Let's start with the subtitle of this article "working to a defined marketing strategy process for business development" - and why we stress this with the clients we work for and of course why we make all attempts to keep on implementing this form of business operations within our companies. The key point that is being stressed here is that on a daily basis within any company; along with performing the necessary daily tasks of servicing clients there needs to be a component of activities that are focused around that of client acquisition and lead generation. For this to take place there must be in place a clear and defined customer target market segment. When we speak of target market segments we refer to the makeup of the customer in terms of geography, their buying behaviour as well as the life time value that may be realised from them.
Looking more closely at target client segments as; we can further work to classify this in terms of business to business or business to consumer targeting as a key component of developing a marketing strategy for the company. The sales cycle will almost definitely be a longer one in terms of selling direct to businesses as opposed to selling to the consumer. With that in mind this should be factored into the mindset and expectations of any go to the client advertising strategy planning.
So we have briefly touched on the "who" we will be selling to and there are of course so many moving parts to consider but as long as the reader is aware of getting this aspect of their Business Strategy Marketing Planning in place that will suffice for now.
... Assuming We Have Determined Who We Are Targeting - Let's Consider How We Are Going To Get Our Message To Them ...
In alignment with Target Customer Segment Marketing we have to factor in the routes, methods of in business terminology our "Channel Marketing Strategies". This piece could be put out to a marketing strategy planning strategy consultant or the expert could be brought into the business to work with management over a set period of time. Now, back to Marketing Channels - this is the means that we are going to choose and make use of from a strategic business development perspective to make customers aware of the product and services that we offer.
Some of the ways that we can choose to [remember we are referring to doing things on an ongoing daily basis within the organisation] communicate with clients for lead generation and customer acquisition is via placing advertisements in industry magazines and other publications. Before we continue it is very to important the aforementioned activities would have determined based on the initial channel marketing strategy development processes analysis and; in turn will continue to be revised. In addition to this we could go to trade shows and other industry specific conferences and events in order to make our presence known. We could print flyers and information leaflets and in fact post them directly the offices. And of course we could look to make full use of digital [search engine and social media marketing] strategies in order to get our message across.
In terms of internet business promotion - many companies will look to work with a full service digital marketing agency that will be expertly able to; take the organisation's top level business corporate plans and then to translate them into all of the necessary search engine as well as social media components [this will include email marketing, video marketing, funnels, processes, content generation, keyword research, blogging and article writing] that need to be developed and executed in terms of internet advertising and promotions. These activities will connect the message to prospects who after moving through defined processes "should end up becoming paying customers or branding advocates.
