Whether you are a start-up or an established entrepreneur, having a robust marketing strategy is essential to staying competitive in today's tech-focused world. Using the timeless 7 Steps to Marketing Success outlined in this article offers a simple checklist to get the best return on investment for your marketing efforts.

Consumers and business owners spend significant time online to get information, purchase items, or connect with people and brands. To successfully promote your business in today's economic environment, you must have an integrated digital-first marketing plan that uses the right balance of digital and traditional marketing. An effective marketing plan ensures a seamless experience across online and offline channels, catering to how consumers research and make purchasing decisions.

An effective marketing strategy must be SMART (Strategic, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timely) and agile enough to adapt to the constantly changing digital landscape. Now more than ever, ensuring that marketing, sales, and customer service all work together is crucial to achieving the best results for the bottom line and building a solid reputation for any sized business.

This 7-step framework provides a simple yet powerful method for creating a marketing strategy that is both SMART and agile.

Although each step follows a linear path, every section is interconnected. As you develop your plan, it is crucial to gather and apply new information to the relevant sections. Continuously update, refine, and adjust your marketing strategy to optimize your results. The 7-step marketing framework is timeless, as the core steps will not change.

However, the audience, type of content, channels, and goals may differ between businesses and evolve. By adapting these elements to your specific context, you can effectively engage your target market and achieve your marketing objectives.

Here are the 7 Simple Steps to Marketing Success

1.Business Plan

The Business Plan establishes the goals, financial projections, and business operations. It is a written guide for making decisions and mapping the company's future. Understanding the goals, available resources, and timelines is essential to a successful marketing strategy.

Additionally, the business plan should include a comprehensive sales and marketing strategy, which encompasses the development of a brand strategy. This brand strategy defines your business's tone, style, and visuals, helping create a cohesive and recognizable identity. A strong brand strategy is essential for building trust and loyalty with your target audience, ensuring all marketing efforts align with the company's overall vision and goals.

2.Target Audiences

To build a successful business, you want to effectively reach your target audience, which typically includes your ideal client but may also include influencers, employees, community partners, vendors, etc. As you research and learn about your target audiences, you will better understand their communication behaviours, challenges, language, personalities, locations, motivators, and more. Knowing your audience helps you develop messaging, choose channels, and create relevant and compelling content.

3.Marketing Goals

The marketing strategy includes goals that support the business goals. As part of the business plan, you should have a sales and marketing strategy that includes goals, market research, product and service descriptions, competitive analysis, and promotion methods. When creating nested marketing strategies or campaigns throughout the year, refer to the marketing plan to ensure your campaign goals support your marketing goals and the broader business goals.

4.Channels

A channel is a method to send your message (one-way) and engage with your audiences (two-way). There are different channels, including owned, paid, and earned. Owned channels are those where you have full control (e.g., website); paid channels typically include advertisements but may also include influencer or affiliate marketing; earned media is when someone else shares your story. Earned media holds the most value because it is perceived as a more genuine message. Mixing all three types of content is ideal, with owned content being the majority.

5.Content

Content is the material created and shared across various channels. The type of content, including the topic, tone, and format, will depend on the audience, industry, resources, channel, and goals. Types of content may include website pages, webinars, podcasts, videos, blogs, infographics, slide decks, e-books, white papers, email campaigns, and interactive content.

6.Marketing Plan

The plan is where the marketing strategy comes to life. It outlines who, what, where, when, and how you will reach your audience with the right message at the right time. Sections of a strategic marketing plan include business goals, marketing goals, background/situational analysis, target audiences, evaluation methods and metrics, tactics, timelines, and budget. This plan template can be used to set up the initial digital marketing strategy and each campaign throughout the year, such as a new product launch, event promotion, or Facebook paid campaign.

7.Track Performance

Tracking performance is crucial to understanding if you are reaching your business goals. Key performance indicators (KPIs) measure success in traffic, engagement, leads, sales, and customer retention. KPIs may include website traffic, acquisition cost, search engine rankings, calls from directory listings, survey feedback, comments, page views, media articles, bounce rate, applications filled out, shopping cart sales, online consultation forms, and referrals. Ensure you track the right KPIs for your goals. Methods for collecting this information may include Google Analytics, surveys, social media analytics, Google AdWords campaign results, e-commerce reports, email campaign reports, and in-house feedback (e.g., sales team).

Integration is Key - Marketing, Sales & Customer Service

Now more than ever, ensuring that marketing, sales, and customer service work together is crucial for achieving the best results for the bottom line and building a solid reputation for any sized business. This integrated approach ensures a seamless experience for consumers as they interact with your brand across various online and offline touch points.

By following this simple 7-step framework and continuously adapting to new information and market changes, you can create a marketing strategy that drives success and growth.

This framework was created by Laura Dunkley, Fractional CMO at Acorn Studio Marketing. It has been successfully used since 2018 to help to hundreds of entrepreneurs develop simple and effective marketing strategies for their business. See webinars here Digital Marketing 101 webinars

If you are interested in learning how we can customize this training for your team or develop a marketing strategy using this framework, contact us to book a free discovery call .

7 Steps to Marketing Success