Before designing a brand, building a website, creating content, or running ads — you need to understand the market, competitors, and the people you’re trying to reach.
This is step 1 of any online marketing gameplan.
In this guide, we will break down the basics of this first step in a successful marketing strategy.
Table of Contents
1- Market Research
The first task that needs to be done is basic online market research.
We need to figure out the industry we’re entering — what people want, the main problems and shifting landscape, what’s trending, and where the opportunities are.
The key things we are trying to learn:
- Market size, growth rate, trends or segments, and keywords
- Customer problems
- Customer desires
- Market opportunities and niches
- Any notes
This can be conducted using online searches and databases about the market you operate in.
Simply google searching or using AI tools for market research data for your market will bring up a lot of helpful statistics and overviews.
Alongside google searching take some time to explore the websites that are showing up for key terms in the industry, the businesses doing well on social media for these niches, and just get an overall feel for this market that you are competing in.
It usually is best done when you dive into certain keywords or channels and then follow the rabbit hole until you start to really understand the market and the people competing in the market.
This step is critical to get a market overview and understanding of how you can compete and provide value in the market.
2- Competitor Research
Next, it’s important to examine and study 5-10 of your most common competitors in the market you are operating in.
Using a spreadsheet or tables and noting the different aspects of their business strategy is the best way to do this as it keeps things organized by specific variables.
These are the things to look at:
- Their market positioning and messaging (or what niche or focus)
- Their offers and pricing (are they higher or lower priced)
- Main marketing channels they are using
- Types of content they are creating
- Overall what is working or not working for them
By examining your competitors you can rip from what they are doing that’s working and also determine how you can carve out your own unique messaging and positioning that will help you differentiate yourself from them in the market.
Often, when doing this research you will find a key or goldmine marketing channel and strategy that your competitor is using to get new customers on autopilot.
Take the time to really dive into what these competitors are doing including what types of content they have and where this content is being dispersed for them.
See if you can figure out how much traffic they are generating, where customers are finding them, and what is working for their business.
3- Buyer Personas
While defining your ideal buyer personas will shift naturally as you work with customers over time it’s important to have an idea of the type of person you will be targeting with your marketing messages and content.
This is because in order to craft content and marketing messages that hit and land with potential customers you need to understand their pains and desires as well as what they are currently dealing with in their day to day life activities.
You need to show and convince them that your product or service can solve their problem and make them feel like it is the right fit for them based on their circumstance.
Over time as the business works with more customers the buyer personas will become more clear and your marketing can become more targeted towards only the people who you can best serve at the most profitable point.
Below is an example of a customer persona:
At this step the goal is to create a few of these personas so that you can use them when crafting your marketing content and messages.
Putting it All Together
In order to do this effectively and stay organized it’s important to have a simple process and operating procedure.
I have created a document that has tables and guidelines for all 3 steps of this initial marketing assignment.
See the document here and complete it for step 1.
Thanks for reading and I hope that you can design and implement a killer marketing strategy to grow your business.
