Begin by clearly defining your business objectives in a quantifiable manner. Does your brand clearly communicate what you are about and convey the highest value you deliver? 9 Content Marketing Strategy Questions You Need to Answer. So how does a marketing professional or business owner go about putting together a marketing strategy? At the end of the year, what numbers will tell you that you’ve had a successful year? Use your most successful accounts to date to help you think about what makes them ideal for you. But you need to know how the others who do what you do are representing themselves in your space. So, before you start trying to assemble a plan from scratch, here are eight of the most relevant strategic marketing questions your team should be asking themselves. Management consultant extraordinaire Peter Drucker famously said, “What gets measured, gets managed.” Now, while terms like measurement and management might seem like big company jargon, the fact is you can’t successfully grow a business unless you track what works and what doesn’t work. This is your marketing strategy. Interview Questions for an Email Marketing Role Email marketers, like most marketing jobs, are a combination of hard, technical skills and soft skills. How do our competitors effectively attract customers? Give some thought to how you might reach them and appeal to them. If you accept this expanded view of marketing strategy then I would suggest you answer the following questions in an attempt to measure where your strategy stands today and where it could … Does your organization’s corporate responsibility strategy match the availability of your current resources?This question addresses your strategy in terms of the funding, time, people, and information necessary to make the strategy work, determining its feasibility.2. If the business has not defined what they’re trying to sell and to whom, the marketing strategy has no chance of being successful. Build customer personas based on that and any other market research you have access to or have done yourself. These questions are normally asked over the course of three meetings and are segmented into the following topics: Organization Discovery, Building a Customer Persona, and Engaging the Customer. 1. Marketing Strategy Question 1: The Affinity Question. In most businesses, your target market is going to be responsible for your business's success or failure. Define the end game. Can we articulate the few things the organization needs to do better than anyone else in order to deliver on that value proposition? Are we investing in those areas, and do they fit with most of the products and services we sell? For example, if success is defined as the number of new customers generated from our email marketing program, but we don’t have a CRM in place, there’s no process for documenting the origin of a lead, and there’s no appetite for segmenting lists and creating content…then you are never going to be able to answer this marketing strategy question. How much website traffic do our competitors receive? Define the end game. For example, it may help to know that your clients real problem is cash flow and the value they get from your solution is getting paid faster. Marketing strategy must come before tactics and these 10 questions will help guide you through the process. This question helps you focus in on your sweet spot. It needs to match your brand and your organization’s voice, and it needs to be true to who you are. This candidate should have management skills, attention to detail, and analytical skills. So you’re ready to take a more process approach in your marketing efforts, but you’re not sure where to start…. Once you assess your industry and customers, start asking market research questions about your competitors. Before you start producing content, you need to know who you’ll be talking to and how you should talk to them. 60 Most Commonly Asked Questions About Digital Marketing – Answered! The old adage of “50% of my marketing works, and 50% doesn’t—I just can’t tell one from the other” doesn’t apply anymore. Marketing has one job—to generate value through attracting qualified leads that sales can convert into customers. Bottom line: the goal of a marketing strategy is to increase business and grow awareness of your organization. Five Questions to Build a Strategy People make strategy much harder than it needs to be. Question4: Marketing planning occurs at which company levels? First, what are your sales goals? The 6 marketing questions behind every good campaign Many people have built successful careers on giving tailored marketing advice to their clients. Business owners and marketers alike get too paralyzed about finding the perfect number—and end up spending nothing at all. Suite 3050 Does the plan help your organization make the right moves without your input? 2. Good Marketing Questions To Ask For Explosive Sales And Profits. Before you make any decisions about what you’re going to do next, it’s a good idea to take a look at what you’ve already done. For example, if the lifetime value of your average customer is $1,000, anything you spend under that in new customer acquisition costs will be profit — or the marginal net worth of your average customer. When asked to come into a business and evaluate marketing activities for growth or make marketing recommendations — this is where I start because this is where all the answers reside. Asking several solid questions a) shows that you care enough about the opportunity to prepare and b) helps you create dialogue that set you apart from everyone else interviewing for the job. Are brand and style guidelines established and are they formally documented? Marketing Strategy. (Hint: they are profitable and talk about you.). The customer experience is everything today. Do you like it? Great marketing is a powerful too that can attract new customers to