A marketing strategy allows you to reach your marketing objectives with the help of products and services offered on the market. It gives the possibility to choose the customer and the market which the company will act on and it also allows to make operational decisions.
Preparing marketing strategy should be made after analyzing the situation, because you will need the data obtained through it, and which relate to the company’s environment. On their basis you decide as to, inter alia, the price of the product you enter the market with, the intensity of its promotion, the moment in which it can take place, or specify the required intensity of the marketing mix elements being used.
This chapter presents the strategies that are to be applied in order to accomplish defined marketing objectives. You can start the chapter with a discussion of what the company is seeking, what its mission and objectives (marketing, financial, social) are, what it wants to achieve, what methods it can afford, and which it can not and why. Programs are then presented to support marketing strategy related to:
- product;
- price;
- distribution channels;
- promotion.
They are presented as separate subsections, e.g. “Product strategy”, “Pricing strategy”, “Promotion strategy”, “Distribution strategy”.
While developing the product strategy, determine whether products (and services) chosen by you are well tailored to the strategy and objectives, and how they will contribute to building relationships with customers. There should be, at this point, a number of decisions made that are related to the characteristics of product, customer’s benefits from it, complementary services of the offer, product quality, its appearance, packaging. Then you should concentrate on the issue of building a brand, which the client will be devoted to and will choose it over others.
Fixing the price is a very important issue. This is due to the fact that it can not be too low (it is not profitable to the company and the customer sees the product as a low-quality) or too high (due to competition, which outbid customers). You should analyze various factors that will have impact on that price and not another, match it according to the market segment that is taken into consideration.
In the case of the distribution strategy you should set how, when and where products will be available for customers. It is also necessary to decide on a strategy of logistics, including- who will take care of transport, where the goods will be stored and the like. Before you do this, you need to have a broad knowledge of the customer, product features, your competitors.
An important element is the promotion strategy. Refer to the used tools of marketing communication, i.e. advertising, personal promotion, public relations, sales promotion, but do not forget the about sales staff. If your marketing plan includes the use of many different tools during the campaign, you should try to make it consistent and not to puzzle the target audience.
It is worth to present the most important activities of the adopted strategies (e.g. promotion strategies : the beginning of a campaign, publishing reviews, running a press conference, sending promotional materials) according to the months in which they will take place.
The above shows that the main emphasis in marketing strategy is on the company and its product, customers who are to buy it and competitors. The key to success is meeting the needs of customers in such a way that the competitors do not do.
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