Forming a marketing strategy will help you optimize your advertising efforts. To help you create your own marketing strategy, we’ve put together this best practice exercise, which consists of five key areas for how to think strategically about your marketing program. Many top companies practice these thought exercises to help them manage their marketing efficiently.
Start by reading through these five steps, then fill in the exercises on the following pages. When you’re finished, you’ll be well on your way to forming a marketing strategy for your business.
Five Steps to Forming a Marketing Strategy4. Decide How to Measure Your Campaign Success
Determine which calculations and results (ROI, cost-per-lead, cost-per-acquisition, etc.) best indicate the success of your campaign.
Example: XYZ Electronics measures cost-per-lead, number of downloads and cost-per-acquisition.
You can plan your customers’ experience by creating user scenarios. These help you envision the target customer’s key steps, which will allow you to anticipate and exceed expectations. Proceed to the User Scenario Exercise on the next page.
User Scenario Exercises1.
Customer’s Key Step:
Successful Outcome:
Implications for the Advertiser: Metrics:
Exercise:
Complete search
Notice your Yahoo! Search Marketing listing
Bid to top positions
Number of impressions
How many of your keywords appear at the top of the listings on sites like Yahoo! and MSN? Bid as many of your keywords as possible to the top of the listings.
2.
Customer’s Key Step:
Successful Outcome:
Implications for the Advertiser:
Read title and description
Click your Yahoo! Search Marketing listing
Write titles and descriptions that reflect the users’ intent and capture their attention.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Choose one of your keywords and rewrite the title and description to be more effective. See chapter 2 for help.
3.
Customer’s Key Step:
Successful Outcome:
Implications for the Advertiser:
Visit your site for the first time
Add item to shopping cart
Select the URL that takes users directly to the page related to the search term.
Ensure the content on your site reflects the title and description.
Page views
For the keyword you chose, what is the most specific URL on your site to send users to?
4.
Customer’s Key Step:
Successful Outcome:
Implications for the Advertiser:
Browse for additional items
Add item to shopping cart
Introduce related or complementary items.
Make it easy to navigate to other items.
Page views
Brainstorm three ideas to encourage customers to browse for additional items.
5.
Customer’s Key Step:
Successful Outcome:
Implications for the Advertiser:
Make purchase
Complete purchase
Do not surprise your customer: no new charges or questions. Consider investing in usability testing.
Emphasize security.
Conversion and profit
Brainstorm three ideas to improve your checkout process.
6.
Customer’s Key Step:
Successful Outcome:
Implications for the Advertiser:
Give permission for additional follow-up
Provide key information
Don’t ask for too much information too soon.
Ensure there are appropriate incentives.
Customer database
Brainstorm three ideas for leveraging customer information to promote additional sales.
7.
Customer’s Key Step:
Successful Outcome:
Implications for the Advertiser:
Return to site
Make additional purchase
Offer a broad selection of products.
Make it easy for repeat buyers to use your site
(store their shipping address, etc.)
Deferred sales and profit
Brainstorm three ideas for marketing to existing customers.
Action Steps
Complete a marketing plan that answers these questions:
• What products do you offer?
• What are your product capabilities?
• Who is your target audience and what are their needs?
• What is your value proposition?
• What does the competitive landscape look like? Based on the above factors, what is your marketing message? Create a pricing strategy based on your marketing plan. Create a user scenario customized for your business objectives.