Marketing Strategies: A marketing strategy serves as the foundation of a marketing plan. A marketing plan contains a list of specific actions required to successfully implement a specific marketing strategy. An example of marketing strategy is as follows: "Use a low cost product to attract consumers. Once our organization, via our low cost product, has established a relationship with consumers, our organization will sell additional, higher-margin products and services that enhance the consumer's interaction with the low-cost product or service."
A strategy is different than a tactic. While it is possible to write a tactical marketing plan without a sound, well-considered strategy, it is not recommended. Without a sound marketing strategy, a marketing plan has no foundation. Marketing strategies serve as the fundamental underpinning of marketing plans designed to reach marketing objectives. It is important that these objectives have measurable results.
A good marketing strategy should integrate an organization's marketing goals, policies, and action sequences (tactics) into a cohesive whole. The objective of a marketing strategy is to provide a foundation from which a tactical plan is developed. This allows the organization to carry out its mission effectively and efficiently.
One used the following techniques to device the Marketing Strategy for the product/service:
Segmentation
Targeting
Positioning
Segmentaion:
Market segmentation is the process in marketing of grouping a market (i.e. customers) into smaller subgroups. This is not something that is arbitrarily imposed on society: it is derived from the recognition that the total market is often made up of submarkets (called 'segments'). These segments are homogeneous within (i.e. people in the segment are similar to each other in their attitudes about certain variables). Because of this intra-group similarity, they are likely to respond somewhat similarly to a given marketing strategy. That is, they are likely to have similar feeling and ideas about a marketing mix comprised of a given product or service, sold at a given price, distributed in a certain way, and promoted in a certain way.
Market segmentation is widely defined as being a complex process consisting in two main phases:
- identification of broad, large markets
- segmentation of these markets in order to select the most appropriate target markets and develop Marketing mixes accordingly.
Everyone within the Marketing world knows and speaks of segmentation yet not many truly understand its underlying mechanics, thus failure is just around the corner. What causes this? It has been documented that most marketers fail the segmentation exam and start with a narrow mind and a bunch of misconceptions such as "all teenagers are rebels", "all elderly women buy the same cosmetics brands" and so on. There are many dimensions to be considered, and uncovering them is certainly an exercise of creativity.
Identify and name the broad market
You have to have figured out by this moment what broad market your business aims at. If your company is already on a market, this can be a starting point; more options are available for a new business but resources would normally be a little limited.
The biggest challenge is to find the right balance for your business: use your experience, knowledge and common sense to estimate if the market you have just identified earlier is not too narrow or too broad for you.
Identify and make an inventory of potential customers' needs
This step pushes the creativity challenge even farther, since it can be compared to a brainstorming session.
What you have to figure out is what needs the consumers from the broad market identified earlier might have. The more possible needs you can come up with, the better.
Got yourself stuck in this stage of segmentation? Try to put yourself into the shoes of your potential customers: why would they buy your product, what could possibly trigger a buying decision? Answering these questions can help you list most needs of potential customers on a given product market.
Formulate narrower markets
Try to form sub-markets around what you would call your "typical customer", then aggregate similar people into this segment, on the condition to be able to satisfy their needs using the same Marketing mix. Start building a column with dimensions of the major need you try to cover: this will make it easier for you to decide if a given person should be included in the first segment or you should form a new segment. Also create a list of people-related features, demographics included, for each narrow market you form – a further step will ask you to name them.
There is no exact formula on how to form narrow markets: use your best judgement and experience. Do not avoid asking opinions even from non-Marketing professionals, as different people can have different opinions and you can usually count on at least those items most people agree on.
Identify the determining dimensions Carefully review the list resulted form the previous step. You should have by now a list of need dimensions for each market segment: try to identify those that carry a determining power.
Reviewing the needs and attitudes of those you included within each market segment can help you figure out the determining dimensions.
Name possible segment markets You have identified the determining dimensions of your market segments, now review them one by one and give them an appropriate name.
A good way of naming these markets is to rely on the most important determining dimension.
Evaluate the behavior of market segments
Once you are done naming each market segment, allow time to consider what other aspects you know about them. It is important for a marketer to understand market behavior and what triggers it. You might notice that, while most segments have similar needs, they're still different needs: understanding the difference and acting upon it is the key to achieve success using competitive offerings.
Estimate the size of each market segment
Each segment identified, named and studied during the previous stages should finally be given an estimate size, even if, for lack of data, it is only a rough estimate.
Positioning
Simply, positioning is how your target market defines you in relation to your competitors.
A good position is:
1. What makes you unique
2. This is considered a benefit by your target market
Both of these conditions are necessary for a good positioning. So what if you are the only red-haired singer who only knows how to play a G minor chord? Does your target market consider this a good thing?
Positioning is important because you are competing with all the noise out there competing for your potential fans attention. If you can stand out with a unique benefit, you have a chance at getting their attention.
It is important to understand your product from the customers point of view relative to the competition.
Environment
In order to begin positioning a product, two questions need to be answered:
1.What is our marketing environment?
2.What is our competitive advantage?
The marketing environment is the external environment. Some things to consider:
- How is the market now satisfying the need your software satisfies?
- What are the switching costs for potential users for your market?
- What are the positions of the competition?
The competitive advantage is an internal question. What do you have that gives you advantage over your competitors. Some things to consider:
- Is your company small and flexibility?
- Do you offer low cost and high quality?
- Does your product offer unique benefits?
- Are you the first on the market with this product (First mover advantage)?
Positioning Strategies
There are seven positioning strategies that can be pursued:
Product Attributes: What are the specific product attributes?
Benefits: What are the benefits to the customers?
Usage Occasions: When / how can the product be used?
Users: Identify a class of users.
Against a Competitor: Positioned directly against a competitor.
Away from a Competitor: Positioned away from competitor
Targeting:
Target Marketing involves breaking a market into segments and then concentrating your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments.
Target marketing can be the key to a small business’s success.
The beauty of target marketing is that it makes the promotion, pricing and distribution of your products and/or services easier and more cost-effective. Target marketing provides a focus to all of your marketing activities.
So if, for instance, I open a catering business offering catering services in the client’s home, instead of advertising with a newspaper insert that goes out to everyone, I could target my market with a direct mail campaign that went only to particular residents.
While market segmentation can be done in many ways, depending on how you want to slice up the pie, three of the most common types are:
- Geographic segmentation – based on location such as home addresses;
- Demographic segmentation – based on measurable statistics, such as age or income;
- Psychographic segmentation – based on lifestyle preferences, such as being urban dwellers or pet lovers.
