The Seven Fundamentals of Strategic Marketing For Long Term Success

Whether a company is operating in good or difficult economic times, they should market strategically. Meaning, there must be an overall goal as well as a core methodology for the company to follow.

Blindly following trends such as “mobile marketing” or “Google Maps” without a strategy will unlikely get you the results that you want. Remember, how you approach the market is as important as how much traffic you get to your website. Understanding the nature of your customer and their buying decisions will always trump even the best search engine marketing techniques.

Therefore, what’s needed is for you to understand the basic framework for marketing. Whether a company is doing internet marketing or television commercials, there is a certain structure that the promotion fits into.

What is that structure?

There are seven basic principles that every company must consider in order to promote their business fully. In fact, the Internet-based method is only one of seven. The other six are just as important and without them in place, a company’s Internet marketing efforts won’t yield positive results.

First, a company must have its own unique selling proposition or USP. That means that every customer should have an understanding of why they choose to frequent that business. Secondly, businesses also need to be able to move customers through their sales system to give them the maximum value possible in exchange for a higher quality and quantity of transactions.

Another fundamental is to have an active relationship with those who have come in contact with you and your business. In marketing circles, this is called a contact database, e-mail list or an e-mail database.

A third function often goes unheralded but is just as powerful.  Whenever possible, business owners and managers should be seeking relationships with other companies within the industry in order to exchange access to their respective customer databases.

Companies should also have a firm handle on how they’ll use traditional media advertising as well. Whether or not they choose to use the newspaper, television, radio or all of the above, management and staff should understand their demographic. They should then match the channel to the media preference of that demographic.

Fifth, good companies find a way to be involved with their community. This involvement has a direct benefit to the company; when used correctly, it’s a fantastic tool for branding. Whenever someone that has come in contact with the involvement sees the company name they will always have a positive association based on that experience. This can easily substitute for companies that cannot afford an extensive media advertising campaign.

As a sixth principle, companies should make the best use of direct response principles of selling one on one.  Instead of using all of their promotion to speak “one to many”, companies with long term success direct some of their messages to customers on an intimate or personal level.  You’ve probably seen direct response in mail advertising, infomercials and website pages requesting your contact information.

Lastly, note that Internet marketing comes after every other “foundational” practice is in place. The Internet is more of a channel of distribution, than it is a marketing method. Before it becomes a first point of contact, lead source, it is there to support and provide credibility for your other marketing activities.

Source: http://goo.gl/4Bo5Ny