Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy refers to an approach adopted by businesses that involves positioning, research, and goal-setting to promote their brand and reach their target audience. It determines the way in which an organization can convert prospective buyers into customers. The ultimate goal is to ensure a sustainable competitive advantage over competitors.

This strategy is effective if it revolves around the organization’s value proposition, communicating to the consumers how the business carries out its operations, what it stands for, and why people should purchase its offerings. This approach can be of different types, for example, diversity, transactional, and internet marketing. Moreover, its elements include competitive analysis, marketing objectives, etc.

• Marketing strategy refers to a long-term game plan created by a business to achieve its goals, comprehend customers’ needs, and establish a sustainable and distinct competitive advantage.
• While such a strategy is an approach to gaining a competitive advantage, a marketing plan covers the activities that will help the business achieve that competitive advantage.
• Some noteworthy marketing strategy elements include a marketing budget, metrics and key performance indicators, marketing objectives, and competitive analysis.
• There are different types of marketing strategies. A few examples are cause marketing, transactional marketing, and internet marketing.

Marketing strategy refers to an approach a business adopts to promote its offerings and convert the target audience into customers. Such an approach consists of the organization’s customer demographics data, key brand messaging, value proposition, and various other high-level components.

Creating and following such a strategy is crucial to set the direction for the whole business. It helps an organization stay in sync with the customer base, develop suitable offerings, and figure out how they must communicate information concerning those products. If a business does not have a well-defined strategy, it will not know who its customers are. Moreover, it will fail to develop the right products and waste time and funds promoting them.

The overall game plan needs to be forward-looking, offering guidelines regarding how a business must allocate its limited resources to boost sales. Moreover, businesses must implement it for the long term. This approach offers the marketing team a template that informs the initiatives across all products and services offered by the organization.

The key marketing strategy elements are as follows:

#1 - Marketing Mix

It refers to the document that a business must create to comprehend what it will market, where it will market, and how it will market. The following 4 Ps make up the framework:

• Price
• Product
• Place
• Promotion

Marketers must lay out the details of the above four aspects in broad strokes. This will help them comprehend the strategy’s overall direction.

#2 - Marketing Budget

Without allocating the available funds to hire the right people, advertise on the correct channels, create suitable content, and use the correct software, the strategy cannot make a strong impact. Businesses must first invest to obtain a significant return on investment (ROI).

#3 - Targeting, Segmentation, And Positioning

This element deals with delivering personalized messages that are more relevant to the target audience. In other words, it involves the business going through a methodical process of content creation that resonates with the target buyers.

#4 - Competitive Analysis

Knowing the competition is vital when formulating such a strategy. Otherwise, the business wouldn’t know if it differentiates itself enough from its competitors.

#5 - Marketing Objectives

Businesses can set their marketing budget according to the 4 Ps. Outlining the objectives is vital before building upon the strategy. This is because the objectives will inform the other elements of the business plan.

#6 - Key Performance Indicators And Metrics

Lastly, this strategy must include certain metrics as well as key performance indicators (KPIs). Such metrics will help understand how well a strategy is working. The choice of Key performance indicators depends on the customer acquisition channels and the type of business.

Let us look at the different types of such a strategy.

• Cause Marketing: It involves connecting products and services offered by an organization to any social issue or cause.
• Undercover Marketing: It involves marketing the offerings while consumers remain unaware of the business’s strategy. People also call it stealth marketing.
• Internet Marketing: As the name suggests, businesses implement this strategy on the Internet. They share every marketing item on the Internet, promoting through multiple platforms using various approaches. This strategy has sub-categories, such as content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing strategies, and more.
• Transactional Marketing: In this case, retailers encourage their customers to make purchases using their shopping coupons and discounts. It motivates their target audience to purchase the promoted items, increasing the possibility of sales.
• Word Of Mouth Marketing: This strategy entirely depends on what impression a business leaves on its customers. If customers are happy with their purchase, they will likely promote the brand.
• Relationship Marketing: It focuses on improving existing customer relationships to improve customer loyalty.

The steps one must follow to create a marketing strategy for startups and other businesses are as follows:

1. Create A Marketing Plan - A business’s marketing team should start by creating a well-documented marketing plan that consists of crucial information, serving as a roadmap to achieve the established goals.
2. Understand The Target Audience And The Market - Next, it is vital to conduct research concerning customers, competition, and customers. This enables a marketing team to differentiate packaging, promotion, distribution, and positioning.
3. Define The Key Differentiators And The Unique Value Proposition - This step involves marketing strategies translating research into action. Note that marketing needs to influence brand identity through voice and visuals. Moreover, it must have an effect on product development and research as well as unique positioning.
4. Establish Marketing Goals - After comprehending market opportunities, a business’s marketing team must set measurable, smart, gaugable, timely, and relevant goals. 
5. Identify The Media To Reach The Target Audience And Marketing Approaches - In this step, marketers need to choose the marketing tactics with the highest potential to influence the organization’s goals and objectives. Moreover, the marketing team has to define the channels that the business will utilize to implement the plan.
6. Publish Marketing Activities - Any marketing plan can only benefit businesses when they actualize it. The marketing strategists of an organization need to determine when the launch of campaigns will take place and how the collaboration of contributors will occur with the available resources to ensure that the vision becomes a reality.
7. Gauge And Analyze The Results -Successful marketers gauge how the activities of the business influence the set of goals. Ideation from the audits can result in iterations and tests that might be more influential in achieving the marketing goals.

Let us look at a few marketing strategy examples to understand the concept better.

Example #1

Suppose ABC is a t-shirt manufacturing company that sells its products online. Its target audience primarily includes people aged 18-24 years. The organization's main objective is to boost its sales and increase brand awareness. After establishing its goals and creating a marketing plan, ABC implemented its marketing strategy.

As part of its strategy, it launches a social media campaign across different platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. The company also uses influencer marketing to promote its products and demonstrate the business's values.

The strategy turned out to be effective as company ABC managed to improve brand awareness and increase sales.

Example #2

Per a report published by Cosmetify in 2023, Huda Beauty is the most popular beauty brand on TikTok. The company has managed to create a successful marketing strategy, recording over 9 million followers on the social media platform. This company was started by Huda Kattan, one of the most influential women in the international beauty industry. The American make-up artist’s position and fanbase have played a key role in driving the organization’s success.

One can understand the importance of this concept by going through the points below.

• It provides direction by defining the goals clearly and outlining the path businesses must follow to achieve them.
• This approach helps businesses build a brand identity that is cohesive and consistent. As a result, aligning every marketing initiative for better brand loyalty and recognition becomes easier.
• It defines performance indicators and several key metrics, making it easier for organizations to gauge and monitor their marketing initiatives’ success.
• The approach helps businesses identify the most effective tactics and marketing channels, helping them maximize the ROI.
• It provides a business with an edge over its market peers.  
• The strategy helps businesses differentiate their offerings in the market through unique value propositions.
• It helps in reaching the target audience and understanding customers.

There are some key differences between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy for startups and other organizations. Let us find out how they differ.

This article has been a guide to what is Marketing Strategy. We explain its examples, types, components, how to create it, & comparison with the marketing plan. You may also find some useful articles here –

• Pull Marketing Strategy
• Push Marketing Strategy
• Ambient Marketing