Strategy Determines Winners
In the proptech, realtech and fintech world, there is a belief that by building a better mouse trap, success is guaranteed.
“the product will sell itself…users will see it inside the product itself.”
Yet B2B or consumer market osmosis isn’t a real thing. Capturing markets and building significance via strategic marketing promotes sales and protects investor’s investment. SMB owners commonly fail to see the long term value of adopting strategy and letting it win the market. Flying by the seat of our pants strategy doesn’t work in intense competition.
The truth is that if you willingly (by absentia) give the market to your competitors, they’ll convince consumers that your product is worthless or even make them dislike you. Not that they would do that deliberately. Instead they do it by persuading the market of their product superiority — and alter perception of value. Now your excellent product appears to have no value.
What Is a Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy refers to a business’s overall game plan for reaching prospective consumers and turning them into customers of their products or services. A marketing strategy contains the company’s value proposition, key brand messaging, and more… — from Investopedia.
Marketing Strategy to the Rescue
Fortunately, marketing strategy (SEO and Content Strategy) will arrive to protect tech company investments. And with the current dive in tech and SaaS profitability, protection of investment is vital.
When business owners and marketers slap up content on the web without a cohesive plan, or a good budget for promotion, the outcome is less than desirable.
What’s unappreciated is the role strategy plays in marketing success. Of course, with large companies, strategy is much more appreciated, and money is not spent without a strong plan of attack.
Strategy is not execution. Marketers often believe that scheduled execution represents strategy. But mimicking large corporations publishing schedules doesn’t cut it. There’s other tasks that are more important.
Documenting is a great way to get it crystalized so you have something tangible to optimize. If you’ve visited the Content Marketing Institute, you know people take planning seriously. But the key is always strategy and how you’ll improve it.
Content and SEO Strategy
An advanced SEO and advanced content strategy, what creates impact is creating reach and delivering an outstanding unique value proposition. The content gets the UVP across in an impactful, informative, enlightening way, such that your product/service becomes the most significant solution available.
Your content (marketing pages, blogs, videos, case studies, product spec sheets, customer stories, images, webinars, illustrations, etc.) has to be good of course, to achieve this “most significant” ranking in prospects minds.
Aside from the content itself, it’s the strategy of delivering the message in a delightful way that makes the difference.
Why Don’t Companies Devise a Strategy?
For the most part, it’s a lack of expertise in designing strategy, a lack of confidence, and a lack of commitment to their business. Sound harsh? You must be good to succeed now. Competition isn’t local, it’s global.
Consider for a moment how competitive it really is. Can you imagine a pro sports team coming onto the field with no strategy to win a game?
Whoever employs the best strategy in that game is going to win. Being strategic means putting intense effort into building a winner. Some pro sports teams have a team salary of more than $600 million per year and hire the best coach at millions per year. No floating or coasting — just preparing the game plan and then executing it.
Clients I worked with such as Franklin Sports, Delta Hotels, Muscletech, Remax, and others put big effort into strategy.
Respecting Marketing Strategy
So our key task is to begin to respect strategy and find a way to ease into using strategy in SEO and content, that you’re comfortable with. The big point is to get started and gradually move toward advanced expertise. You’ll gain widsom as you go and more funding will evolve as you prove its worth.
Of course, there new analytics solutions too, that help you know whether your SEO, Content and conversion funnel strategy are working or not.
This is why hiring an outside consultant is important. A branding consultant for instance can give you an unbiased review of your brand and value proposition. Then a content and SEO consultant can review how your content is succeeding or failing, and advise on actions.
12 Ways to Deploy a Strategic SEO/Content Strategy
- conduct a digital marketing audit — uncover weaknesses, understand competitor’s positioning, and learn how customers feel about your content, brand and value proposition
- conduct an SEO audit — learn why your presence on search engines is weak and you’re giving up visibility to competitors
- develop a written content strategy — define exactly what you’re doing against your weaknesss, strengths and opportunities
- enrich your content — create a budget to hire high quality content creators to generate the exact content your prospects want to experience, and work to make it the richest content online
- make more exciting, engaging, and actionable content – continuously improve and add value to all of your content.
- improve your lead funnel – strategize with funnel solutions and improve the touchpoints in the customer journey and optimize flow through the funnel
- refresh and rework your old content — refresh, update and improve existing content which will give your new content strategy a lift
- choose your target keywords well – research best keyword phrases to advertise on and learn which generate the best leads and engagement with your content (learning experience to improve your content strategy)
- build significance — more than just trying to be relevant is the task of achieving top significance in your customer’s minds. Create content that communicates, engages, and powers action to make your brand the only one customers want.
- delve into marketing strategy – work with your consultant/content strategist to define the exact process you need to win the market (battle strategy really isn’t about war, it’s about creating such strong attraction with customers that they forget competitors exist).
- support your SEO strategist — acquire tools, resources, budget, and guidance so they stay focused on becoming the number one organic presence (big social media gains from this too).
- insist on hiring an advanced seo specialist if budget permits — part time or full time, hire an SEO expert with a strong sense of strategy passion for results (buzz words and academic concepts don’t deliver real results)
When documented strategy drives your marketing efforts, you’re going to have a serious advantage on those who don’t. They don’t have any means for evaluation or improvement. It’s a win by default.
Of course, you still must accept the challenge yourself. Launch into strategy as a way of improving every aspect of managing your business. The benefits to you personally are limitless.
Contact me to discuss joining your team and helping you power them up and creating a substantial increase in traffic, leads, brand awareness, and persistent visibility with your audience.
Gord Collins has been providing expert level SEO, social media, PPC services for software companies, manufacturers, hotels, recruiters, moving companies, publishers, sports equipment retailers, building supplies companies, window and door companies, Realtors, investment companies, IT companies, clean energy, consumer products, branding consultants and many more.
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