Understanding Marketing Strategy to use it effectively

When I am in the market to sell my product or services, not everyone is my customer. Similarly, not everywhere I can advertise nor can I reach all the places.

The most important resource – money, always makes an organization constrained.

So, what is the way out? 

To have a strategy with which I would be precise regarding all 4Ps of marketing, Product, Price, Place and Promotion. 

Marketing is an ever-changing field. Organizations have to be resilient in the approach according to the market needs.

Marketing Strategy definition

Prof. Philip Kotler, and Prof Kevin Keller in his book “Marketing management”, 14th Edition, define marketing strategy as below – 

The marketing strategy lays out target markets and the value proposition that will be offered based on an analysis of the best market opportunities.

What is a marketing strategy?

In simple terms, marketing strategy is limited means, maximum benefit.

A business’s purpose is to make a profit, and that comes from sales of products or services. How to generate or increase sales is of utmost importance.

A person who wants to generate leads for his product has a budget of $100.

Ad agency “A” provides 7 days of promotion with an expected reach of 1000 people.

Ad agency “B” provides 5 days of promotion but with an expected reach of 1500 people. 

A very common scenario. But which one is a better deal?

He would certainly opt for Agency “B” as the total expected reach is (5X1500) 7500 people

But with agency “A” he could only reach (7X1000) 7000 people.

With the same $100, he has better value, better benefits with agency “B”.

For an organization, a clear and robust marketing strategy definitely means an upper hand amongst its peers. 

So, a marketing strategy is the best utilization of capacities and resources to gain a competitive advantage.

Types of marketing strategy

They are of broadly two types: 

B2B (Business to Business)

This means one company deals with another company to sell its product or services.

Example – Coal supplier and Steel manufacturing unit. A wholesaler and a retailer.

B2C (Business to Consumers)

This is the most prevalent type where a company deals with customers who happens to be the end users.

Example – A bakery, shirt manufacturer, an insurance company.

The B2C can again be divided into:

Offline marketing strategy

Cold calling – Traditional strategy where a company makes a list of leads and tries calling each one of them to offer them their products.

Cause marketing – A very strong following. According to one research, around 90 percent of people are most likely to buy from a company that is associated with some kind of social cause. The cause may be, Anti-smoking, Cancer treatment, wildlife preservation.

Word of Mouth – This is quite impactful. If a consumer is satisfied and has a pleasant experience, he will spread the good words. And that will bring more customers. The advertisement for the company, with no cost. Conversely, unhappy customers will take away many prospecting buyers.

Relationship marketing – An indispensable technique that every organization should follow.

Bringing one new customer is much costlier than retaining an existing one. So, if a company wants to grow and increase its profit, this must be used to the fullest extent. This will also help in up-selling and cross-selling the products.

Surrogate marketing – In some countries, advertisements for alcoholic drinks, tobacco and cigarettes are not allowed.

Companies in those countries will advertise some other product instead.

Example – Carlsberg, famous for its beer. But can’t show the beer ad in say, India. It, instead shows, “Carlsberg club glasses”, however, the target product is always alcoholic drinks.

Guerrilla Marketing – Companies, at times, are so creative that it brings a surprise factor while advertising. Example – Coke made the bus stop in such a way that it generated visual stimuli.

A person will spend some time at the bus stop so the brand association gets even stronger.

Transactional strategy – Providing discount coupons, discount offers to promote sales, especially in the off-season when the sales are already low.

Print and promotional media – Advertising in print media like newspapers, magazines are quite effective. Companies also distribute, pamphlets, business cards, handouts, newspaper inserts to showcase their offerings.

Online Marketing Strategies

One of the most impactful ways to market these days.

Content marketing – Where articles, blogs are written to educate the customers. The articles are associated with some brands to promote the products. The writeups are attention-grabbing and shareable so that it reaches more people.

Direct Marketing – Companies try to reach their targeted customers directly. The targeting can be achieved by the use of DMP (Data Management Platform).

Social Media Marketing – In today’s day and age, a company cannot survive without utilizing the power of social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, etc.)

Display Marketing – These days we search a lot. Search engines many a times used to display products of different companies. A user clicks on that and then the company tries to engage with those customers.

Influencer marketing– These days, people follow celebrity recommended products. As celebrities have a mass following. A study shows a company earns approx. 5 times on one Dollar spent. The trend is very strong and the opportunity to reach out to the people is huge. Companies hire influencers from YouTube, Instagram, etc. to promote their products. 

