At Mad Fish Digital, we work with companies at every stage of growth. Our experience includes startups with venture capital investments, small businesses looking to expand, and established businesses who are simply looking to grow. They all have this in common: they want to ensure their marketing strategy will get them the results they need.

The research-oriented process we have developed helps us uncover goals, needs, and tactics that deliver results. In this post, we’ll share the ways you can start this process internally. We’ll also help you know how to identify areas of expansion for your business. Finally, we’ll explore how to build a fresh marketing strategy.

Take Stock of Your Current Marketing Strategy

Building your plan starts with some introspection. You can’t know where you’re going without knowing where you’ve been. Start by auditing your current and past efforts and creating a one-sheet or brief that explains the tactics that are working, those that have worked, and those that have been unsuccessful. It can help here to add a few notes so that team members know the what, why, and how around each for better context.

Evaluate the Competition

Now that you’ve taken stock of where you’ve been and where you currently are, take the time to investigate your competition. Evaluate their strategy and identify areas where they are outperforming you, as well as where you are beating them.

Here are just a few ways to get a feel for what they are doing online:

    • Subscribe to their newsletters
    • Evaluate their website
    • Follow their social channels
    • Read their blog
  • Look at their partners

Take the time to make notes of how your competitors are outperforming you. Then, make note of how you can differentiate yourself. This will help you hone your strategy. You can then identify the unique elements of your brand, product, or service, and how best to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Investigate Your Audience

When you’re making a marketing plan you want to know who you’re trying to reach. Identifying your current and dream audience will help you evaluate marketing channels. For instance, convincing someone to go to a specific college may require more than an Instagram post. However, for B2C products, Instagram stories or targeted emails may be the best way to encourage conversions.

At Mad Fish Digital, we ask ourselves what a client’s audience needs are from the brand. We investigate the pain points, as well as how the product solves them. Then, we move into positioning and plan a marketing approach that has specific touch points to build awareness, consideration, and transaction.

Building your brand personas is a time-consuming process. However, you may be tempted to skip because you already “know” your audience. We can’t stress enough how important taking the extra time to confirm your understandings and challenge your assumptions is. Stay curious and you’d be surprised what insights you come up with.

Develop Your Plan of Attack

Now that you know who you’re trying to reach, identify where you want to reach them and how best to do it. Building an integrated marketing plan that pulls on all the stages of the funnel means you’ll engage the audience with aligned messaging and CTAs.

Customer impressionsWhen developing your marketing strategies, incorporate the audience and channel implementation. This means you’ll deliver your message in all the right places at the right time, build brand affinity, and increase the likelihood of conversion.

Through the years, Mad Fish Digital has learned to work with clients in an integrated manner. After all, you know your brand better than anyone else. Whether it’s a perfectly crafted blog post in Position Zero, an Instagram Stories ad, or animated videos that explore the intricacy of your brand, we know the right marketing mix is essential and are invested in getting it right.

Curious how we can help? Reach out for a free consultation today.