any business the same way a super magnet attracts metal. Not only that, but you’re probably competing against businesses—and other factors—that might not occur to you without doing a little research. Asking why a candidate is interested in pursuing a marketing career will give you insight into the way they perceive the industry and if they have done their research into the job role. This is the first question, because it’s the easiest to answer. Here are the 10 questions to ask before creating your marketing strategy. Invest in your measurement tools so you can be smart about your marketing strategy as you begin to implement it. Ideal can mean many things — who can you deliver the greatest value to, who do you enjoy working with, who needs what you do … The idea was that you found out what people in your industry were searching for and you optimized your site and pages to try to show up on page one — pretty simple. Here are 40 questions* I recommend for evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing and developing a smarter marketing strategy. These 21 solved Strategic Marketing questions will help you prepare for personal interviews and online selection tests during campus placement for freshers and job interviews for professionals. story | strategy | scorecard, match your brand and your organization’s voice, evaluate how healthy your brand really is, Complete 200 new installations of our software, 10-15% of your overall budget should be spent on planning and measurement tools. Asking smart marketing strategy questions is the quickest route to smart answers. The final question to ask yourself during strategy development is simple. If you start asking the right questions, though, you’ll start arriving at right answers. If you have performance data—for example, if you’re equipped with in-depth reporting dashboards—add that to the stew as well. Take some time to identify your competitors in the space you’re selling in. You can learn a lot about who you’re selling to based on looking at who’s searching for you and visiting your website, and by examining what they’re doing once they arrive. Indianapolis, IN 46268 However, many CEOs only give lip service to strategy, avoiding the hard work of writing, honing, and sharing a specific strategic plan. 2. Who are we trying to reach? Take an inventory of people inside and outside your organization who can assist with implementing your plan. It gives real time reporting on social media, inbound links, seo, keywords and Pay per click marketing campaigns. It will give you total visibility into everything that your business has done to date, showing you the big picture in terms of your marketing. Ideal can mean many things — who can you deliver the greatest value to, who do you enjoy working with, who needs what you do most. We asked attendees to keep our discussions during the meeting private — no tweets, posts, … Bottom line: the goal of a marketing strategy is to increase business and grow awareness of your organization. Companies often fail to address the tough questions about strategy and execution: Are we really clear, as a leadership team, about how we choose to create value in the marketplace? Your marketing plan must answer these 7 questions to succeed. So, before you start trying to assemble a plan from scratch, here are eight of the most relevant strategic marketing questions your team should be asking themselves. There are several pieces of information you’ll need in order to create this strategy. Today's blog article is a list of good marketing questions to ask yourself to improve you marketing efforts and put plans in place to attract more customers. Marketing questions to ask to: Improve your customer experience; Measure overall brand impression; Compare your company to a competitor; Get a complete understanding of your analytics data; Track performance over time; Evaluate the omnichannel customer experience; Improve your social media marketing; Find out if your copy is effective; Learn what customers think of your ads; Optimize your … Here are 40 questions we ask when we’re creating a smart branding strategy for a client. But it occurred to us recently that it might be helpful for us to put together a blog post answering some of the most common questions we get related to digital marketing. Consider choosing a few of these marketing-focused questions for your next interview: Get creative. So, let's get to it. A marketing strategy is how you plan to use the resources available to you to build an ongoing case that your business, products and services are the obvious choice for a narrowly defined ideal customer. Ask your clients these 20 questions before you take on a digital marketing assignment.. “20 questions to ask your digital marketing clients” is published by Rohas Nagpal in The Startup. This question lets you discover the real value about you, your services/products and your company. You won’t regret it. Ruin this in a social driven world and you’re doomed. About “20 Questions for Business Leaders” For the 20th anniversary of strategy+business, we, the editors and staff of this magazine thought we’d celebrate this grand story of management thinking by holding, in effect, a grand party. If there is not a clear decision-making process set up in advance of the “creating stuff” part of marketing, your best work and greatest ideas will get caught up in an internal mess of non-responsiveness and/or “I have an idea/ opinion.” Make one person who is trusted centrally responsible for approving all creative and content. The answer is offering prospects a way to sample your expertise, product or service. From overall characteristics about ideal clients to logistics about measurement and offers, these questions walk you through the steps you should take prior to hitting “go.”