What is the role of strategic marketing in every organisation?

Strategic marketing is a marketing process that allows an organisation to allot and make the best use of its resources. Every organisation has a set of achievable goals and targets. Businesses that take an effort to plan strategic marketing for their products and services, help themselves achieve their sales and profit targets much faster.

So, what is strategic marketing?

Strategic marketing is composed of two words: strategy and marketing.

You might use strategy to win in war, games, or competitions. Strategy is developed by studying your opponent or war field to have a better advantage and leverage resources in your favour. When you combine effective strategy and marketing, you have the term: strategic marketing.

When you, as a business or marketer, put effort into establishing a strategic marketing plan, you are essentially providing yourself a fair and competitive advantage over your rivals in the marketplace.

Strategic marketing was developed in the late 1970s and 80s, with a vision to upscale business performance. Having a solid marketing strategy allows businesses to successfully connect with current customers and reach a wider audience of potential customers.(Source: JSTOR)

There are some steps and marketing tips for strategic marketing planning.

They are as follows:

The Detailed Process of Strategic Marketing 

• Picking the target market: Every organisation has a specific target market or type of person they want to sell their products or services to. While a service or product may be very useful, not all consumers may be interested in buying it. The part of the market that is interested in investing in a business service or product is the target market.Nevertheless, every organisation has a potential market that it can capture for itself which would guarantee fast profits with excellent potential. In some cases, marketing and selling products can be very difficult due to cultural, language or even socio-economic barriers.

With the help of strategic marketing businesses can now conduct in-depth research on the buyers, their preferences , their cultural beliefs, biases,buying traits, budget, and distinct needs.Knowing this can help an organisation achieve success in the marketplace.

What is a real-life example of strategic marketing planning?

Take, for example, the location-based marketing strategy adopted by Coca-Cola to capture the Chinese market. Ambitious to establish itself in this foreign marketplace, Coca-Cola created new products to meet the customer demands in the Chinese marketplace.

Demands for healthy beverages, tea, coffee, milk drinks, and juices were met with new consumables under the Coca-Cola bandwagon. The original Coca-Cola recipe was also rebranded and marketed in a way that appeals to the Chinese population’s sentiments, cultural appetite, and way of life. Coca-Cola low-fat and low-sugar light milk tea was introduced to China with flavours like grape jasmine, lychee black, and peach oolong. (Source: Researchgate)

• Gather the marketing mix: The ‘marketing mix’ is a popular business model used by organisations to sell their products. The model is organised around the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. A marketing mix is a combination of all these factors that are moderated to influence the decision of the buyers.

What is the Importance of a Marketing Strategy?

The importance of strategic marketing lies in its ability to bring together your marketing plans in unison to achieve a business target and help promote marketing in line with the ethical code of your organisation.

According to CoSchedule's Trend Report on Marketing Strategy in 2022, businesses that have properly documented marketing strategies are 414% more likely to report success.

The importance of marketing strategy can be seen in the following pointers:

• Marketing strategy is the game plan! It involves various aspects of business research, including market analysis, competitor analysis, company goals, buyer personas, persona challenges (pain points and problems), solutions to resolve persona needs, unique selling points, and your business’ “purple cow”.

• The importance of a marketing strategy lies in the fact that it is through your core marketing strategies that you can communicate and advertise your unique offerings to the world. Seth Godin’s book talks about a business’ “purple cow” as the key feature of their business that helps them stand apart in a vast field of competitors the “brown, ordinary cows”.

Does your marketing strategy have answers to the following questions? If so, you’re off to a good start!

1.   What products or services will your business offer?
2.   Who is your target consumer base who will buy your product or pay for your service?
3.   How will you fulfil the needs of your consumers/customers with your products and offerings?
4.   Know and study your competitors: Who else is in the same marketplace as you?

Benefits of a Marketing Strategy

• Marketing strategy offers an edge to an organisation over its competitors. 
• Strategic marketing techniques help develop goods and services that have the best profit-making potential.
• Marketing strategies also help to discover business areas that are affected by different factors and allow businesses to create plans to meet those changes.
• Strategic marketing helps to fix products and services at the correct price based on information that is collected through market research. 
• Through strategic marketing, organisations get to make the optimum utilisation of their available resources and market according to the organisation’s target and goals.
• With a proper strategy in place, organisations get to fix the budget for advertisement in advance. This means marketing strategy also determines what revenue will be generated by that advertisement plan. 
• A marketing strategy explains, in short, how an organisation can reach its predetermined goals and objectives.

With a strategy in place, companies can easily penetrate their desired market. By segmenting the target market and understanding its functional value, customers, and their needs, organisations can establish the right positioning for their products.

