There are 4 just key questions to ask if you want to deliver more effective marketing. Who, What, Why, Where? Simple! But they’re absolutely critical, must ask questions. Because not asking them will lead to ineffective marketing and wasted budget.

Despite all the wonderful shiny new toys marketers have at their disposal today, and the explosion of channels, the fundamental principle of marketing is still the same. Getting the right message to the right people in the right place at the right time. To influence their thinking and create preference for your product or service by presenting it as the solution to their wants and needs.

The good thing about it is, it’s easy to breakdown that basic principle to help you build an effective strategy and develop an incisive marketing plan. So before defining your marketing strategy and building your plan, make sure you ask yourself the right questions.

And those Who, What, Why, When? questions fall into the following areas. Objectives, Audience, Message, Channels. Let’s take each one by one.

1. Objectives: What’s Your Business Trying To Achieve?

Start with understanding what your business wants to achieve this year. For example, are you a young business and your primary objective is to raise awareness? Is your business looking to increase its customer base? Are you looking to improve profits? Or do you want to grow revenue?

All are different objectives that require a different approach to your marketing strategy and the activity that will help you delver that strategy. Once you understand this you can identify the KPI’s and measurements to put in place to measure how your marketing is performing against business objectives.

2. Audience: Who Are You Trying To Target?

Once you know what your business is looking for, and what you need to achieve, the first step in effective marketing is identifying your target audience.

What market segment (or segments) do you serve? Exactly who are the people or businesses within the segment(s) that need or can benefit from your products or services? What are their demographics, interests, behaviours, characteristics and traits?

More importantly, what are their motivators, needs, challenges and pain points? Once you really understand your target audience, you’ll know what matters to them and what they’re looking for to help make things easier, better, more enjoyable for them

3. Message: What Are You Going To Say and Why Do They Care?

With audience established and needs, challenges and pain points identified, ask yourself how your products or services help your audience. What problems do you solve? How do you make their lives easier or better? Do you offer greater quality, more speed, better pricing, the complete solution?

Knowing the answers, you can begin to develop messaging and effective marketing that will engage them and interest them. Messaging that communicates the value your brand offers and highlights the relevant selling points that answer your audience’s needs, challenges and pain points. Because demonstrating empathy with their situation is what’ll resonate. If they see you understand their lives, you begin to influence their behaviour. Changing perceptions, building positive associations and creating preference.

So craft clear, concise and compelling stories that identify a truth your audience recognise because they can see themselves in the message you deliver.

4. Channels: Where Are You Going To Say It?

Once you know who you’re targeting, you should have a much clearer idea of what channels they prefer and where they’re active. This is where you deliver your message.

Remember, successful, effective marketing is about meeting audience needs, so you have to engage them where they spend their time. Don’t be swayed just because you might like to do a nice video or jump on board the latest/newest platform. If you still don’t have enough research or insight on where your target audience are active, continue to ask Where do my target audience spend their time? What channels do they choose? Until you know.

Your audience knowledge and understanding should inform your choice of tactics. Not the other way around. Once you have that, you can build a plan incorporating the right channels to get you in front of your audience. So your compelling message focused on your audience needs will be seen by them. This could be across a mix of social, email, YouTube, print, Direct Mail, outdoor, TV or radio. With each channel performing a different role to nudge your target audience at different times.

More Effective Marketing

And that’s it. Whilst it’s easy to break down the basic principle of marketing, it requires effort, discipline and clarity to put together a focused strategy and implement an incisive plan that delivers more effective marketing.

It requires clarity on business objectives, a detailed understanding of your target audience, a compelling message that resonates with them, and the right media channels to deliver that message. With different channels used at different parts of the customer journey. And different messages used to reflect the different stages your target audience are at.

Easy Peasy?

Have you got all this in hand? If asked by the CEO, MD or you, do your Marketing team have all the answers?

Or maybe time and other demands are keeping you from asking the questions. If you’d benefit from expert help to make sure you’re getting the answers you need to deliver more effective marketing, contact us. It’s what we do.

 

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