A marketing strategy involves planning how a business can reach potential customers and turn them into paying customers. A strategy should include various marketing channels, such as social media and search engine optimization (SEO), that speak to potential customers at all points in their buyers’ journeys.
According to a CoSchedule survey, businesses were 414% more likely to find success with a documented marketing strategy. Part of a strategy is setting goals; those who set goals were also 377% more likely to succeed than those without.
When creating a strategy, however, businesses shouldn’t go in blind.Â
Today, the video and digital marketing experts at Forge Apollo explain the importance of a strategy backed by a digital marketing audit.
How to Create a Marketing Strategy
Your business’s current performance and goals inform the best marketing strategies. Our team of digital marketing experts always suggests starting a digital marketing strategy with a marketing audit.
Discover, Audit, Strategize
As a marketing strategy consultant, Forge Apollo uses a process called the DAS, which stands for “Discover,” “Audit,” and “Strategize.” This three-step process allows us to build a strategy based on a solid foundation of knowledge instead of guesswork.
Your business is a rich field of information. Before you can extract key insights from that data, you need to compile it. That’s why our first step is always “Discovering” or asking businesses the right questions to unearth and assemble that information.
We analyze all that information during the “Audit” stage to extract critical insights.
Only then, with a wealth of insights into a business’s performance and goals, do we craft a strategy.
The Benefits of the Discover, Audit, Strategize Process
Creating a marketing strategy on the foundation of a marketing audit leads to a number of benefits for the business.
More Efficient Spending and Improved ROI
Strategic spending allows businesses to get the most out of their marketing budget. You may be wasting your budget on ineffective efforts or missing opportunities in other channels.
A strategy built on a marketing audit allows you to maximize your ROI by reallocating the budget from ineffective channels to productive ones. It also makes each channel more effective by building out your marketing funnel to provide more effective touchpoints for potential customers.
Insight on Your Personas and a Strategy to Reach Them
Buyer personas are a detailed representation of your target buyers, combining information from your actual and ideal customers. Personas allow you to tailor your marketing to attract those buyers by speaking directly to their pain points, goals, and lifestyles.
Forge Apollo’s DAS process provides buyer personas and insights on how a business can reach them.
We ask extensive questions to get a deep understanding of a business’s target persona. We then analyze each marketing channel through the lens of that buyer to evaluate how it speaks to them. Finally, we craft a strategy to connect with their specific goals and pain points.
Speaking directly to that persona drives the success of a strategy through human connection.
For example, HubSpot found that websites directed towards a specific persona are 2-5 times more effective.
Visibility into What’s Working
With the number of marketing channels only seeming to grow as technology evolves, your business has probably tried multiple. Do you have a solid understanding of what’s working and what’s not?
A marketing audit provides visibility into which marketing channels are working for a business. It also provides an understanding of what could be working better or worth trying.
There may be a marketing channel that wastes your time and money or another that could provide more results with a few tweaks.
An audit provides visibility into those insights and crafts a strategy based on them.
Reaching Your Goals
The most obvious, but arguably most important, benefit of a strategy crafted after a marketing audit is that it helps you reach your goals.
Whether you want to increase brand awareness, bring in more leads, or close more sales, an audit-based strategy will help you get there faster than going in blind.
Kickstart an Effective Strategy With a DAS
To improve visibility into your business’s marketing efforts and learn how to spend your budget more effectively with a solid strategy, contact Forge Apollo in Philadelphia to get started with a DAS. Our team of digital marketing experts is here to craft a strategy informed by your current performance for better results.
