What is a Marketing Strategy? How to develop a marketing strategy starts by addressing key questions like:
- What am I selling?
- What is the price of what I am selling?
- Where will I sell it?
- How will I promote it and reach my potential customers?
This pretty much summarizes the 4Ps (marketing mix) framework, which pins the most important elements of marketing essentially, which are the Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.
However, there is much to each element other than the question asked above.
What Should My Marketing Strategy Further Define?
Just like other essential functions within an organization, such as supply chain or human resources management, marketing is influenced by external factors that should be analyzed.
Competitors:
You cannot simply build a marketing strategy without having competitors’ analysis in place which could eventually affect your whole plan.
If you have defined your marketing mix elements and found out later on that a competitor does the same with a lower price, then your marketing strategy is not solid enough.
Learn more about conversion rate optimization to stay competitive.
External factors:
Technology, economics, and other external factors should be analyzed to ensure your marketing strategy remains relevant. Tools like Porter’s Five Forces are extremely useful for evaluating these external factors.
How to Develop a Marketing Strategy Beyond the Marketing Mix or External Factors
To clearly outline how to develop a marketing strategy, we can define the levels as follows:
1. The high-level strategy
At this level, you define the core elements of the marketing strategy, which are often extracted from the broader organizational strategy. These include your marketing mix, external factors, competitor analysis, high-level objectives, positioning, and target audience.
Explore how branding and customer experience can influence your overall strategy.
2. Marketing Tactics
At this level, we articulate the approaches that we are going to deliver the strategy through, such as affiliate marketing, online marketing, and search engine optimization
3. Operations
At this stage, each identified tactic is broken down and linked back to the high-level strategy. For example, within online marketing, you would define the methods, online channels, key performance indicators (KPIs), success enablers, and campaign structures.
Periodic reviews are essential to ensure coherence, efficiency, and that your marketing strategy meets the set objectives.
Should I Consult Someone For My Marketing Strategy?
That’s a good question, depending on which stage of business you are at, where you might be at a stagnant position that you require to refresh your strategy, or at an early stage where you’re feeling lost within the detail; a bird’s eye view from experts can absolutely elevate your strategy and brand.
At Convert, we craft tailored marketing strategies based on benchmarking and extensive experience with vivid and prioritized measures that can facilitate informed decision-making, contact us to know more!