Email marketing– Companies send commercial messages showcasing their products or services. They can also be used to send business proposals, charity, donations. All such emails are considered as an example of email marketing. Also, these emails are not sent at random. But people or prospects are carefully chosen and targeted accordingly.

Chatbot and text messages– Almost similar to email marketing, text messages are leveraged too. Earlier it was a manual task. But as the technology has advanced now, companies have used Robotic processes. The manual task has become automated and very cost effective.

There are numerous other forms of Online Marketing techniques which are utilised these days. Exploring all of these strategies is discussion for another day.

Examples of Marketing Strategy

GoPro “The world’s most versatile camera”

The US-based company makes excellent cameras that have multifaceted use.

They can be used in underwater photography or high-speed sporting activities.

The strategy – User-generated photos and videos without the company visiting those places.

With those great visuals, other people get inspired, thus sales increase

So, GoPro makes amazing devices and showcases the power via different platforms like YouTube, Instagram, to garner more sales.

Now the interesting part is, in the beginning, they were ruling the market.

But once Apple launched its phone, everything changed. iPhone was the first mobile to sport powerful cameras. The sales start dipping as people started using their mobile camera more often.

As we know the market is dynamic, the company went back to the drawing board. Made a new strategy. Incorporated better technology, more powerful and wide-angle lenses, and also made the device smaller. 

Now again, they were back in business, still unrivalled in their field.

Nike – “Just Do it”

In the early days, the company focused on making athletic wear. They also were famous in basketball shoes, Jordan being the most famous shoe model.

In those days, Nike’s positioning was of athletic products maker.

Later on, they reviewed the strategy and wanted to change the perception.

Their marketing team came up with the slogan “Just do it”.

The perception started changing. People started associating the brand with more people-centric, and a sense of inclusiveness. On the other hand, the slogan gave athletes a different mindset, overcome the challenges and just do it.

Needless to say, the strategy made history.

Segway – Self-balancing electric vehicle

This one is unique due to the fact that wrong strategy can backfire, too.

At the launch the vehicle inventor Dean Kamen said, it will be bigger than the internet.

Unsuccessful because of several reasons. Makers failed to identify the target market. “Who was this for?”, “how it is useful?”, “where to park?”, “what about charging?”, legitimate questions were raised.

Most important of them was their idea, to replace walking as per the makers.

Hurt badly, as there were far too fewer people who wanted to stop walking, because of its health benefits walking provides.

The product was not solving the problem but indirectly adding it. Also, the cost factor.

Product pricing was way too much than the value it offered. Overall, a poor strategy.  

How marketing strategy plan is developed?

There are a few steps involved in developing an excellent strategy.

Where are we now?

An analysis of the organization’s strong and weak areas. A thorough SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity & Threat) analysis. This will give them a benchmark against which the organizations keep measuring themselves on every milestone.

Creating Personas

Immensely important is to have a target. To whom do we want to sell? User segmentation by creating a “look-alike” model of customers, a DMP, would be certainly helpful here.

Setting SMART goals

The goal should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time bound

We have to clearly define the objective we want to achieve, say “increase of sale” from present is not SMART.

An example would be – Being a product-based company, wanting to increase sales by 5% in the next 6 months.

Set budget

This is self-explanatory. Cost is involved at every juncture. Define the budget according to the requirement and stick to it.

Select marketing strategy

Depending on the product I want to sell, I would choose one, or a combination of offline and online techniques discussed earlier. Also, keep a closer look how our competitors are doing their business. Learn from their mistakes as well.

Periodic Review

Once everything is in motion. Periodic review is mandatory to see if we are on the right track or to see if we need to leave something which is not working. Or should we incorporate something that was missed earlier?

Conclusion

Strategies are many. Of course, not all of them can be applied together nor all are suitable for every company. 

Which strategy to choose will depend on the type of product we are marketing, the budget I have kept aside which distribution channel to opt for and the best way of promotion. Basically, all those 4Ps of the marketing mix. 

An organization needs to do SWOT analysis and identify focus areas only then come up with appropriate strategy. Should be pretty dynamic when it comes to adopting strategies.

Besides that, a timely evaluation of those strategies is very important. Marketing is fiercely competitive and the environment changes in the blink of an eye. We can’t implement one strategy and become relaxed.