Where to start with Marketing Strategy

Review is one of (if not the) most important parts of you strategy. You should never just blast straight into strategising without reviewing how your strategy could be affected by (and affect) its wider context. So, it’s vital to go over what you’ve decided, and reference it against the internal and external factors currently affecting your organisation.

Without having an in-depth look at the wider picture of what is happening in and around your organisation, you won’t be able to build a relevant marketing strategy. There are a couple of great frameworks designed for analysing the micro (internal) and macro (external) factors which could affect your strategy. Read on to learn all about it:

SWOT

SWOT is a very popular form of analysis, and should be the starting point of your review. It will give you a broad overview of the good and the bad about your strategy from both a brand and a customer perspective, and will help you to identify what is and what is not going well. It doesn’t delve very deep into data analytics or influential factors, but it’s a great place to start. You can apply other review frameworks to establish those other things.

• Strengths - Fairly straightforward!
  • What are the strengths of your strategy?
  • What are you proud of, and what do you think your customers will respond positively to?
  • What opportunities are you taking full advantage of, and what’s helping your strategy out?
• Weaknesses
  • What concerns or needs are you not addressing with your strategy?
  • What are you worried about?
  • What could be hindering your strategy?
• Opportunities
  • Thinking about the wider market context, what external factors really benefit your strategy?
  • Are you leveraging any events, celebrations, or other socio-cultural factors to give your campaigns a boost?
• Threats
  • What external factors could put a damper on your performance?
  • Are your competitors muscling in on your market?
  • Is the need for your product declining?
  • Are economic or regulatory factors hampering you in any way?

RACE

The RACE framework by Smart Insights covers the key stages of the customer’s journey. It’s a useful strategic tool at every stage - including your strategy review. Using the RACE framework, you can evaluate how your campaigns performed within each section. This will make it clear to you where your customers are really engaged with the journey and where drop-off occurs. From this, you can glean insights and set measurable KPIs.

• Reach
  • How far did your message spread?
  • Did it reach the target market?
  • How could you improve your distribution and targeting?
• Act
  • Did your audience engage with your marketing content?
    • If so, where, when, and how?
    • What was the bounce rate
    • Where did drop-off occur?
• Convert
  • To what extent did you achieve your marketing goals, and which segments of your target audience converted most readily?
  • Can you find any common features when tracing back the journey of customers who converted?
• Engage
  • Are you managing to build (or maintain) a loyal customer base?
  • How often do customers engage with your brand?
  • What actions do they typically take when re-engaging?
  • How can this be utilised strategically for your next campaign?

PESTEL

The PESTEL framework helps marketers to look at various factors which may influence the performance of their strategy. It’s an acronym which helps you to identify how the wider (macro) context may affect the way in which your strategy is received. You may feel powerless to control some of these factors - but you can modify your strategy to work with them.

Let’s run through the acronym:

• Political
  • The wider political climate can have more impact than you might think on how your marketing strategy performs. Consider Brexit and the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, for example. When you’re reviewing the ups and downs of your campaign, think about how the political scene could have affected things.
• Economic
  • Economic and political factors are often pretty closely aligned. Things like inflation, exchange rates, interest rates and so on will all influence how profitable your strategy proves to be. If a campaign hasn’t brought in the ROI you wanted, could that be because you’ve spent too much, or charged the wrong price? Or was the value that your product provides it's customers not clear or engaging enough for the audience?
• Social
  • Socio-cultural factors affect the way that people receive your marketing messages. For example, Nivea’s ‘White is Purity’ campaign went down very badly because people felt that it had racist overtones. If you find that you’ve made a socio-cultural misstep, dive a bit deeper into your demographic data when planning your next campaign. Social justice ethics play into this one as well. Is your brand ethical, and were you running a socially ethical strategy?
• Technological
  • TThe pace of technological change is faster than it’s ever been. Tech affects the performance of marketing campaigns in a number of ways.
    • How are you distributing your content?
    • How are people receiving it?
    • Are you communicating with your target market on the right platforms, or through the right devices?
• Environmental
  • Much like social ethics, environmental ethics play an increasingly large part in customer perception of brands. If you as a brand ran an environmentally damaging campaign, that could have impacted your ROI. On the other hand, a strong green ethic and/or message can bring a lot of positive benefits. Remember that Iceland advert with the orangutan which went viral on back around Christmas time?
• Legal
  • Sometimes legal issues can arise which impact on a marketing strategy but most importantly it's to be aware of changes to legislation such as GDPR. Was that the case in the campaigns you’re reviewing?

Speak to an expert

A good strategy isn’t all about devising fun tactics and sending out creative content. There’s a lot of analysis and review needed to make a strategy truly great. If you’d like to get the absolute most out of your strategy performance review, get in touch with us today.

@JennaTiffany

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jennatiffany

About the Author

Jenna Tiffany is a Chartered Marketer and Fellow of the IDM. She is the Founder & Strategy Director at Let'sTalk Strategy providing consultancy services across the digital marketing mix. Jenna has over ten years' marketing experience within B2B and B2C and both client and agency side.

Industry recognised expert as an elected member of the prestigious DMA Email Marketing Council. Jenna provides marketing consultancy to brands worldwide. As a proven thought-leader, competent public speaker and publisher, Jenna can be regularly seen sharing her latest trends and key industry topics internationally.