Marketing Strategy: Our Guide (Strategies, steps, etc.)
The Marketing Strategy Article in Brief
Defining an effective marketing strategy is essential for any company wishing to establish itself in its market. This guide offers you a clear roadmap for developing your strategy, from the very essence of marketing to the deployment of targeted actions. You will discover how to align your methods and actions to precisely meet your customers’ expectations, taking into account crucial variables such as price, quality of offer, and market trends. A well-established marketing strategy is not limited to promoting a product or service; it also encompasses production logistics and distribution and aims for the sustainable expansion of the company.
The guide covers various marketing strategies, from focusing on a specific niche to differentiating through innovation or price to skimming and market penetration. Each of these strategies has its advantages and disadvantages, and the choice depends on your business’s objectives and specific context. Developing your strategy goes through several key stages:
1- Analyzing market opportunities
2- Defining your target clientele
3- Positioning your offer
4- Implementing an effective action plan across the mix
Marketing. This course, punctuated with practical advice and examples, is designed to guide you in implementing an adapted, dynamic marketing strategy that can support the development of your business in a competitive environment.
SUMMARY
Definition of the marketing strategy
What are the different marketing strategies?
How to develop a marketing strategy?
Do you want to employ an effective marketing strategy but need to know where to start? Please don’t panic; we’re here for you! In this guide, you’ll find all the information you need to set up a marketing strategy that works. We will explain the various steps to follow and the different possible strategies and give you numerous examples to follow.
Definition of the Marketing Strategy
Before starting with the definition of the marketing strategy, we will give a quick reminder of what marketing is. Marketing is the set of activities that allow a company to promote and sell its products or services.
The marketing strategy defines a set of methods and actions to be implemented to enable your company to achieve its objectives on the scale of a given market. Developing a marketing strategy allows you better to match the supply and demand of the targeted clientele.
The marketing strategy considers many variables, such as price, quality of the product or service, market needs, competition, etc. It then allows you to seek to adjust them to assure customers of the relevance of your product or service.
By constantly questioning the market, competition, and trends, it allows the company to establish and consolidate its activities and achieve better objectives.
The marketing strategy is also associated with all the logistical issues of production, distribution, market expansion opportunities, and the possibility of achieving economies of scale.
Finally, the marketing strategy is directly linked to the business strategy and its organization to support its development in a sustainable manner.
What are the Different Marketing Strategies?
Concentration Strategy
The concentration strategy, also called a focus or specialization strategy, consists of your company developing its activity on a product or service (also called a niche) or a particular market segment (called a niche).
This strategy is most often of interest to SMEs or new entrants in a sector because this strategy benefits from lower costs and involves much less risk.
The Concentration Strategy Is Justified by The Following:
1- Comparative advantages in terms of costs or terms of differentiation;
2- A lack of interest from competitors because the product or service requires investment and, therefore, profitability may be insufficient;
3- The company is unable to sustain a price war with its competitors.
The Advantages of a Concentration Strategy:
1- Allows you to avoid competition with large companies;
2- Know the expectations of customers who will concern you, thereby meeting them and retaining them.
The Disadvantages of a Concentration Strategy:
You will be dependent on a segment that may be too small and, above all in which demand may decrease;
Other companies may also covet the segment you have chosen.
Differentiation Strategy
Differentiation strategy involves developing a product or service that is perceived as different from your competitors. We find several aspects of this strategy:
Product packaging
The chosen distribution method
The characteristics linked to your product or service (quality, safety, technology, innovation, etc.)
Services related to the product or service (advice, service, after-sales)
In addition, the differentiation strategy can take two directions:
Differentiation from above is charging high prices explained by the unique character of your product or service.
Differentiation from below is the act of offering a product or service at its real value to charge low prices.
The Advantages of the Differentiation Strategy:
Avoid direct competition;
Create barriers to entry;
Build consumer loyalty;
The Disadvantages of the Differentiation Strategy:
Clearly and directly perceive the difference between your offer and the offer of your competitors;
The challenges of preserving the unique position include making its elements of differentiation difficult to imitate.
Skimming Strategy
The skimming strategy involves charging a high price when launching your product or service and then lowering the price as demand decreases.
Initially, this strategy aims to reach customers with high purchasing power so that it is accessible only to a certain socio-professional category. Subsequently, the latter will gradually lower the price of its product or service so that any customer can afford it if they want it. So, in continuity, the company can sell its product or service to several categories of customers while maximizing its profits.
The Advantages of a Skimming Strategy:
A better return on investment;
Helps to create and, above all maintain your brand image;
Market segmentation.
The Disadvantages of a Skimming Strategy:
This strategy only works if your demand curve is inextensible;
This strategy does not work in a tight market;
The skimming strategy risks attracting future competitors.