. Often this will involve a complex, nuanced strategy which caters for every circumstance – something which is far out of reach for anyone who is either inexperienced or doesn’t have the budget to hire a similar service. hbspt.cta.load(131252, '1afd9101-d070-4ace-9883-8fce7eedf3d5', {}); It seems simple enough, but it’s often overlooked. I think the cost of acquiring a new customer is one of those data points that is critical to understand in any business. The more information you can synthesize before you start making new decisions, the better informed you’ll be and the smarter your decisions will be. Ten drawings for creative people, to motivate and inspire, California Needs a Housing-First Agenda: My 2018 Housing Package. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn. Guerrilla marketing ideas for small brands looking to take down Goliath. Marketing moves businesses towards a different place than they sit … To a larger market, to serve more customers, selling more products, delivering additional services. Market research questions is a questionnaire that is answered by customers or potential consumers, to understand their perception and opinion on a given subject, typically pertaining to product or service feasibility, understanding consumer needs and interests, and pricing concepts. Look at what they’re doing and how it compares with what you’ve done, and when possible also take a look at online engagement metrics for your competitors’ websites and digital content. Question3: What is the difference between strategy and tactics? Smart marketers employ some form of competitive research in an effort to better understand what products and services, pricing models and value propositions they are up against. Some questions to ask include: How is our brand doing compared to our competitors? #1. Who is your ideal customer? Outside of company staff, think about bringing in the expertise of industry thought leaders, key partners, vendors, clients, and interns. It’s very difficult to measure progress if you haven’t set up the system ahead of time to include measurement. There are about a million different things surrounding that one goal, but at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. Think about what your customers core problem is. Lack of a process approach to selling is the biggest weakness for most small businesses. What does the company want to accomplish in the next 6-12 months? Here are the 41 Questions Marketing Consultants Should Ask Potential Clients. In my opinion focusing on building a better process or better relationships is the surest and maybe simplest way to create a true competitive advantage that someone might care about. Choose the wrong target market, and you'll flounder. Would you like to sell more of a certain product or service? This will include local and national businesses, depending on your industry. 3. It seems like common sense to say that if you’re going to devote time to examining your own past marketing work, you should do the same with the businesses you’re competing with for sales and attention. Most entry level candidates may say something like, “I love that there are so many facets of marketing, so many things you can do, etc.” Which makes sense. That doesn’t mean guesswork or assumptions—it means doing the research legwork to identify your audience and determine what messaging and positioning will be most effective for them. Second, what marketing efforts … 03/22/2016 03:36 pm ET Updated Dec 06, 2017 Before you can be successful in a startup, you have to know your target market, inside and out. Market Research Questions for Competitive Analysis. Allow your resource availability to guide your strategic marketing plan. The primary reason great ideas and strategic plans go unexecuted is because no one thought through who was going to do the work. There is no sense in creating a strategy you don’t have the financial or human capital to execute on. 5. This can be in the form of free consultations, money-back guarantees, demos, seminars, proof of concept, audits, trail offers, assessments, etc. Too often we get so bogged down in the tactics that we forget to create a framework to allow for smart decision-making and swift implementation once the strategy is defined. It makes no sense to go out of business trying to fund your marketing effort. Heck, in the digital space you’re even competing with businesses and products that have the same name as yours, whether they’re in your industry or not. Today, I believe that content is the primary tool for optimizing your effectiveness is just about every channel your clients use — it’s the key to SEO, social media sharing, referrals, email marketing and even online and offline advertising. What do you want to accomplish and why? Today’s shift in buying now demands a very tangible way prospects can experience your offer. Do you want to increase sales by 10 percent? Last week, we held our inaugural CMI Executive Forum in San Francisco. And then make sure you have the tools in place to actually report on that information. Once you know who your competition is, you’ll need to audit their marketing the same way you did with your own. Your Organization & Mission Why does your organization exist? Think of the thing you’re considering and ask yourself, “Do I like the idea of doing this?” This separates out most marketing strategies, right off the hop. You’re competing against the ever-shorter attention span of your audience. Trying to figure out how to be better than the competition — better product, better service, better features, and better price is worthless. How will your marketing plan support your business goals? How to set the content marketing world on fire. Why is that? Before developing any plan, you should have a clear idea of what you wish to accomplish. We just got done saying that knowing what works and what doesn’t is an important piece of the puzzle when you’re building a new marketing strategy. One way to do this is to examine the data you are hopefully already collecting from your website. You’ll be able to see not only what you’ve done, but what worked for you and what didn’t. 2. Include the cost of utilizing internal resources for things like content creation, list segmentation, and customer feedback—and budget for it accordingly. Learn from your mistakes, and try to replicate your successes as best you can. Ask your sales team these 7 questions to improve sales and marketing alignment and develop a smarter marketing strategy. You’re competing against businesses that exist at the fringes of your space, the ones that aren’t offering quite what you are but might have something that does the same job or makes your offering obsolete. 