now, no signup required!
Any structure’s lifeline is based on the foundation that it’s built upon. A good foundation ensures that the structure doesn’t crumble easily from minor threats while successfully aiding in growth to reach the planned heights. Similarly, marketing serves as the foundation for an organization’s growth.
Every organization’s growth relies heavily on its marketing objectives such as increasing presence, gaining traction for products and services, attraction and retention of consumers, sales and profit increment. This is achieved by participating in marketing activities. Achieving these objectives requires a structured, well-thought-out plan answering what, where and how the marketing activities will be implemented. This prompts the need to develop a marketing strategy.
-
Understanding Marketing Strategy And Its Types
-
How To Develop A Marketing Strategy
-
Marketing Strategies VS Marketing Plans
-
Benefits Of A Marketing Strategy
-
Developing Knowledge For Marketing Strategy
Understanding Marketing Strategy And Its Types
To develop a marketing strategy is to essentially build a rule book for introducing products or services to consumers. It’s a set of steps formulated around each and every respective organization’s value proposition and based on extensive research. It’s then followed to increase brand loyalty, expand and enhance the organization’s image and encourage willing conversion of consumers to potential customers to maximize sales.
A good marketing strategy incorporates both internal and external factors of any organization, and its successful implementation brings changes to the same. Factors such as marketing mix, budget limitations, performance analysis and more make up for the internal factors. External factors include analyzing competition, consumer experience, market trends, socio-economic environment and more.
Marketing strategy development is divided into two key factors, the knowledge of which allows you to develop a marketing strategy with better chances of getting the desired impact:
- B2B Marketing Strategy: B2B stands for Business to Business, and this marketing strategy comes into play when an organization’s outputs are directly aimed at selling to other businesses. Marketing strategy development differs from B2C marketing strategy as the focus shifts to business enterprises, rather than a targeted consumer demographic.
- B2C Marketing Strategy: B2C marketing strategy is Business to Consumer marketing strategy. This involves measures taken to promote and engage targeted consumers with products and services. The aim is to ensure the maximum number of these commodities are purchased by the maximum number of consumers for use.
Having a sound marketing strategy development in place leads to better and more goal-oriented marketing decisions, with higher chances of meeting sales targets. To successfully develop a marketing strategy, one must always include the 4Ps of marketing (product, price, place and promotion).
How To Develop A Marketing Strategy
Marketing strategy development is divided into several steps. Each of these steps can bring potential alterations to the functioning of a business, but this is ultimately beneficial. These steps include:
- Identifying Goals: The first step is to see whether the marketing strategy’s goals align with the organization’s business goals or not. Aligning goals streamlines a product’s marketing objectives and presents more attainable targets.
- Market Research: A market is an uncertain factor that can, at times, be volatile. Therefore, researching market factors such as trends, growth, size, competitor analysis and demographic data are necessary for building a marketing strategy.
- Understanding Targeted Consumers: A marketing strategy is built around an organization’s value proposition, which is entirely about guaranteeing value to customers. Therefore, marketing strategy development must be consumer-centric. Conduct research to understand the needs and behavior of targeted customers and how their requirements can be met better.
- Understanding Competition: Just as with customers, it’s important to study the competition. Understanding how the competition is tackling challenges to bring their product into the market will help you make necessary adjustments to your own marketing strategy.
- Using Marketing Mix: Using the 4Ps of marketing presents a clearer, more practical vision of performance beforehand.
Product: Gain an understanding of how a product or service stands out from competition while satisfying consumer needs
Price: Evaluate pricing of a product or service, keeping in mind the economic status of consumers and market trends as well as the pricing policy of competitors
Place: Identify what channel of distribution will be best suited for a product, be it online or offline or through telemarketing
Promotion: Data from research on targeted consumers will be helpful here in evaluating their tastes and traits to devise accurate promotional campaigns
- Creating Strategies For Supporting Goals: Goals created on aligning marketing strategy with an organization’s mission statement will now need strategic insight to achieve them efficiently. Assigning specific targets to other goals may serve as a helpful strategy in fulfilling them.
- Testing Strategy: Testing a strategy on a closed group of consumers and employees will help in reviewing strategy for areas of improvement or bring to light overlooked aspects that now have the opportunity to be rectified and allow for building a better strategy. This boosts the chances of a positive impact from the marketing strategy.
Marketing Strategies VS Marketing Plans
Marketing strategies vs marketing plans is a question that leaves many startups as well as established businesses puzzled, mainly due to the understanding that they can be used interchangeably. However, while they benefit each other and ensure the smooth functioning of an organization’s segments, marketing strategies vs marketing plans are anything but similar to one another. This is why it’s important to know what sets them apart by looking further into marketing strategies vs marketing plans.
- While a marketing strategy lays down the groundwork for achieving a target, it’s the marketing plan that serves as the steps taken to execute the conceived process
- While a marketing strategy helps organizations identify the ‘why’ for the product campaign, it’s a marketing plan that helps them determine the ‘when’ and ‘where’ the campaign must be implemented
- A marketing strategy helps organizations optimize their investments by presenting a focused vision for campaign activities. A marketing plan cooperates by helping implement this vision successfully
Marketing strategy, therefore, is a larger, more comprehensive framework for an organization’s marketing efforts, and a marketing plan details the steps that lead to its realization.
Benefits Of A Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy is an integral practice for running a business successfully, and yet, some organizations remain ignorant of this process. By understanding the benefits of a marketing strategy, organizations stand a chance to not lose consumers who may benefit from their successfully marketed product. The benefits of a marketing strategy are as follows:
- A marketing strategy provides a deeper understanding of targeted consumers
- It helps flesh out a relatable brand image of an organization
- It attracts new consumers
Formulating an effective marketing strategy is essential to an organization’s success. And selecting the right strategy is the first step.
Developing Knowledge For Marketing Strategy
A marketing strategy holds the potential to make or break a product’s campaign. Armed with the right know-how, it ensures the attainment of planned sales figures. Harappa’s Select A Strategy pathway explores essential skills necessary for developing a successful marketing strategy that provides all necessary tactics to help businesses boost their performance onto the next level.
