Better marketing content - five strategic rules

Strategy is about thinking before action. If you’ve not created a marketing strategy, here’s five crucial rules to follow before you commission your next creative project.

1. Who are you marketing to?

Being crystal clear about who your marketing is targeting is crucial. You might have multiple groups that you need to market to for your organisation to thrive. Charities or education establishments are often marketing to parties that are not in fact the end benefactor, for example funders or local authorities. Is your marketing content addressing the right audience?  

2. What are you offering them?

You know what you’re offering better than anyone else, but you might still struggle to explain it in simple terms that mean something to your audience. Understanding the value of what’s on offer and how this meets what people need is crucial. Your marketing material should be articulating the difference your service will make to your users.

3. When are they ready to ‘buy’ from you?

If you know who you’re targeting and what you're offering, the next thing to figure out is when people are ready to engage with you. There will be always be specific points in time when your audience is ready. Think about umbrellas appearing at the front of supermarkets on a rainy day. If you can work out when your audience need you, you’ll understand when and where to distribute your marketing.  

4. Why should they chose your organisation?

Key messages explain to people why they need you. They outline what you’re offering. These statements will form the basis of lots of marketing materials going forward – website content, presentations, sales documents – all benefit from consistent marketing messages. Do you have consistent messages across everything?

5. How do you want the audience to engage with you?

Once people have been on your website or watched your film, what do you want them to do next? What is your call to action? Even the biggest organisations get this wrong. Be clear about what you want your audience to do next, and then work out how to encourage them to do this. Don’t leave them hanging!

These tips are designed to get you thinking in the right way, but it’s not easy to be strategic from inside an organisation. A marketing strategy can be a big project, workshop or even a series of guided discussions. Crucially, investing in strategy means you don’t waste money because every piece of marketing content produced is targeted in the right way.

If you want to talk about this and would appreciate a professional sounding board, please get in touch.