Marketing strategy is like building a house. All good houses start with a solid foundation. The easiest way to make sure your digital-marketing foundation is solid is through research.
To get a full understanding of who you are marketing to, how they make decisions, and what else is out there, it is important to deep dive into both your potential customers and your competitors.
In this session, you will learn where to start when it comes to customer and competitive research.
You will learn three ways to conduct customer research, the process of creating buyer profiles and buyer personas, and who should be conducting this research for your organization. You will also learn about the buyer’s journey and how that fits into your buyer personas and content marketing strategies. Mary Cate will also give you a buyer research template to take home so you can get started creating your own buyer profiles and personas.
Knowing your buyers and how they make decisions is priority number one in a solid marketing strategy, but a close second is knowing your competition. It is important for you to (1) know who your key competitors truly are, and (2) know what your potential customers are experiencing when they interact with those competitors. For your competitors, Mary Cate will walk you through her own competitor report card and how to grade yourself and your competition in key areas.
Once you have done the research, you can confidently and strategically move on to the fun stuff: building a strategy and goals. All of this information will help you decide where you should focus your energy.
This session will lean toward research around digital marketing, but these principles are flexible to use in any aspect of your marketing-strategy research.
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