Developing a Marketing Strategy
Developing a Marketing Strategy
As a marketing professional, you will likely be involved in the development of both marketing strategies and marketing plans. It is important to have an understanding of what differentiates these terms.
A marketing strategy is an explanation of the goals you need to achieve through your marketing, which is shaped by your business goals. By contrast, a marketing plan is how you are going to achieve your marketing goals. Your marketing strategy serves as a road map that will guide you from one point to another within your marketing plan. In other words, the strategy is the thinking (the “what”) and the plan is the doing (the “how”).
The purpose of your marketing strategy should be to identify and communicate the benefits of your business offering to your target market.
For example, if your business objective is to gain broader market adoption, your marketing strategy might be to introduce into new market segments, and your marketing plan might be to develop a marketing campaign that reaches out, identifies with, and focuses on a specific segment.
Review the following articles to create your marketing strategy:
http://www.akadvisorypartners.com/files/Creating-a-Successful-Marketing-Strategy.pdf
http://www.infoentrepreneurs.org/en/guides/create-your-marketing-strategy/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2013/04/17/creating-a-successful-marketing-strategy/
Create a 3 page marketing strategy which addresses the following:
- Target market segment(s)
- Who are your existing and potential customers (target market)?
- What are the needs of your target market, as identified through market research?
- Business strengths
- What are your company’s strengths?
- How do the strengths of your company match the needs of your target market?
- Marketing activities
- What marketing activities are likely to ensure that your target market knows about the products and/or services you offer, and why these products/services meet their needs?
- Why did you select each of these marketing activities?
- Monitoring and evaluation
- How will you monitor and evaluate how effective your marketing strategy has been?
