17 Signs You Work With Strategic Content Marketing

Well, to put it bluntly, it's not that difficult if you simply apply the basics of marketing. Unfortunately, marketing is one of the least understood and arguably one of the least underutilized, course of action, in business today.

Marketing has and will continue to make the difference between the survival and extinction of a business today. Treading our way into the future with the overwhelming velocity of day-to-day change in this wildly unpredictable changing marketplace, with shorter product life cycles, require businesses, small or large, to have an edge or lose share of market to the competition.

Having the edge today will involve refining your marketing with a holistic approach and razor-sharp strategies that accelerate your business growth. The more I research and study how businesses stay alive and well -- the more I am convinced and respect that strategic marketing is the forerunner to optimizing our selling performance.

Think of it this way: Visualize an umbrella - and label it "marketing" and "strategy." Next, under the umbrella see advertising, branding, public relations, etc. Label those items, "selling" and "tactical processes."

"Marketing," -- the strategy -- is what favorably positions your company products or services in the mind of the customer and is aimed at stimulating a desire and demand on the part of the customer to make a purchase.

"Selling" -- the tactical processes -- are tools used to educate, inform, influence and persuade purchasing actions from the customer.

Both marketing and selling must lead the customer to action. For example: Advertising is salesmanship in action. Radio, television, newspaper, direct mail (electronic or paper) and magazines should all be constructed in the same demanding way that a salesperson makes a presentation to a prospective customer.

The same skills, habits and attitudes that are required of a salesperson for influencing action, on the part of the customer, should be directly aligned with all your various tactical processes.

For example -- The successful salesperson must:

1. Develop and build rapport

2. Understand customer needs

3. Emphasize tangible benefits

4. Skillfully move a customer toward a purchase

5. Keep the prospective customer "engaged" in the purchase process

6. Strategically link a product or services to a customer's most important needs and issues

7. Detail the product or service to motivate the purchasing action of the customer

Each advertising piece that is used in your marketing arsenal - newspaper ad, magazine ad, direct response mailing, public relations campaign should make a complete and compelling case for your products and services in the same way that a salesperson would do in person.

1. Do your ads (metaphorically) talk to your customers - do they build a rapport?

2. Are your brochures, letters, newsletters, ads and public relations material believable and emotionally peak the curiosity of people to want to learn more?

3. Is your marketing targeted toward perspective customers that have a real need for your products and services - have the money and willing to spend it?

4. Does your marketing materials educate and emphasize all the tangible benefits to keep the prospective customer engaged and motivated to take a purchasing action.

Today is not the time to be timid in your marketing. People need a nudge in making decisions. They want and expect to be told how to take action to obtain your products and services.

Take an assessment of your strategic marketing and selling action mentioned above and in addition see if you are:

1. Educating your customers about the unique advantages your products and services offered:

a). Service guarantees

b). Technical or manufacturing support

c). Warranties

d). Durability and dependability

e). New product developments

f). Upgrades and product enhancements

g). Delivery

2. Asking strategic questions for:

a). Linking products or services to customers needs

b). Providing solutions for their problems

c). Manage customer relationships

d). Keeping your customer and prospective customer engaged in the buying process

3. Active Listening for:

a). Emotional triggers

b). Logical reasoning

4. Handling objections to:

a). Minimizing concerns

b). Overcome obstacles

5. Presenting benefits that:

a). Motivate your customer's loyalty and purchasing action

b). Advantage your products and services over your competitors

Now is the time to pull out all your marketing materials, ads, sales scripts, brochures, presentation materials, marketing channels, and yes, check your attitudes, habits and skills - it's time to be innovative, nontraditional and bold in your thinking and business endeavors.

We find many companies that are expending resources trying to sell to the wrong markets against competitors who are way stronger than they are in the markets they are trying to sell into and lack of fundamental focus in this area as a result of not understanding their strategic marketing imperatives. We see companies that are selling the wrong products with the wrong people to the wrong customers and with strategic marketing planning work could fundamentally alter the odds and gain a much more solid footing in the markets where they have the best opportunity to compete to win. So strategic marking planning has a place in every company. Often times, business owners look at strategic marketing plans as documents that are put on the shelf and never actually put into practice but, if strategic marketing planning is done as an exercise and periodically updated as a part of your company's business planning process, you'll have a much better chance of accelerating your company's growth, winning in sales, and improving your revenue and profitability.

Let's talk about strategic marketing planning and why it's so important to companies. Many companies lack a strategic marketing plan that becomes a guiding source for the focus of their business. A lot of business owner's view strategic planning, in general, to be a real boring exercise, but without sound strategic planning a company may be expending resources to try to sell that it wouldn't have to with a more focused strategy. Strategic marketing planning has a number of different benefits including being a rallying point for all of your internal employees, for understanding and being on the same page regarding the focus of your business, understanding your market in a lot more detail than your competitors, understanding who your competition is, what their strengths and weaknesses are and how to compete with them and develop competitive strategies. Strategic marking planning also allows a company to define its fundamental focus in terms of target markets, target segments, customers and actual profiling of potential target clients that helps your sales force to be more effective when it comes to selling your products or services. Finally, strategic marketing planning is really the foundation for a successful sales acceleration program.

