Marketing strategy,Marketing environment,Marketing business,Marketing customers,Marketing competitors

Marketing strategy

The purpose of a marketing strategy is to address a business or brand challenge or objective that has been revealed. An effective strategy involves making a series of well-informed decisions about how the brand, product or service should be promoted; the brand that attempts to be all things to all people risks becoming unfocused or losing the clarity of its value proposition.

For example, a new airline would need to consider how it is going to add value to the category and differentiate itself from competitors; whether their product is

a domestic or international service; whether its target market would be budget travelers or international and business travelers; and whether the channel would be through primary airports or smaller, more cost-effective airports. Each of these choices will result in a vastly different strategic direction.

To make these decisions, a strategist must understand the context in which the brand operates: what are the factors that affect the business? This means conducting a situational analysis that looks at four pillars:

1.The environment

2.The business

3.The customers

The competitors

Here are some considerations and tools for conducting your brand’s situational analysis.

Understanding the environment

The environment is the overall context or ‘outside world’ in which the business functions. It can involve anything from global economics (how well is the local currency performing these days?) to developments in your industry. Every brand will have a specific environment that it needs to consider, based on the type of product or service it produces.

An analysis of the business and brand environment will typically consider political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental (PESTLE) influences to identify a clear set of considerations or issues pertinent to the marketing strategy.

Understanding the business

There are several marketing models that can be used to understand the business and brand you are working with. Since essential for all marketing messages to encapsulate the brand’s identity and objectives, this is a very important step.

A crucial consideration is the brand itself. What does it stand for? What does it mean? What associations, ideas, emotions and benefits do people associate with it? What makes it unique?

Out of this, you can determine what the brand or product’s unique selling point (USP) is. A USP is the one characteristic that makes your product or service better than the competition’s – what unique value does it have? Does it solve a problem that no other product does?

Understanding customers

In order truly to understand your customers, you need to conduct market research (discussed in much more detail in the next chapter). Try not to make assumptions about why people like and transact with your brand you may find their values and motives are quite different from what you thought. Ongoing research will help you build a picture of what particular benefit or feature your business provides to your customers, allowing you to capitalize on this in your marketing content.

One important area on which to focus here is the consumer journey – the series of steps and decisions a customer takes before buying from your business (or not). Luckily, online data analytics allow you to get a good picture of how people behave on your website before converting to customers; other forms of market research will also help you establish this for your offline channels.

On the Internet, a consumer journey is not linear. Instead, consumers may engage with your brand in a variety of ways factor example, across devices or marketing channels – before making a purchase.

The goal is to reach customers with the right marketing message at the right stage of their journey. For example, you may want to use aspirational messages for someone in the exploration phase, but focus on more direct features and benefits (such as a lower price) when there almost ready to buy.

Understanding competitors

Finally, it’s important to know who else is marketing to your potential customers, what they offer, and how you can challenge or learn from them.

On the Internet, your competitors are not just those who are aiming to earn your customers’ money; they are also those who are capturing your customers attention. With more digital content being created in a day than most people could consume in a year – for example, over 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute (YouTube, 2013) – the scarcest resources these days are time, focus and attention.

When considering competition, it’s also worthwhile looking at potential replacements for your product. The Internet is disrupting and accelerating the pace of disintermediation in a number of industries, meaning that people can now go directly to the business instead of transacting through a middleman (look at the travel industry as an example). To stay ahead, you should be looking at potential disruptors of your industry as well as the existing players.

Business and brand strategy

Before you can delve into marketing strategy, take a step back and consider the business and brand with which you are working.

The end-goal of any business is to make money, in one way or another. Business strategy asks the questions: ‘What is the business challenge we are facing that prevents us from making more revenue?’ or, ‘What business objective should we strive for in order to increase the money in the bank?’

The brand is the vessel of value in this equation. The brand justifies why the business matters, and what value its adds to people lives. The value of the brand is measured in terms of its equity – how aware are people of the brand? Does it hold positive associations and perceived value? How loyal are people to the brand?

When you have the answer to this question, you can formulate a marketing strategy to address the challenge or objective you’ve discovered.