What is Marketing Strategy?
In the most basic form, marketing strategy is a plan to sell services or products in a way that renders long-term profitable growth for any organization. It is like a road map for any brand, which guides it where to go and what’s the best route to get there. Successful companies use marketing strategy to deliver their offerings to the customers to create meaningful impact.
So,
“Marketing Strategy is defined as an organization’s strategy that combines all of its marketing goals into one comprehensive plan”.
It offers a blueprint for achieving these marketing objectives. Marketing strategy is the basic building block of a marketing plan. A good marketing strategy requires in-depth market research and focus on the right product mix to attain the maximum profit potential and uphold the business. A marketing strategy helps a brand to focus on its insufficient resources on the best possible opportunities so as to amplify the sales.
How to build marketing strategy?
To create marketing strategy that works in the favour of your business, you must focus on the below discussed aspects:
- Selecting the right target market: Choosing the target market here means the potential buyers of specific products or services of an organization. Not all the market segments are beneficial to an organization. While certain market segments can guarantee rapid profits, certain others may have great potential with high barriers to entry. Hence, a careful pick has to be made by the organization. For this, the organization needs to carry out in-depth marketing research to identify the traits and particular needs of the buyers and the particular in the target market.
- Collecting the marketing mix: Gathering the marketing mix means how the organization intends to sell its products or services. For this, the organization should gather the four P’s of marketing (discussed below) in appropriate combination. This is an important section of marketing job. Various decisions have to be made like –
- The most appropriate mix of the four P’s in a particular situation.
- Availability of various distribution channels and which one should be used.
- Appropriate developmental strategy to be used in the target market.
- Designing the right price structure.
The Marketing Mix, also known as “The Four P’s,” that lays the building blocks of a Marketing Strategy.
- Product– Products and their packaging must sustain the position of a brand. Design and functionality need to be considered carefully and developed to communicate product profits.
- Price- Organizations selling a premium product can control above average prices. Brands who want to be recognized as price leaders should offer lower prices to reap a competitive edge.
- Place – The choice of distribution channel must be consistent according to the brand’s positioning. This means that a high-end product must be linked with a high-end distribution channel to strengthen product value.
- Promotion– Promotion strategy includes the brand’s USP into all of its messaging. Organization should include all of the brand’s marketing objectives and develop particular tactics that will render against them. This includes recall of key communication point, brand awareness, shifts in preference, and more.
Significance of Marketing Strategy
1. Helps Win over the Market
Having a marketing strategy helps businesses gain a competitive edge in the market. With the right marketing strategy, businesses can get an edge over the competitors and even the new contestants trying to establish their footprints in the industry.
A well-defined marketing strategy allows businesses to promote the USPs of their brand, features and benefits of their products and services. Businesses can create creative, strategic and planned methods to highlight how their brand and its offerings are better than their competitors. With a curative and consistent marketing strategy, brands can build a distinguishing identity in the ever-evolving, competitive market.
2. Create Awareness
People always remember what they find unique and interesting, Hence, having a well-curated market strategy that interacts directly with the consumer makes them recall your brand. All you need to do is start with highlighting and promoting your USPs, attributes and legacy followed by your products and services.
3. Build a New Customer Base Every Time
As a company, what is your primary goal? To attract more and more customers and increase your sales. True! To achieve the same, the marketing team of any company must understand the importance of marketing strategy.
By creating the right marketing strategy, brands are able to know the interests, needs, and other customer demographics like income, location, age, etc.,. All this information help them improve their offerings and attract a new set of customers through consistent promotional activities.
Also Read: Factors influencing consumer behaviour
4. Plan the marketing budgets
As you know, every department in any organization is assigned a specific budget for a period or for all the tasks involved to achieving a set of goals. So, when you have a well-planned marketing strategy, you can make sure the assigned budget doesn’t go haywire by investing them in unthoughtful promotional activities with no or low returns. It also helps you ensure that you are using or budget optimally and in the right way towards achieving the marketing as well as the company goals and objectives.
5. Keep everyone on the same page
This is an important aspect of any marketing strategy. It means that every department in any organization should understand the marketing strategy. Whether it is your social media department posting social media posts of the day or your Facebook paid ads team preparing for the weekly campaign, they will all have the same consistent message.
Having everyone on the same page helps an organization to effectively utilize the skills of its employees and even stakeholders. Further, it also prevents you from wasting your time and money in doing the daily tasks inefficiently (duplication).
When everyone in your organization stays on the same page, it keeps everything integrated including your traditional marketing and digital marketing activities.
Helpful Read: Types of AI Tools for Marketing
In short, a marketing strategy is significant because:
- It offers an organization a competitive edge.
- It aids in developing products and services with best profit-making potential.
- Helps in creating an organizational plan to satisfy customer needs.
- It helps in discovering the areas affected by brand’s growth.
- It helps in fixing the right price for organization’s offerings.
- Helps you best utilize your resources to offer a sales message to the target market.
- It helps to set the advertising budget in advance.
- Helps develop a method to determine the scope of the marketing plan.