Ben Young
Ben Young
November 8, 2022

Marketing strategy is developing a plan of action to achieve business objectives. There are a lot of different skills and practices which go into developing an effective strategy.

If you are new to marketing strategy, some relevant posts:

Guides on different marketing strategies:

On reporting & feedback:

On marketing effectiveness:

On setting marketing budgets:

And some guides which provide useful information:

 

Data driven marketing strategy

Modern marketing strategies all have data at their core. Data is enables marketers to check in on progress, provide context for performance and act as an asset in making predictions. Which is why marketing analytics has grown in prominence.

What do people mean by data driven marketing?

Marketing activities that are informed by data. As more and more of the marketing mix has digitized, this has opened up new channels of data, to help guide marketers.

People refer to it, when theyโ€™ve made a conscious effort, to identify the most suitable data, collect it and process it. This is then disseminated to the right folks to help improve marketing.

Examples can include:

  • Assigning budgets based off past performance
  • Providing insights to creatives, to help fuel their creative intuition or give constraints to work to
  • Benchmarking performance or internal scorecards
  • Managing team performance

In the formation stages of strategy, data is immensely helpful. To identify areas that need improvement. Or to give context on how well particular opportunities might be.

 

Why do you need a marketing strategy?

Having a plan of action will lead to more effective work, than no plan at all. It helps to keep everyone focused on the right things, and prioritize accordingly. It helps manage up as well, setting expectations and guidance on where budget is being spent. The plan shows how marketing will help achieve the organizations goals.

No plan is referred to as a headless chickens strategy. Which on the surface sounds wise. But headless chickens run in circles!

 

How often should a marketing strategy be revised or updated?

The cadence of updates should reflect the cadence of the business. If you are an early stage company, you may need to revisit your strategy more often. For more established businesses, the framework may stay fairly resilient but the creative ideas within it change.


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