A SWOT analysis will help you understand where your business and its products or services correspond to the market and your unique sales position and where you have problems and how to solve them. The acronym SWOT itself means:
- S What are you doing well, which is the best. What are the advantages of your business (product or service) distinguished by customers.
- W What are you doing badly. What your competitors are doing better than you. What is holding back your business. What aspects of the business need to be improved to stay competitive.
- O What you can use in the interests of your business. What market trends can lead to increased sales.
- T What can harm your business in the short, medium and long term. How to avoid it.
Stage 2: setting marketing goals
The second stage of the
SOSTAC methodology involves the development of goals that you plan to achieve with your marketing strategy plan. For their formulation, it is recommended to use SMART criteria.
This is another acronym meaning:
- S The goal should be clearly defined. For example, “I want to lose weight” is not a specific goal, while “I will eat 1200-1500 calories a day for two months” is a clear goal. The same goes for marketing: “I want to increase the number of subscribers” is not specific, while “I want to receive 1000 new subscribers per month” is specific.
- M Goals must be measurable. This means that you must have quantitative criteria for measuring the process of fulfilling the plan (achieving goals). Example: increase conversion from 3 to 6% per month or increase incoming traffic to 10,000 unique visits per day.
- A Goals must be achievable. Make sure your marketing goals are within reach. For example, “becoming the first in the Chinese market” is almost always the goal of your dreams, while “selling 1000 positions a month in China” is an achievable goal.
- R Goals must be realistic. It is possible that some goals will require resources that you do not have. For example, you can set a goal: get 100,000 new followers on Instagram. This is easy to achieve if you have money for quality content and extensive advertising. And it’s not possible if you are a small business with a limited budget.
- Time-related. Goals should be tied to time. For example, increase sales by 20% by the beginning of 2020 or enter the top 5 in Google’s natural delivery in six months.
Stage 3: developing a marketing strategy
Strategy is the path that you will follow until you reach your goals. In marketing, this is the set of channels that you plan to use. What is included in this set depends on the target audience. For example, you should not use advertising in print newspapers if your target audience is young people, because they practically do not read newspapers.
Now are used the following channels:
- Advertising in print media and magazines.
- Outdoor advertising (signs, banners, posters).
- Radio and television.
- Digital marketing.
The choice of
specific channels for promotion should be done on the basis of “Customer Identity” and marketing research. It is better not to trust personal preferences and experience here, since you can become a victim of a
systematic error of the survivor.
Even at this stage, you need to make a budget for the marketing strategy (how much and what you will spend money on) and establish the “rules of the game” - the basic principles (criteria for selecting sites, forbidden techniques and topics, etc.) that you will be guided by when developing tactics and choosing marketing tools.
Stage 4: setting marketing objectives
Tactics cover the
specific tools that you plan to use to achieve your goals. In terms of marketing, you need to describe not only these tools, but also why you use them.
For example, in digital marketing such tools are usually used:
- SEO promotion. Determine which words (search queries) are most often used by your customers on Google and their site filler.
- Search engine optimization. Development and customization of the site so that it is more visible in the search engines. This is facilitated by the high speed of the site, the correct structure, internal linking, tag optimization, adaptation for mobile devices and more.
- Affiliate programs. Collaboration with affiliates (platforms, bloggers, organizations, etc.) that redirect their traffic to your site in exchange for a portion of the profit or a specific cash payment.
- Advertising on the Internet. Promotion of goods and services on the network using contextual advertising, banners, advertising on TV shows and on certain sites that your target audience visits.
- Email marketing. Sending emails to attract traffic or advertising a brand, product or service.
- Social Networking / Marketing Impact. Active on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube, as well as using popular accounts to promote ideas, brand, products and services.
- Advertising in mobile applications. It is placed in free or shareware applications and games of advertisements (usually with a temporary timer, before the expiration of which the advertisement cannot be turned off).
The
choice of channels should be done on the basis of the “buyer person” and the target market. For example, if you plan to advertise something in India, then you do not need to make a major bet on social networks, since their penetration in this country is at the level of 30%. While in Malaysia 99% of residents have a page in at least one of the
popular social networks.
The situation is similar with other digital marketing tools: somewhere, people use e-mail, and somewhere they consider it an anachronism; Some messengers are popular somewhere, while others are popular somewhere.