played jigsaw puzzles, I believe. Let’s say you’re solving one now. Now imagine you don’t have all the pieces or even worse, you believe you have all the pieces but in reality, you don’t.
I don’t think you’ll be able to solve the jigsaw in either of the cases. On the other hand, imagine if you have all the pieces or even better you somehow are able to visualize all the pieces, their shape & patterns in your mind and you know what fits where.
I don’t think I need to tell you that you’ve already solved that puzzle.
Anyway, let’s say that a jigsaw puzzle, when solved i.e. put together is a successful marketing strategy. All those pieces are the marketing tactics, techniques, tools, experience, executions, knowledge, channels, etc.
By now, I feel I’m able to put my point across that there’s no one who could magically teach you marketing strategy but experience & exposure, and of course, knowledge & know-how of marketing tools, tactics, executions, and whatnot.
You have to know those little jigsaw pieces before you can put it all together. I know as I’ve looked for such silver-bullet answers but never found one. Instead, as I’ve gathered some exposure in the field, I now know what’s possible with all the marketing tools & tactics at my disposal and hence I’m in a much better position to go about formulating a marketing strategy.
Don’t worry, you won’t go empty-handed as I’ll put a basic path out for you to effectively learn about marketing strategy.
In a line, I would say, a good place to start is by figuring out who your target audience is, where they are, how to reach them and what will either entertain or educate them, if it does both, then you, my friend, have aced it. This is a very very simplified yet effective way of thinking about formulating a marketing strategy.
If you’re able to think around the above steps and create a buyer journey i.e. how you will be moving your target audience through the marketing funnel, then we’re talking about formulating a marketing strategy. When you plan out that “how” part, then that’s a marketing strategy.
I personally have seen success with following the above steps. A successful marketing effort is one where everything you do is done by keeping your target audience in mind. Every little bit of effort is made for the target audience.
The question you must be having now is how to understand the audience, that too, in so much depth that it can guide your marketing efforts, content, copy, landing page, funnel, etc. For that, let me put it in another blog where I’ll tell you what approach I follow to understand the audience. I’ve spent years reading about this and gathered a lot of resources from a lot of experts in this field. I’ll link the blog as soon as it’s ready and published. 🙂
For you, I’ll say I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to give you that 1 line answer & solve all your troubles. Nevertheless, there are many free resources that can get you started on learning about those jigsaw pieces I talked about. YouTube, blogs, courses, etc., choices are infinite. I would suggest not to indulge yourself in all those choices and just start with one. You’ll figure it all out along the way!
Thank you so much for reading. If you made it this far, then I’m really honored. Lots of love and keep at it!