What is marketing strategy?

In a nutshell, this is an outline that shows the specific goals and directions that a marketing team needs to implement in order to support the business objectives of the company. These goals are not limited to increasing revenue, reducing the costs, and raising the profit. This being a strategy contains several important decision making options regarding pricing, product offering, communication as well as the channels for distribution. Each process requires a budget and the plan should include how much will be used to implement this strategy.

How much is good marketing strategy?

It really depends on the project and product as well as organization. It is necessary to understand the conditions of the company externally and internally to see what strategies will work best. Is the company starting up? At the top of the game? Or downhill? Is the strategy for a single product? The company values? Or maybe an entire product line? In some cases, marketers tend to economize on specific areas. That is not a good practice. Just because you feel that your company is at stake, does not mean you cannot go full force with the marketing strategy.

One effective way for marketing is by implementing a structured procedure. Usually, the plan or strategy is not done by one person only. It is a collaborative effort that usually ends up becoming the whole department working on one major project. Sometimes, the plan can become too extensive because we are side tracked with other things and that is why it is important that at the beginning, you exercise the use of a structured, and well implemented processing order to give the team an understanding on what they should focus on. If you do so, you can save more time and money.

Outlines and collection

The strategy is the end product. To begin the process, start out by outlining what areas need attention. It all depends on what information or resources are not available. For most products, they normally have an ideal demographic but it needs testing so implementing various methods to verify the need is important. Researching about competitors and trends is also very necessary to identify which areas to emphasize and which ones to set at the latter part. You need to understand the industry, the client, the customers and the product as well as economic factors.

The strategy

  • First, we head to the product strategy. Here, you position the product by laying down its features and advantages, features that meet customer demands, pricing comparison to other similar products and the changes that can be made in the future to better adapt to the customer demands.
  • Prices can be positioned based on cost or on value. Cost based means you calculate based on raw materials, labor and other details. Value based means you look at how the customer might value the product based on the benefits and features. Of course, it is necessary to look at competition in order to keep the business healthy.
  • Now comes advertising. Will it require conventional trimedia methods like print, radio and TV? Will there be billboards and posters? What promotional methods are necessary? Will this require SEO and other internet marketing strategies? Or will it be a client based advertising, focusing on existing market and expanding the scope through clients.

The market is ever changing and therefore, our definition of what is marketing strategy changes every time. It is necessary to always continuously research and move forward since in a few months, a new thing will come up and could change the way customers look at the product.