Strategic marketing planning starts by defining which target markets you company is after and fundamentally requires research into how your markets are segmented and a breakdown of those segments, in terms of priorities for your company. If you're like most businesses, you can't afford to go after every market segment in your market. What you need to do is you need to focus on those segments that have the best opportunities for your company and align best with your company's core strengths and competencies and what makes you different. This is the key to building a sustainable competitive advantage. Many companies engage in what's called the red ocean strategy, whereby they focus on selling into markets that are highly competitive, where the water is a color of crimson as a result of all the blood that is being spilled amongst all the competitors fighting for the same valuable customers. Smart companies, on the other hand, focus on what we call the blue ocean strategy, which is finding stretches of water where the competition is less fierce and where the company has a better opportunity to win sales and increase its sales win ratio in relationship to a total number of prospects and deals that it's looking at. This is one of the examples of how strategic marketing planning exercises can help a company define those markets that are less competitive and where the company can be more unique.

Strategic marketing planning also focuses, in addition to targeting and segmentation, focuses on target customers and profiling those customers in terms of size, industry focus, what their pain is, what needs they have and how those needs align with the company's fundamental product offerings and strengths. So, a lot of time needs to be spent in the strategic marketing process really determining what the profiling is of the target customers. In addition, strategic marketing should focus on who the target buyers are inside those prospects in terms of title, in terms of job function, in terms of decision making authority, and seek to understand exactly who those different constituents are, who the champions are, who the decision makers are inside that audience. This works in terms of understanding that target audience inside that market ultimately leads to the company's ability to develop positioning statements and messaging. It really focuses on the pain and the needs of those specific buyers inside their target companies.

Another important element of strategic marketing planning is doing competitive analysis. If your company doesn't have a strong understanding of what the competitive landscape is in its core markets, how can you possibly hope to win? Good competitive analysis means categorizing each of your competitors in your core segments, understanding their strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats from those competitors and developing a competitive matrix that lines up those competitors in a table and does a comparison analysis between your company and those competitors that are important, according to product, service, offerings, price, product features, service capabilities, geographic reach, all of those criteria you would use in order to see how well you stack up against the competition.

If you do good competitive analysis, you'll have a much stronger understanding of the details of who your competitors are, how to compete against them and that becomes the foundation for developing a good competitive strategy that you can roll out though your company. It has vast implications for the products that you produce, the kinds of services that you provide, and also, probably most important, it becomes a foundation for training your sales people on how to compete against the competition Strategic Content Marketing to win and build sustainable competitive advantage. Every company needs to define its unique selling proposition and build a sustainable competitive advantage and the foundation for this is knowing you competition, understanding where they're strong, where you're strong against them and how to win.

The next element of a strategic marketing plan is determining your company's overall position, what is your company's unique selling proposition, what are the aspects of your business that make you truly unique that you want your buyers and prospects to know first and foremost about your company? Most companies that are trying to rise above the competitive clutter in their market place today do a great job of articulating what their unique selling proposition is and what their value proposition is relative to their competitors. By whittling it down to a couple of words that can be easily created, a vision in the mind of their potential buyers in which is easily understandable positioning, is the process of defining how your company is going to position itself in its core market amongst its prospects and its buyers.

The next step in the strategic marketing planning process, of course, is developing solid messaging - specific words that are crafted in order to provide an exact image of your company's capabilities and its unique selling proposition among its target audience of buyers and prospects. Messaging is an artful exercise that requires careful attention to the use of words in order to maximize the impact of the marketing message on your customers. It's not easy to get your messaging right. A lot of companies make mistakes by using the same sort of ho-hum words that all of their competitors are using and thereby lock themselves into a position of unsustainable noncompetitive disadvantage. So, developing solid messaging really resonates with your potential buyers and prospects in your target market is extremely important. Messaging, if done right, should be developed into a messaging guide as a part of your strategic marketing plan. And this messaging guide becomes a foundation for outputs into your sales materials, presentation, collateral, website, contents, data sheets, all of the proposals that you write for customers they should all be an output from your core messaging guide that is done in your strategic marketing planning process. So messaging guide really becomes the output. Also, to all of your marketing communication programs, whether it be advertising, direct mail and other forms of promotion to generate leads.

So why is it important to do strategic marketing planning? Strategic marketing planning is the foundation for developing a successful, well focused sales program. Many companies miss this and go about deploying their sales resources without fundamentally having a sales strategy. A sales strategy comes from your strategic marking plan. What's your company doing to develop its marketing strategy? How well do you understand your target customers, your markets, which segments you're competitive in? What is your unique selling proposition, have you done a thorough analysis of who your competition is and how you plan to win? Does your sales team understand all of these elements as it relates to executing their daily job successfully? If your company needs help with strategic marketing, our company can help.