Why are all top brands in the world so crazy about marketing? Do you feel it is unnecessary to spend a huge budget in executing marketing strategies? You’ve got the concept entirely wrong!

The market is overflowing with people trying to sell their products and services. Getting people’s attention is the toughest and most crucial task for brands in 2021.

What Is Marketing?

To put it simply, marketing is how you attract customers to your offer. In today’s world, no matter what business you are in, you will have thousands of competitors who will target the same customers as you.

How will you make your offer visible to them when there are 50 other brands on their Instagram feed? You can do this only through a well-researched and brilliantly executed marketing strategy.

Why else do you think brands like Nike and Apple spend massively on marketing campaigns even today? 

Why Marketing Strategy Is Important and Why Do You Even Need A Marketing Strategy In The First Place?

Let us imagine your brand curates the best gift packages. The products in it are of premium quality. You are even offering it at a competitive price as compared to other brands. But you don’t invest in creating a marketing strategy to promote your product.

How will your target customers even discover that you have an offer to make? Without great marketing, your brand cannot even establish a presence in the market, forget convincing people to buy from you.

Other brands with low-quality products but with a more impressive marketing campaign will get noticed and convert your potential customers. Sounds demotivating, doesn’t it?

This is why you should have a solid marketing plan in mind even before you start creating your offer.

Have You Heard Of The Promotional Mix Strategy?

No matter what the brand is, every marketing campaign revolves around this key strategy. The basic concept here is to figure out the 4 Ps for every product or service. Does this seem confusing? We’ll simplify it for you.

The 4 P’s Of Marketing:

PRODUCT

This is the first and most important step in ideating any marketing plan. Research who your target customers are.

For instance, you are a brand that sells only funky and trendy shoes in shades like neon. Will your marketing strategy ever work if you pitch your products to people above their forties rather than youngsters? Of course, no!

PRICE

You can spend your entire budget on marketing and still not convert even a single customer if the pricing of your offer isn’t optimized.

No, setting the price as low as possible does not help! Your marketing team has to research your prospects enough to hit that sweet spot when it comes to pricing.

PLACE

Now that you have figured out the basics right, it’s time to decide “where” to market your offer. This question couldn’t be more relevant than in the time we are living in right now. There are so many channels through which you can reach out to your potential customers today.

But what is the channel that fits the best into your offer? Coming back to the shoe example, if Millenials and Gen Z youngsters are essentially your target audience, there cannot be a better channel for marketing than social media.

PROMOTION

Now that you are in the final step, you have to decide your marketing objective. What is the USP of your product that will lie at the core of your marketing campaigns?

Maybe, for the shoe example, it could be fashionable looks or comfort or anything else for that matter. The stronger your USP, the more customers you will attract.

“People do not buy products and services anymore, they buy relations, stories and magic”- Seth Godin

Here’s An Easy And Effective 10-Step Marketing Plan For Your Product Launch

1. Organize a Pre-Launch Giveaway: A successful launch is all about creating excitement and anticipation in the minds of your target customers about your offering.

The best way to do this is to generate content ideas around your launch that have the potential to go viral. Maybe an Instagram reel challenge or cool product giveaways for Instagram contests around your brand.

2. Set up an optimized website: This is the first step of any product launch strategy. Have an aesthetically designed website ready to showcase all your offerings.

Make it catchy and attractive, but also don’t forget to optimize the content on it for SEO. A website can be a great conversion tool, and you cannot miss out on this opportunity.

3. Create valuable content: The goal is to create content that will spark an interest in your audience about your launch. It could be some great blogs on your website narrating your brand story or some quirky social media posts indirectly promoting your offer.

But whatever it is, make sure to add value. Direct promotional content is a big turn-off for anyone and feels impersonal.

4. Strategise a conversion funnel: The basic structure of any conversion funnel involves – awareness, interest, consideration, and the final step, purchase.

Figure out how you can implement each of these steps. You can even add additional steps based on your launch requirement.

5. Try to emphasize word-of-mouth marketing: A customer values nothing better than the opinion of other customers about your brand. No wonder only good reviews alone can generate at least 73% of sales for any brand.

But how do you get people to leave genuinely good reviews about your offerings? You can perhaps give them incentives like a discount coupon code or a freebie.

6. Select social media platforms suitable to your brand: People are hooked on social media right now. Your brand cannot miss out on this massive opportunity.

Get your creative juices flowing and create an interesting social media marketing strategy around your launch. Make it fun, quirky, and engaging enough.

7. Collaborate with influencers: Influencer marketing is so hyped for a reason. They have a huge loyal fan base that relates to the influencers emotionally. You can use this connection to your brand’s benefit.

Research the influencers that fit best into your marketing strategy and send them free samples of your offerings. They will create humorous and catchy posts and stories around your products/services.

Make your target audience interested in your brand. You can even organize virtual or physical launch events and invite these influencers.

8. Prepare your FAQ before your launch: Once you launch a new offer, there will be so many questions from people around it. You can prepare a list of questions beforehand and curate relevant answers to resolve all of them.

9. Hire a solid customer service team: Nothing can replace exceptional customer service when it comes to marketing. Hire a customer service team who can politely help out your current and potential customers.

