Marketing was first used as a term in the 16th century by the Oxford Dictionary. Every corporate involved in running a business regardless of the industry is worried about marketing their products and services to the target market segment, beating their completion and securing a greater market share. At a glance, this is a herculean task for any marketer or the senior management. This is not an unrealistic task yet a task that should be handled carefully with an energetic team that is prepared to chase the customers to expand and retail the market share. Any lapses in this process would lead to the collapse of the entire business. Crafting and executing a good marketing strategy would help you do the above successfully.
Key Factors to consider while formulating a Marketing Strategy
There are several factors to be considered before the formulation of a marketing strategy. But some factors stand apart and you can build your marketing strategy just from these crucial factors. Such three factors are discussed below:
- Developing Customer Intimacy
All things related to a customer can be classified as customer intimacy. A company can gain a lot by investing time in its customers, getting to know them, their likes, dislikes, preferences.
Answers to the following questions will ease the task of developing customer intimacy:
- How much is spent on market research with focus on customer satisfaction or customer retention?
- Do we have the proper customer insight at any point of time?
- Do we take notice of consumer trends to fine tune our marketing strategy?
- Is anyone representing the company in front of customers to take a direct feedback?
Several studies over years have proved that improving customer retention increases the overall margins of the company. On the other hand, a company cannot survive without getting new customers. Thus, a marketer will need to consider his options for increasing customer intimacy while formulating a marketing strategy.
- Health of the Brand
The second most important factor while formulating a marketing strategy is determining the health of the brand. This takes the external environment into account. Several companies carry out regular market research studies to find out what the stakeholders, customers and other entities involved in the external business environment think of the company or the brand.
From the brand health studies we get an answer to several questions. Is our competitive strategy strong enough? What do our customers think of us? And where are we positioned in the customers mind? These questions are important to determine the strength of a brand. Only by determining the brand health can you go ahead with formulating a marketing strategy. Because if your brand health is weak, you know that you need to implement short term and long term brand building plans strongly.
- Innovation
“Innovate or die” is a famous quote by Tom peters, a legendary American writer on business management tactics. The same was repeated by Bill Gates to his employees at Microsoft in 1997 when the competition was on the rise. An innovative culture in the organization is half the work done. This is why companies like Facebook, Google and Apple encourage their employees for innovation by allowing them to take out some office time for their own projects.
It is important to understand that innovation does not happen in one department only. It can happen in the supply chain department, the costing department, the accounting department and most importantly the product development department. A product innovation can increase the overall margins of the company because a new product generally uses skimming pricing which brings a lot of increase in the top-line for a company. Naturally, companies focus on product innovation the most.
Furthermore, a company also needs to see the effect which innovation has on the customer mindset. Companies like apple are known as the most innovative companies ever and each one of their products are received with respect in the market from both – customers and competitors. Over time, these companies develop a lot of good will in the market thereby increasing their brand equity. This has an incremental effect on the revenues generated by the firm. Back to back innovation as done by apple, ensures top revenue generation by the company as well as amazing contribution to the top-line because of continuous skimming pricing.
To sum it all up, marketing strategy needs to make a positive connection between where the firm stands currently and where it wants to be in the future. The vision needs to be realistic. However, if the company wants an incremental growth, then above mentioned three factors need to be implemented properly in the marketing strategy to bring amazing results for the company.
In the end, that’s exactly what you need from a marketing strategy – Results.
To train your staff on Marketing Strategy, please contact:
Braveenan Parathan on braveenan@ultimmatraining.com or on +94 779 024 229
Prassanna Pathmanathan on prassanna@ultimmatraining.com or on +94 775026865
Useful videos to watch;
4 Principles of Marketing Strategy
