Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy is a long-term, forward-looking approach to planning with the

fundamental goal achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Strategic planning involves an
analysis of the company's strategic initial situation prior to the formulation, evaluation and
selection of market-oriented competitive position that contributes to the company's goals and
marketing objectives.

Strategic marketing, as a distinct field of study emerged in the 1970s, and built on
strategic management that preceded it. Marketing strategy highlights the role of marketing as a
link between the organisation and its customers.

At its most basic level, strategic marketing addresses three deceptively simple questions:
(1) Where are we now? (2) Where are we going? and (3) How are we going to get there? In
attempting to answer these questions, strategic planners require sophisticated skills in both
research and analysis.

Importance of Marketing Strategy

• Marketing strategy provides an organization an edge over it’s competitors.

• Strategy helps in developing goods and services with best profit making potential.

• Marketing strategy helps in discovering the areas affected by organizational growth and
thereby helps in creating an organizational plan to cater to the customer needs.

• It helps in fixing the right price for organization’s goods and services based on
information collected by market research.

• Strategy ensures effective departmental co-ordination.

• It helps an organization to make optimum utilization of its resources so as to provide a

sales message to it’s target market.

• A marketing strategy helps to fix the advertising budget in advance, and it also develops a
method which determines the scope of the plan, i.e., it determines the revenue generated
by the advertising plan.
In short, a marketing strategy clearly explains how an organization reaches it’s predetermined
objectives.

Kinds of marketing strategies:

1. Paid advertising

This includes multiple approaches for marketing. It includes traditional approaches like TVCs
and print media advertising. Also, one of the most well-known marketing approach is internet
marketing. It includes various methods like PPC (Pay per click) and paid advertising.

2. Cause marketing

Cause marketing links the services and products of a company to a social cause or issue. It is also
well known as cause related marketing.

3. Relationship marketing

This type of marketing is basically focused on customer building. Enhancing existing

relationships with customers and improving customer loyalty.

4. Undercover marketing

This type of marketing strategy focuses on marketing the product while customers remain
unaware of the marketing strategy. It is also known as stealth marketing.

5. Word of mouth

It totally relies on what impression you leave on people. It is traditionally the most important
type of marketing strategy. Being heard is important in business world. When you give quality
services to customers, it is likely that they’d promote you.

6. Internet marketing
It is also known as cloud marketing. It usually happens over the internet. All the marketing items
are shared on the internet and promoted on various platforms via multiple approaches.

7. Transactional marketing

Sales is particularly the most challenging work. Even for the largest retailers, selling is always
tough especially when there are high volume targets. However with the new marketing
strategies, selling isn’t as difficult as it was. In transactional marketing the retailers encourage
customers to buy with shopping coupons, discounts and huge events. It enhances the chances of
sales and motivates the target audience to buy the promoted products.

It caters diverse audience by customizing and integrating different marketing strategies. It covers
different aspects like cultural, beliefs, attitudes, views and other specific needs.

Flow:
 T & D Furniture
Shop
Market analysis

Research Competitor analysis

Company analysis

Segment them
Customer
Positioning

Unique Sales
Product Proposition (USP)
Benefits to the
customer

Communication Marketing Mix

Research. You need to carry out detailed analyses of these three areas:

• Market analysis: the size of your market, how quickly its growing, your customers and
their spending and lifestyle habits.

• Competitor analysis: monitor both direct and indirect competition and how they compare
with you on every aspect of sales and marketing (their customers, their brand, price,
convenience of location, sales channels, and so on).

• Company analysis: your overall business objectives, how you are going to achieve them,
your strengths and weaknesses and those of your products or services.

Customers. Next you need to identify your target customers, using the information you've
gathered from your research and, if needed, more detailed customer research. Then you have to:
 • Segment them: split your existing and target customers into groups, according to what
they need from your business - which will differ. Some will want cost-effectiveness,
some quality, some great customer service, and so on.

• Positioning: how you compare to your competitors for each of your customer segments -
are you the fastest, do you have the best customer service, are you the third most popular,
and so on.

Product. Now you need to examine your product or service with the aim of working out how
you're going to market it and outdo competitors, according to these:

• USPs: what it can offer that no other product or business can. (Read more in our guide on
USPs.)

• Benefits to the customer: From your USPs, draw out what benefits your product or
service offers to the customer. These may well vary between your various customer
segments. You need to look very closely at what the customer actually sees: while
Starbucks sells coffee, the benefit to the customer is a place to relax and have a chat with
a friend or a place to sit with a laptop. Your USP may be that you deliver pizza faster
than competitors to people in your area, but the benefit to the customer is that they don't
have to cook and can receive a ready-made meal quickly. The way you define the
benefits will shape your marketing message.

Communication. How you are now going to communicate the benefits of buying your product
or service or using your business to your target customers (again, this may well vary between
your various customer segments).

• Marketing mix: the combination of all the marketing tools you are going to use to
communicate your benefits to your customers. For example: advertising, PR, word of
mouth, distribution channels, pricing, promotion, which products you'll sell to them,
display in a shop, website, and so on.

References:

http://www.smarta.com/advice/sales-and-marketing/advertising-and-marketing/how-to-
develop-a-marketing-strategy/

http://www.smarta.com/advice/sales-and-marketing/advertising-and-marketing/the-
marketing-mix
https://www.yodiz.com/blog/8-types-of-marketing-strategies-and-definition/

https://www.managementstudyguide.com/marketing-strategy.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_strategy