10. Have an e-mail marketing strategy: You cannot ignore e-mail marketing if you want to effectively convert your prospects. But the content of the e-mail should be value-adding, attention-worthy, and never directly promotional.

Traditional Versus Digital Marketing

Traditional marketing is all about promotion using conventional marketing channels such as television, radio, newspaper, etc.

Digital marketing is about establishing an online presence of your brand to market your offerings. Since in 2021, people are mostly spending time on the internet, it makes more sense to stick to digital marketing.

The key differences are:

• Digital marketing is more targeted and personalized since people are promoted offers only according to the likes and interests of the audience. Traditional marketing is too generalized as you don’t really know who has read your offers and promotions, and whether it has positively affected them.

• The chances of conversions are higher in digital marketing since it is more data-driven and engaging. Traditional marketing is also data-driven but not as precise and target-oriented as compared to the digital dashboard. Take the power of Google Ads, for instance; Google Analytics can provide the number of users present from a certain location that your brand can target. Can a local newspaper ad do that for you?

• It is easier to calculate the ROI in the case of digital marketing. In traditional marketing, it is hard to track the return on investment.

• The reach is much higher in the case of digital marketing. You can pitch your brand offerings to the world through online platforms. Traditional marketing is more limited when it comes to reaching the audience.

• Digital marketing is much less expensive as compared to traditional marketing. Yet results are usually far better and real-time when it comes to online marketing.

“What separates a great marketing strategy from a mediocre one is the willingness to take risks and push envelopes.” Brian Halligan, CEO & Co-founder of HubSpot said it writes about content, but this quote that we’ve modified applies to marketing as well.

Elements Or Tools Used In Marketing?

There are so many elements or tools that come into play while marketing any product or service. Some of them are:

1. Content marketing: 86% of B2C marketers believe that content marketing is the most effective marketing strategy. Great content will help your brand establish itself as a market leader.

Create content that will educate your audience about your offerings with an element of entertainment.

2. Social media marketing: 83% of brands around the world are on social media. The possibility of conversions on social media is immense with the right strategy.

You can leverage the power of platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. to create more brand awareness. All you need to do is create content that is relatable and attractive enough.

3. Search engine optimization: 7 in 10 businesses these days get discovered on the search engine.

Generate more traffic to your brand website by properly optimizing it for the search engine. It can create huge visibility for your brand.

4. E-mail marketing: E-mail marketing if strategized right has the highest capacity to generate revenue for your brand. You can generate up to $42 for every $1 you spend on this marketing tool.

Through compelling e-mail marketing campaigns, you can convince your target customers to buy from your brand like nowhere else. You get an opportunity to directly communicate with your potential customers.

5. Conversational marketing: 90% of people would prefer to directly have a conversation with the brands through DMs.

It is a great strategy to make your prospects feel special and valued. By instantly replying to their queries about your offerings, you can gain their loyalty.

“Nothing sticks to the mind of people right now more than an epic marketing strategy”

Benefits Of Marketing

1. Build a strong connection with your target audience: Why do some people go crazy about some brands even though the product value is not exceptional?

Brands that implement viral marketing strategies can build a loyal audience base that is more likely to convert.

2. Make your brand popular in the market: People on average probably come across the names of more than a hundred brands in a day.

How will you make your brand memorable in such a crowded market? A creative marketing strategy can do wonders.

3. Enjoy high conversions:  Do you think that in this content-dominated world, it is possible to grab people’s attention without a good marketing strategy?

 Your target audience will only convert if you can build a genuine interest in their mind about your offerings through marketing.

4. You can attract new customers to your brand: If you don’t market your products consistently, only your existing customers will know about you. You are less likely to attract new customers without constant brand promotion.

With an engaging marketing strategy, you can convert window shoppers into loyal customers.

Case Studies On Popular Brands’ Marketing Strategies

Apple: Creating a movement

Apple has always portrayed to its target audience how it plans to revolutionize technology through its marketing strategy. People have always connected this brand with innovation.

Starbucks: Social Strategy

Starbucks has created an image of it being an extremely social, friendly, and interactive brand. It never lags when it comes to tweeting about a recent event or creating viral hashtags.

Nike: selling stories and emotions

Nike’s core marketing strategy is all about telling stories about famous athletes and hitting the emotional chords of people. They try to inspire their audience through marketing.

People are usually under the misconception that sales and marketing have the same meaning. Do you know the difference between the two? If not, our next chapter will give you a lot of insight into this.

Disclaimer: Digitalz Pro Media & Technologies (P) Ltd. is a 360 Degree Marketing & Branding Company in Delhi NCR. If you want to take your brand to the next level, book your consultation now.

Related Blogs

• Why Digital Marketing Is Important For Small Businesses?
• Ten Steps To Create A Robust Digital Marketing Strategy For Your Business
• Digital Transformation: How Technology Is Revolutionizing Marketing
• Transform Your Brand’s Image With These Digital Marketing Trends In 2023
• 10 Digital Marketing Strategies For B2B Businesses
• Everything You Need To Know About Creating A Business Profile That Generates Leads.
• Generate Leads Through Paid Marketing Techniques
• The Complete Guide To Building Your Personal Brand
• Branding Vs Marketing Vs Sales
• Why Is Branding Important
• What are Business Goals? Step-by-Step Guide