Marketing Strategy

Marketing Strategy

Marketing Strategies can be seen as the means, or “game plan,” by which marketing objectives will be achieved and are generally concerned with the 8 P’s plus Time. Examples are:

  1. Price — The amount of money needed to buy products
  2. Product — The actual product
  3. Promotion (advertising)- Getting the product known
  4. Placement — Where the product is located
  5. People — Represent the business
  6. Physical environment — The ambiance, mood, or tone of the environment
  7. Process — How do people obtain your product
  8. Packaging — How the product will be protected
  9. Plus Time – Timing is a critical element to the strategy

Developing a Marketing Strategy
Marketing strategies serve as the fundamental underpinning of marketing plans designed to fill market needs and reach marketing objectives. Plans and objectives are generally tested for measurable results. Commonly, marketing strategies are developed as multi-year plans, with a tactical plan detailing specific actions to be accomplished in the current year. Time horizons covered by the marketing plan vary by company, by industry, and by nation, however, time horizons are becoming shorter as the speed of change in the environment increases. Marketing strategies are dynamic and interactive. They are partially planned and partially unplanned.

Marketing strategy involves careful scanning of the internal and external environments which are summarized in a SWOT analysis. Internal environmental factors include the marketing mix, plus performance analysis and strategic constraints. External environmental factors include customer analysis, competitor analysis, target market analysis, as well as evaluation of any elements of the technological, economic, cultural or political/legal environment likely to impact success. A key component of marketing strategy is often to keep marketing in line with a company’s overarching mission statement. Besides SWOT analysis, portfolio analyses such as the GE/McKinsey matrix or COPE analysis can be performed to determine the strategic focus.

Once a thorough environmental scan is complete, a strategic plan can be constructed to identify business alternatives, establish challenging goals, determine the optimal marketing mix to attain these goals, and detail implementation. A final step in developing a marketing strategy is to create a plan to monitor progress and a set of contingencies if problems arise in the implementation of the plan.

Types of Strategies
Marketing strategies may differ depending on the unique situation of the individual business. However there are a number of ways of categorizing some generic strategies. A brief description of the most common categorizing schemes is presented below:

  • Strategies based on market dominance – In this scheme, firms are classified based on their market share or dominance of an industry. Typically there are four types of market dominance strategies:
    • Leader
    • Challenger
    • Follower
    • Nicher
  • Porter generic strategies – strategy on the dimensions of strategic scope and strategic strength. Strategic scope refers to the market penetration while strategic strength refers to the firm’s sustainable competitive advantage. The generic strategy framework (porter 1984) comprises two alternatives each with two alternative scopes. These are Differentiation and low-cost leadership each with a dimension of Focus-broad or narrow.
    • Product differentiation (broad)
    • Cost leadership (broad)
    • Market segmentation (narrow)
  • Innovation strategies — This deals with the firm’s rate of the new product development and business model innovation. It asks whether the company is on the cutting edge of technology and business innovation. There are three types:
    • Pioneers
    • Close followers
    • Late followers
  • Growth strategies — In this scheme we ask the question, “How should the firm grow?”. There are a number of different ways of answering that question, but the most common gives four answers:
    • Horizontal integration
    • Vertical integration
    • Diversification
    • Intensification

A more detailed scheme uses the categories:

  • Prospector
  • Analyzer
  • Defender
  • Reactor
  • Marketing warfare strategies – This scheme draws parallels between marketing strategies and military strategies.

CALL 706-782-5522 for more information about how to build and implement successful marketing strategies for your business.

 

 


 

 

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