What Makes a Good Marketing Strategy?

by | MARKETING, STRATEGY, TWO MINUTES WITH TROY

In the last 25 years I’ve owned 12 different businesses.  Each of these has taught me different qualities of what makes a good marketing strategy.  Most recently I became one of the founding shareholders of the American arm of the world’s largest pool and spa maintenance network, Poolwerx.

One of the businesses I owned was an advertising agency where we focussed on 6 key steps to developing an integrated marketing strategy. Here they are:

  1. Brand.  What does the brand represent so that you are positioned in the marketplace as distinctive to those you are trying to attract as customers?
  2. Area: Establish focussed clarity of what you want to promote. It could be an area of the business, an area geographically, etc.
  3. Relationship.  How are you going to build clients for life? What will you do to get closer to them, get them to come in to the business more often and how will you gain a greater share of their business over time?
  4. Local. How are you going to be good corporate citizens in the local marketplace and attract those you don’t yet serve?
  5. IT.  Include technology and how you will reach out digitally, through email marketing, your website and with social media.
  6. Training. This is the piece that is normally forgotten. Don’t forget to train your people on the importance of what all of the above mean to the business so they understand the importance of each quality.