25 content creation strategy questions to ask your team: 1. ELEMENT THREE So they don’t ask marketing questions that generate piercing and thought provoking insights into the dynamics of their target market. It seems simple enough, but it’s often overlooked. Pyramid Three, Floor Five This question helps you focus in on your sweet spot. Marketing moves businesses towards a different place than they sit today. It should set forth goals for each member of the team and give them their own objectives to achieve. “Tell me about a time when you owned the process of an email campaign from beginning to end.” Dear Readers, Welcome to Strategic Marketing Interview questions with answers and explanation. Download a copy of the E-Book by clicking here. At the end of the year, you’ll need to have something to determine that your marketing efforts were effective. Creating your overall marketing strategy is one of the most important jobs you’ll do as a marketer—and if you don’t answer these eight marketing plan questions before getting started, your foundation is likely to be faulty. Or, worse yet, they spend randomly and nothing is integrated enough to have any real impact. How do you figure that out? Write a description of the problems you solve for ideal clients. Here are the 10 questions to ask before creating your marketing strategy. Your strategy should keep everyone accountable and on task. 4. Feed your marketing mind and keep your skills sharp by opting into our weekly newsletter, packed with lessons we’ve learned firsthand. If you have the time and the ability to do a full creative audit, that’s your best possible option. Before executing, determine the scorecard. Why is it so … Seems simple enough, right? 3500 Depauw Blvd. Keyword research has long been the primary tool for search engine optimization plans. Once you have that information, it should be pretty clear what needs to be said and to whom. We’ve been asked this question a million times. Marketing is as much about momentum as it is about consistent execution. 250+ Marketing Strategy Interview Questions and Answers, Question1: The Objective and Task method of budgeting involves Question2: Which is not a financial objective? 317.879.9592. We’re a group of marketers, thinkers, creatives, developers, and more. 1. Buyers want a understanding of what they’re potentially buying, and they want it right away — essentially a buyer wants the opportunity to see and experience a service/product in action very early on. 1. How can you leverage all of these individual contributions to support mutual goals? We’d invite all the luminaries of management thought, from antiquity to today, to join us in spirit. What does the marketing team need to achieve to support corporate goals? Brand. The more complex this process is, the smaller the chances are that you will have a successful strategic marketing effort. Here are some examples: Before you begin, ask yourself: how are we going to determine if what we’ve done has been successful? Figure out how much of your company’s current profits you can comfortably invest back in the business to support future growth. What specific factors should you assess in a marketing audit? If you’re going to war, you must know your enemy. You’ve come to the right place. It outlines what you want to do, while your marketing plan provides details on how to do it. Content marketing leaders from some of the largest B2B and B2C brands came together to talk about the challenges and opportunities they see for content marketing. If you’re struggling at that, maybe you should evaluate how healthy your brand really is—or even re-examine who you and your organization really are. 10 Questions to Ask About Your Target Market. The bottom line is that if you market your business well, you’ll get the right customers. The short answer is: spend what makes sense for your business. As marketing and branding consultants, we’ve developed branding strategies and brand identities for many types of organizations. We suggest using Google analytics or vendor specific analytic tools to measure your marketing. Installing a sales process, one that everyone involved in selling in the organization operates, is the fastest way to improve overall results. I’ve seen lead conversion rates go from 3% to over 50% when all of the parts of a marketing and sales process work together. Once you understand the lifetime value of a customer, you can determine how much you’re willing to pay in new customer acquisition costs. It is critical, though, that however you curate your content in order to appeal to your audience, it’s still you. Tactics alone won’t take you where you want to go. What business objectives does the marketing strategy need to support? After all, if you don’t know what you don’t know, you can’t exactly get to the bottom of the problems you’re facing. 1. Here at Zen Media, we often get questions from businesses about online marketing, and we do our utmost to answer every one. Question5: ACME Company sets its advertising budget by only spending up to the point where … See what’s working for them and what isn’t, just like you did with your own content. 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