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Even the most fresh-faced entrepreneur will tell you that a solid marketing strategy is one of the main keys to running a successful business.

In fact, many would argue it’s the main key for doing so.

No matter the industry, marketing is essential for:

• Building brand awareness
• Generating a buzz and increasing engagement among potential customers
• Bringing in highly-qualified leads and converting them into paying customers

Now, it’s not terribly difficult to achieve the bare minimum level of success with regard to the points mentioned above.

Even new marketers can get their brand “out there,” generate a small amount of buzz and even bring in a decent amount of leads if they don’t exactly know what they’re doing.

However, this minimal amount of success pales in comparison to that which experienced marketers achieve on a routine basis.

The main difference?

Successful marketers develop and follow a documented and strategic marketing strategy.

The benefits of having such a marketing strategy in place are…well…quite significant. According to data collected by CoSchedule:

• Marketers who create and document a marketing strategy are 538% more likely to report success than those who don’t.
• Marketers who create, document, and follow a specific marketing strategy are 466% more likely to report success than those who don’t.
• Marketers who set specific goals for their marketing strategy are 429% more likely to report success than those who don’t.
• Of those that set specific marketing goals, more than four of every five marketers achieve them.

With numbers like this, it’s rather odd, then, that more than one-third of marketers don’t have any kind of marketing strategy in place. And, unfortunately, even among those that do, nearly 40% of them don’t believe their strategy is all that effective.

With all of this in mind, we’re going to take a deep dive into all that developing an effective marketing strategy entails. By the end of this article, you’ll understand:

• The importance of defining customer personas
• How and why to research your competition
• How to implement the Bullseye Framework to determine the right marketing channels to focus on
• The differences between Owned, Earned, and Paid marketing channels
• The meaning of AIDA and ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu
• Why setting SMART goals is essential to the success of your marketing strategy

We’ve got a lot to cover, here. Whenever you’re ready, take a deep breath – and dive in.