Penetration Strategy
A penetration strategy allows your company to enter a market with very strong competition or even saturation through positioning on price. As a result, this strategy is directly opposed to the skimming strategy and the price-matching strategy.
This marketing strategy aims to gain market share by marketing your products in large quantities and at reduced prices. This strategy then requires large investments in communication (e.g., social networks). If you decide to apply this strategy, it is essential to make yourself known!!
The success of a penetration strategy is evaluated based on the number of market shares you have managed to gain, hence the name penetration rate.
So, the penetration strategy is to place your product in as many points of sale as possible to reach the most targets.
The Advantages of the Penetration Strategy:
Gain market shares;
Conquer and obtain new customers;
Construction of a large customer file.
The Disadvantages of the Penetration Strategy:
The communication costs because you are entering a market where no one knows you, so it’s fresh will be very important;
Cash flow requirements;
A brief strategy, this strategy must not be established over time; when you have penetrated the desired market, you must change your strategy!!
How To Develop A Marketing Strategy?
The development of a marketing strategy must be structured between a methodical approach and tactical elements in order to preserve a coherent approach to the market.
It all starts with an analysis of the context. Then, you have to take an interest in the potential clientele to position your offer.
Step 1: Analysis of Market Opportunities
A marketing strategy is linked to the company’s objectives and must be able to translate its ambitions. A company relies primarily on the opportunities present in its sector of activity. But we must pay attention to threats, strengths, and weaknesses. We advise you to establish a SWOT matrix (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) to achieve this.
Market research is the basis for building a marketing strategy because these elements will help you define your project and, above all, help you overcome certain threats. Based on the elements revealed, it will allow you to define a coherent approach to penetrate it.
At the end of your market study, you will be able to identify the various customer segments, their size, and their resources and thus analyze them in depth.
Step 2: Target Your Future Customers
Once the market has been analyzed, we target customers and their needs. There are two questions to ask:
Who do we want to address?
What can we offer him?
The offer of a product or service can respond to different types of prospects, although each has different characteristics. Therefore, to target a clientele, it is essential to bring together people with a similar purchasing attitude within the same group.
In a targeting process, it is important to consider other potential profiles:
The buyer is the person who buys your product, but it is not necessarily intended for their personal use.
The prescriber is the person who recommends a product or service to you. This role is important because its recommendation can be very important for entering a market.
Each identified target can designate themselves in a persona. It is a symbolic profile that will take up the specific characteristics of each target and the context, expectations, desires, purchasing power, and consumption habits. We call this a reference profile; it will help you build an adequate marketing approach.
Step 3: Position Your Offer
After having targeted your customers, the challenge now is to succeed in positioning your product or service well with regard to everyone’s needs. We call this the value proposition.
The goal is to highlight to your consumers the benefits of the proposed offer by adopting their perspectives. The value proposition must convince users, but it also helps your company position itself vis-à-vis the competition.
In order to know if your positioning is good, it must meet the following characteristics:
Distinct: the positioning must be directly perceived and understood by all targets;
Dissimilar and relevant: distinguishing itself from its competitors while best meeting expectations is essential;
Take the market into account and be at the forefront of current trends.
Step 4: Define the Action Plan (Marketing Mix)
The marketing strategy, also called an action plan, will allow your business to enter the market. This action plan is translated through the marketing mix.
The Marketing Mix Is Structured Around Four Components:
The Product Policy: defines the attributes of the product, its functionalities, etc.
Pricing Policy: setting the price of your service, taking into consideration what the consumer is willing to pay, the costs surrounding the product, the margin, etc.
Communication Policy: these are the means implemented to make your product or service known and convince consumers.
The Distribution Policy: consists of establishing the means of distribution of the product or service, such as points of sale, the logistics chain, etc.
All these elements are interdependent. If we increase the quality of a product, this could lead to an increase in price, which will, therefore, impact distribution and reduce the target customer base.
The marketing strategy must consider all the variables to define a coherent action plan. It must follow your company’s objectives while meeting your customers’ expectations.
Step 5: Adapt Your Marketing Strategy and Control It
A marketing strategy must consider and provide means to figure out the relevance of the planned actions. It is important to measure its effectiveness, monitor its level of satisfaction, and evaluate the brand’s notoriety among the chosen target.
Thanks to its regular checks, you will be able to discover new improvement levers and optimize elements to best satisfy your customers’ needs.
Estimating the relevance of actions and regularly scrutinizing buyers can allow you to develop new business opportunities. In addition, meeting new customers and especially seeking to satisfy their needs can guide you toward new development projects.
The market and your company’s objectives are constantly evolving. Monitoring allows you to track new trends, anticipate the evolution of your offer, and, above all, adapt your strategy.
Using all these steps, you will be able to establish a good marketing strategy.
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