The marketing strategy is one of the most important aspects when it comes to a company’s wellbeing. Together with the financial plan, and the business plans, the marketing strategy defines your company’s future development.

For the marketing strategy to be successful, it needs to be closely related to the business and financial plans. For example, if you have a cost per lead of around $100 and you are looking to get 10 new clients per month, having a $300 monthly budget won’t be enough.

For you to make sure your marketing strategy won’t end up being a black hole for your company’s budget, here are 8 tips you should consider.

1. The Business Plan

“Before you even start to plan your marketing strategy is very important to define your business plan. For example, let’s say you have a self-service car wash and you are looking to create a marketing strategy for it.” emphasizes Cornelia Gale, CMO.

First, you need to define your business plan. Let’s say you have four car wash boxes and you are looking to expand your business and buy four new boxes in the next year.

2. From Business Plan to Marketing Strategy

Do the math and find out how much funds do you need for this operation. Then, calculate how many clients would you need in order to obtain the needed funds. Lastly, once you now the number of clients you need, make some simulations and find out how much money you have to spend on your marketing strategy in order to get those clients.

3. Are you Talking to the Right People?

Right, you got the idea, you know how to source your marketing strategy from your business plan. But, the question is, who are you talking to actually? If you have a self-service car wash, your audience consists of the daily car drivers. This means that Waze Ads would be more effective than Pinterest Ads. Before you start pumping money in promoting your business it’s very important that you create customer personas and approach them with targeted messages.

4. Are you Reaching the Right People?

As we said, it’s important to know who are you talking to. Even as important as this is trying to identify the right channels to deliver your message. For example, the Waze Ads alternative should be tried by the marketing specialist of such a business. Another effective marketing channel for such businesses would be the radio stations.

Do some digging, find all the marketing channels available and initiate A/B testing on all of them. Then, once you identify the ones who generate the most ROI, focus on them.

5. Online vs Offline Marketing

“In today’s business environment is very important to know the percentage of your budget you spend on online marketing and offline marketing.”, added Sean Kurt.

According to research done by Business2Community, almost one in three marketing specialists has reduced their advertising budget in order to fund more digital marketing campaigns. This means that digital marketing campaigns are becoming more and more important to nowadays businesses.

6. Am I Budgeting Enough?

What’s the percentage of your marketing and sales expenditures according to your revenue? Is it 5 percent, is it 10 percent, is it 20 percent?

A good example of how much money you should spend on marketing and sales is Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft spent $17.7 Billion on marketing and sales during 2018. During the same year, they’ve generated $110.4 Billion in revenues.

The conclusion? You should spend roughly 15-20 percent of your revenue on marketing and sales. This is the average percentage the large companies allocate when creating their marketing strategies. Keep in mind they are well-established companies, leaders of their markets. You need to grow, not to consolidate your leadership.

7. Is my Strategy Efficient?

Your job is not done once you plan and launch your marketing strategy. After the launch of the marketing campaigns, you need to keep a close eye on their development. Are they effective enough? Are they generating the expected results? If yes, could you improve the results?

If not, why is this happening? Was the simulation unrealistic? Are the marketing campaigns wrongfully setup?

8. Adaptability is Key!

Apart from the planning part of the marketing strategy, there is another more important aspect of these strategies, the adaptability.

If your marketing strategy is delivering results better than expected, you should use the extra revenue to advance with your business plan. Maybe buy a new-self service car wash box?

If the strategy is not delivering the results you expected, you need to study the numbers you are getting. Is the click-through rate of your marketing campaigns lower than the industry average?

Study your campaigns’ results and find out why they are not delivering the expected results.

The marketing strategy is very important for a company because it can help expand the company or it can wreck it. The next time you are looking to create your marketing strategy, take a look at these 8 tips and make sure your strategy is spot on.

Sharon is marketing specialist and blogger from Manchester, UK. When she has a minute, she loves to share a few of her thoughts about marketing, writing and blogging with you. Currently, she is working as a marketer at Bestessay. You could follow Sharon on Facebook.