Marketing strategy
Marketing strategy is an organization's promotional efforts to allocate its resources across a wide range of platforms and channels to increase its sales and achieve sustainable competitive advantage within its corresponding market.[1]
Strategic marketing emerged in the 1970s and 80s as a distinct field of study, branching out of strategic management. Marketing strategy highlights the role of marketing as a link between the organization and its customers, leveraging the combination of resources and capabilities within an organization to achieve a competitive advantage.[2]In recent years, the advent of digital marketing has revolutionized strategic marketing practices, introducing new avenues for customer engagement and data-driven decision-making.[3]
The distinction between "strategic" and "managerial" marketing is used to distinguish "two phases having different goals and based on different conceptual tools. Strategic marketing mainly concerns the choice of policies aimed at improving the competitive position of the firm, taking account of the challenges and opportunities proposed by the competitive environment. On the other hand, managerial marketing is focused on the implementation of specific targets."[4] Marketing strategy is about "lofty visions translated into less lofty and practical goals [while marketing management] is where we start to get our hands dirty and make plans for things to happen."[5] Marketing strategy is sometimes called higher-order planning because it sets out the broad direction and provides guidance and structure for the marketing program.
Marketing Management is a combined effort of strategies on how a business can launch its products and services. On the other hand, Marketing strategy is the combination of many processes where the business owner or marketer can attract potential customers via several channels. It can be through offline channels or online channels.
Marketing Strategy Examples -
Marketing Management Examples -
These are a few examples to understand the basics.
Marketing strategy involves mapping out the company's direction for the forthcoming planning period, whether that be three, five, or ten years. It involves undertaking a 360° review of the firm and its operating environment to identify new business opportunities that the firm could potentially leverage for competitive advantage. Strategic planning can also reveal market threats that the firm may need to consider for long-term sustainability.[12] Strategic planning makes no assumptions about the firm continuing to offer the same products to the same customers in the future. Instead, it is concerned with identifying the business opportunities that are likely to be successful and evaluating the firm's capacity to leverage such opportunities. It seeks to identify the strategic gap, which is the difference between where a firm is currently situated (the strategic reality or inadvertent strategy) and where it should be situated for sustainable, long-term growth (the strategic intent or deliberate strategy).[13]
Strategic planning seeks to address three deceptively simple questions, specifically:[7]: 34
A fourth question may be added to the list, namely 'How do we know when we got there?' Due to the increasing need for accountability, many marketing organizations use a variety of metrics to track strategic performance, allowing for corrective action to be taken as required. On the surface, strategic planning seeks to address three simple questions, however, the research and analysis involved in strategic planning are very sophisticated and require a great deal of skill and judgment.
Strategic analysis is designed to address the first strategic question, "Where are we now?" [7]: 34 Traditional market research is less useful for strategic marketing because the analyst is not seeking insights about customer attitudes and preferences. Instead, strategic analysts are seeking insights about the firm's operating environment to identify possible future scenarios, opportunities, and threats.
Mintzberg suggests that the top planners spend most of their time engaged in analysis and are concerned with industry or competitive analyses as well as internal studies, including the use of computer models to analyze trends in the organization.[14] Strategic planners use a variety of research tools and analytical techniques, depending on the environment complexity and the firm's goals. Fletcher and Bensoussan, for instance, have identified some 200 qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques regularly used by strategic analysts[15] while a recent publication suggests that 72 techniques are essential.[16] No optimal technique can be identified as useful across all situations or problems. Determining which technique to use in any given situation rests with the skill of the analyst. The choice of tool depends on a variety of factors including: data availability; the nature of the marketing problem; the objective or purpose, the analyst's skill level as well as other constraints such as time or motivation.[17]
The most commonly used tools and techniques include:[16]
Research methods
Analytical techniques
The vision and mission address the second central question, 'Where are we going?' At the conclusion of the research and analysis stage, the firm will typically review its vision statement, mission statement and, if necessary, devise a new vision and mission for the outlook period. At this stage, the firm will also devise a generic competitive strategy as the basis for maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage for the forthcoming planning period.
A vision statement is a realistic, long-term future scenario for the organization. (Vision statements should not be confused with slogans or mottos.)[40] A vision statement is designed to present a realistic long-term future scenario for the organization. It is a "clearly articulated statement of the business scope." A strong vision statement typically includes the following:[41]
Some scholars point out the market visioning is a skill or competency that encapsulates the planners' capacity "to link advanced technologies to market opportunities of the future, and to do so through a shared understanding of a given product market.[42]
A mission statement is a clear and concise statement of the organization's reason for being and its scope of operations,[43] while the generic strategy outlines how the company intends to achieve both its vision and mission.[44]
Mission statements should include detailed information and must be more than a simple motherhood statement.[45] A mission statement typically includes the following:[43]
Developing marketing goals and objectives[edit]
Whereas the vision and mission provide the framework, the "goals define targets within the mission, which, when achieved, should move the organization toward the performance of that mission."[87] Goals are broad primary outcomes whereas, objectives are measurable steps taken to achieve a goal or strategy.[88] In strategic planning, it is important for managers to translate the overall strategy into goals and objectives. Goals are designed to inspire action and focus attention on specific desired outcomes. Objectives, on the other hand, are used to measure an organization's performance on specific dimensions, thereby providing the organization with feedback on how well it is achieving its goals and strategies.
Managers typically establish objectives using the balanced scorecard approach. This means that objectives do not include desired financial outcomes exclusively, but also specify measures of performance for customers (e.g. satisfaction, loyalty, repeat patronage), internal processes (e.g., employee satisfaction, productivity) and innovation and improvement activities.[89]
After setting the goals marketing strategy or marketing plan should be developed. The marketing strategy plan provides an outline of the specific actions to be taken over time to achieve the objectives. Plans can be extended to cover many years, with sub-plans for each year. Plans usually involve monitoring, to assess progress, and prepare for contingencies if problems arise. Simultaneous such as customer lifetime value models can be used to help marketers conduct "what-if" analyses to forecast what potential scenarios arising from possible actions, and to gauge how specific actions might affect such variables as the revenue-per-customer and the churn rate.
Relationship between the marketing strategy and the marketing mix[edit]
Marketing strategy and marketing mix are related elements of a comprehensive marketing plan. While marketing strategy is aligned with setting the direction of a company or product/service line, the marketing mix is majorly tactical in nature and is employed to carry out the overall marketing strategy. The 4P's of the marketing mix (Price, Product, Place and Promotion) represent the tools that marketers can leverage while defining their marketing strategy to create a marketing plan.[94] Accuracy of marketing mix impacts success of overall marketing strategy. The 4P's of marketing should in tune with brand's core message.
