May 3, 2024

How to Build a Marketing Strategy That Goes Beyond Social Media

Nadya Bakhur

Researcher, Technical Writer

Ecommerce

How to build a marketing strategy beyond social media

Nadya Bakhur

Researcher, Technical Writer

Ecommerce

How to build a marketing strategy beyond social media

Oftentimes businesses get caught up in the world of social media. Any ecommerce marketing strategy might become stagnant this way. If you want to truly reach your marketing potential, you must be willing to look at other alternatives.

Social media is not the only online retail marketing strategy available. We acknowledge its effectiveness, but there are other valuable platforms and methods you can use.

Below, we discover 5 steps in the marketing planning process that will help you succeed.

How To Create a Digital Marketing Strategy?

A well-designed marketing strategy will help you achieve your business goals and build a solid reputation for your products or services. It usually involves creating one or two powerful ideas to raise awareness and sell your products.

Marketing strategy development includes several components that will help you get the most out of your marketing investments, maintain your marketing focus, and improve your sales results.

To formulate a marketing strategy, one must follow 5 steps:

Determine your business goals

Marketing strategy planning requires defining the overall business goals to identify a set of marketing goals to support them. Your business goals may include:

When setting goals, it is very important to be as focused as possible so that you can effectively measure the results against the expectations. A simple criterion for setting goals is the SMART pattern:

  • Specific: be clear about what you want to achieve;
  • Measurable: set measurable metrics so you can measure your results;
  • Achievable: set goals that are within your capabilities and budget;
  • Relevant: set goals that will help you improve certain aspects of your business;
  • Time-bound: set goals that you can achieve within the time you need.

Formulate your marketing goals

The following step of the marketing planning process is to define a set of specific marketing goals based on your business goals. These goals will motivate you and your team and help measure success.

Examples of marketing goals include, for example, increased market penetration (selling more existing products to existing customers) or market development (selling existing products to new target markets). These marketing goals can be long-term and can take several years to be achieved.

Make sure your overall strategies are practical and measurable as well. A good marketing strategy does not need to be changed every year, but you can update it when one or several marketing goals are achieved. In addition, you may need to make changes to your strategy if your external market changes due to the performance of your competitors or the development of new technology, or if your product changes significantly.

Explore your market

Market research and analysis is one of the important steps of marketing strategy building. You need to collect information about your market, including:

  • Size;
  • Growth;
  • Social trends;
  • Demographic data (population statistics such as age, gender and family type).

It’s important to keep an eye on your market to keep abreast of any changes over time so that your strategy remains relevant and focused.

Make a profile of your potential customer

Marketing strategy basics include building a profile of your target audience and determining their needs. The profile will show their purchasing patterns, including how they buy, where they buy, and what they buy.

Review trends regularly so you don’t miss out on new opportunities and stay relevant in your marketing message. While you are trying to find new customers, make sure your marketing strategy also allows you to maintain relationships with the existing ones.

Make a profile of your competitors

One of the steps marketing strategy building includes is creating a profile of your competitors. You can define their products, supply chains, pricing, and marketing tactics.

Use this information to specify your competitive advantage – what sets your business apart from the competition. You can also identify the strengths and weaknesses of your internal processes to improve your performance over the competition.

5 Tips to Build a Marketing Strategy for Any Business

How To Create a Digital Marketing Strategy: build a recognizable brand, experiment with email marketing, tr video marketing, create blog, compliment your marketing ith offline media.

The main purpose of the following tips is first to help optimize and build a marketing strategy. Additionally, this mini-guide aims to maximize the business performance of your products and website.

Anyway, the key element is to adapt your marketing strategy to your business values and market trends. A clear marketing strategy helps to create a consistent marketing plan. However, it’s a multipurpose work that leads to a significant rise in profitability.

Companies today often rely on social media as a unique way to build a working marketing strategy. However, besides social media, you can also infuse:

  • Recognizable brand;
  • Email marketing;
  • Videos and streams;
  • Corporate media and blog;
  • Offline activities.

1. Build a recognizable brand

Branding is one of the most effective forms of marketing. You can build a recognizable brand using tools like LogoCreator and Adobe Spark. LogoCreator, for example, allows you to produce a business logo for free.

Alternatively, Adobe Spark allows you to experiment with color schemes and fonts to include in your marketing. Your branding should be cohesive and it should be utilized across your online and offline marketing channels. This will help customers recognize your business, but also improve their trust.

2. Experiment with email marketing

eCommerce email marketing can help with customer retention. Prompting new sales and increasing conversion rates are among the benefits of email marketing. The most successful email marketing ideas include inserting a pop-up or link on your website where customers can sign-up for your email newsletter. This newsletter should have useful information that customers actually want to read. It should also include plenty of images and infographics – and not simply be a wall of text.

You could also offer discounts, or special access to new product launches for those who subscribe to your email newsletters. There should always be an option for customers to opt-out of your email newsletter too if they no longer wish to receive them.

What is email marketing automation and how can it benefit your business? One of our Blog articles contains useful info on how email marketing automation helps build strong relationships with your customers. Don’t miss it!  

3. Try video marketing and streaming

Live video content and video marketing are incredibly popular today. You can find many YouTube channels for businesses, for example. These often contain complementary product videos that give customers useful information. Alternatively, businesses also experiment with lifestyle videos or fun content that shows the human side to their team.

Like any other means to achieve your marketing goals, video marketing has advantages and disadvantages.

The benefits of video marketing include:

  • Increased attention from the viewer;
  • Customers’ loyalty and trust;
  • Increase in site conversion;
  • Viral dissemination of information;

Minor disadvantages include the high cost of video production, the cost of the equipment to create quality video content, and the difficulty in finding a team of professionals with a similar vision.

However, you could easily create a YouTube channel and use free video editing software like Lightworks to create cool product videos or videos that give insight into the daily workings of your business and enjoy video marketing benefits to the utmost.

4. Create an interesting blog

A blog is a great way to attract customers and provide additional information for them. Many businesses now run a regular blog as a supplement to their marketing.

If you have a business website, you can often incorporate a blog with minimum effort. Alternatively, you could use platforms like Blogger or Tumblr. Your blog should be interesting and give real value to your customers. It should also have a moderated comment section so your customers can interact with you. It is necessary to promote your blog via social media and your website to further boost your SEO.

5. Complement your marketing with offline media

Offline marketing is often overlooked in today’s digital world. However, it can still be effective. One of the simplest offline marketing strategies to use is to create a business card. A business card is a useful and inexpensive marketing tool that you can carry with you anywhere.

There are plenty of business card tools available that allow you to produce professional cards for little to no expense. Make sure that any offline media you create still utilizes your branding including colors and company logo for cohesion.

Summing Up

In 2021, marketing strategy importance is hard to overestimate. And as you can see, social media is just a part of a successful marketing strategy. Today, it is important to keep in mind other marketing options as social media becomes increasingly competitive. Improving your branding, using email marketing, creating a blog, and even using offline marketing can all help greatly. If building a working strategy for a marketing plan is a challenge for you, ask NEKLO experts for help. Just contact us through the form on our website.