Conduct a SWOT analysis in step two.

In the end, you want marketing that generates a steady stream of high-quality leads to support new sales prospects and spur expansion. You want to communicate with your technical target audiences and consumers in a way that makes them pleased, not anxious. Additionally, your resources and bandwidth are constrained.

The best way to do all of this is to employ a clever marketing strategy that starts with a SWOT analysis of your present marketing programme and produces a marketing strategy and execution plan matched to your business goals. Create a list of your competitive position's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, present positioning and messaging, the maturity of your offers, channel partners, etc. as well as target markets and audiences.

Determine Your Target Personas in Step 3

You are undoubtedly familiar with the characteristics of your most important prospects and the sales procedure your business employs to turn leads into chances and customers. The particular circumstances of each prospect won't be known to you as your business expands, so a single message won't be effective for everyone. You must develop buyer personas to tailor your marketing strategy.

Buyer personas are fictitious depictions of your ideal consumers based on demographic information, internet activity, and your educated guesses about their backgrounds, motives, and issues. Consider VP of Engineering Vince, a business executive who is primarily concerned with cost and long-term support, as one of your personas. A second persona might be Engineer Elliot, a senior staff engineer or engineering manager who is an authority in your field of technology and is eager to go deeply into the technical capabilities of your offering or the manner in which it is provided. Vince is heavily influenced by Elliott, yet Vince ultimately decides what to do. Elliot and Vince are completely different in their worries.

To help you understand how to create your personas, below is an example of a buyer persona.

Brainstorm potential buyer personas as the first step in building them.

Once you have a complete list, look for any that have roles or needs that are comparable and think about merging them. Consider the influence each persona will have on the ultimate purchase decision, their connection to your business, and the size of the audience persona group before ranking them in order of importance. Create your genuine personas after you've finished your thinking.

CONSTRUCT BUYER PERSONAS

Step 4: Create Your Marketing Objectives

You are now prepared to set your marketing objectives thanks to your business plan, regions of highest possibility, and identified individuals. Setting goals is essential for coordinating your marketing team, focusing your efforts, and establishing your entire marketing plan.

By outlining your objectives, you can make sure that your team understands your top marketing priorities and the outcomes you hope to achieve with your marketing activities. Your objectives may be both internally and externally focused, or they may be a combination of the two.

The SMART approach for writing goals helps to ensure responsibility. SMART is short for:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Time-Bound

As an illustration, your SMART marketing objective would be to "grow qualified leads passed to sales in the military market by Q4 2021 by 15%." Create a minimum of three and a maximum of five SMART marketing objectives.

Create Your Activity Plan in Step 5

You are prepared to design your activity plan now that you have established your marketing objectives and a financial strategy.

Using a campaign structure is the most efficient method to go about translating your marketing strategy into an execution plan. Campaigns can be thought of as collections of actions with a similar subject or objective.

A campaign strategy gives you the large picture when you have limited time and resources before you get into the specifics of which new video you will develop, which white paper you will write and market, etc.

Campaigns can have a wide range of objectives. They might range from a significant product launch to developing thought leadership in a specific industry to boosting site traffic and leads. Here are two examples of marketing initiatives, together with their explicit objectives and KPIs:

Lead generation and conversion for the campaign

Description—Attract quality leads that become opportunities with content and partner co-marketing.

KPI 1: Reach 210 leads per month, an increase of 35% in leads.

KPI 2: Raise the lead opportunity conversion rate to 8%.

Partner marketing campaign

Create and implement a channel co-marketing programme is the description.

KPI 1 — Publish at least one piece of co-branded content per quarter that generates leads.

Produce 100 nett new leads through comarketing activities, according to KPI 2.

It takes a long time to build a strategy because it is an evolving concept. To achieve an unified marketing plan that maps to your personas through campaigns, is time- and budget-bound, it is important to establish a clear strategic direction.

SOURCES FOR MARKETING PLANNING

Knowles Precision Devices, a case study

In 2018, when it had new marketing management, Knowles Precision Devices had the chance to seize market share in a few important markets as they developed. Knowles made the decision to use an inbound marketing strategy in order to achieve these business objectives. Since content was at the centre of their strategy, they turned to TREW to conceive, plan, and carry out their content marketing strategy from the bottom up.

We began with a comprehensive marketing plan, defining buyer personas, marketing objectives, specific campaigns, and an overall marketing strategy that would be rolled up and supported by the content plan. Then, we created a thorough content strategy centred on four main content themes that were targeted to the defined personas at various points in their buyer's journey. To read the entire case study, click the button below.