After studying the audience, marketing strategies can be transformed into highly focused plans to achieve massive profits and high conversion rates for businesses.

A study of this sort also leads to more consumers because when the needs of the consumers are studied effectively, the business will evolve around those needs, therefore, leading to more consumers.

What are the Benefits of Strategic Marketing for an Organisation?

Strategic marketing involves utilising a thorough business and market strategy to formulate and execute marketing plans to achieve desired results.

A good marketing strategy can help you formulate great marketing plans, plug the loopholes in your business finance, cut costs and even reduce the time taken to achieve business goals.

Benefits of strategic marketing for an organisation:

•       Become adept at using resources wisely
•       Make smart business choices
•       Dominate the marketplace by staying ahead of the game
•       Ensure long-term success for your business
•       Utilise time effectively to learn new things and grow as a business
•       Develop strong customer relationships and forge trust

What are the Different Phases of Strategic Marketing Management?

Essentially, strategic marketing management can be easily divided into three phases: planning, implementation, and evaluation.

Let’s take a closer look at each phase of the strategic marketing process.

Strategic Marketing Management Phases

Phase 1: Planning

Strategic marketing relies heavily on accurate and in-depth planning. Planning involves the use of methods like SWOT analysis and PESTEL Analysis, studying your marketing mix and product mix before establishing your SMART goals (Specific details, Measurable Criteria, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound).

Phase 2: Implementation

Implementation is the phase of strategic marketing management that involves the tools and actions taken to achieve the goal set in the first phase.

All the market research, competitor analysis, product mix, and marketing mix come into play in this stage.

This phase includes developing marketing content, budgeting, creating marketing channels, finalising distribution channels and optimisation for global emergencies such as the pandemic.

Phase 3: Evaluation and self-assessment

This phase of the strategic marketing process involves obtaining feedback from your customers, clients, workers, and partners. This can be done through KPIs and KRAs or feedback forms and live discussions. Evaluation also involves assessing whether your strategic marketing plan has failed or succeeded in achieving the goal. Evaluation helps you understand what percentage of success you can achieve and how to improve as a whole.

How to Create a Strategic Marketing Plan

A strategic marketing plan builds on the resources and understanding you gain through your strategic marketing strategies and phase 1 of the strategic marketing process.

Once you have completed a thorough analysis and research of your business goals and consumer base, a strategic marketing plan is what you need to be able to implement necessary action towards the deployment of services and reaping business gains.

What are the factors to consider when formulating a strategic marketing plan?

1. Your ultimate business goal: This would drive the entirety of your marketing efforts and give you clarity as to which resource to use and how.
2. Promotional and advertising efforts: Investing in these is crucial to projecting the correct message to your consumer base and achieving the best results.
3. Consistency: How often must you incur marketing expenses and how consistently must you invest efforts in implementing a certain plan? Ensure that your strategic marketing plan answers these questions clearly for definite success.
4. Budget: Needless to say, count your money before you begin the journey!

Tips to Develop an Effective Marketing Strategy.

• Endurance: Creating the perfect marketing strategy is not a one-day project. The perfect marketing strategy is born out of many trials and errors, losses and gains and firefighting. Stay patient and learn from your mistakes, be consistent in improving your strategy to hit the sweet spot of success.
• Consult and create the right team: Consider having those with experience in the strategic marketing management arena as part of your arsenal storage.
• Invest wisely: Hire and consult seasoned experts who can provide you with a clear financial picture, marketing tips, and strategic marketing strategies that highlight the depth of the risks involved in your ventures.

Most Common Strategic Marketing Channels:

• Social media marketing: The practice of using social media platforms to connect with target audiences and promote products or services.
• Content marketing: Creating and sharing valuable content to attract and engage a target audience.
• Search engine optimisation (SEO): Optimising a website to improve its ranking in search engine results pages for more website traffic and conversions. (SERPs).
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising: Running ads on search engines and other websites that users are likely to visit to promote awareness of your products and services.
• Email marketing: Sending emails to a list of subscribers to promote products or services and to keep customer relationships with your business active.

Difference Between Marketing and Strategic Marketing

Marketing is the broad term that encompasses all activities a company does to promote its products or services to its target audience.

Strategic marketing is a more focused and deliberate approach to marketing. It involves developing a long-term plan to achieve specific marketing goals. Strategic marketing considers the company's target audience, competition, and overall business objectives.

Strategic marketing goals are more effective. Traditional marketing is flooded with products everywhere, but strategic marketing is more focused and specific. It has a particular target, which helps organisations outline their goals and achieve them.

Here are Some of the Advantages of Strategic Marketing Over Traditional Marketing:

• Increased brand awareness
• Improved customer acquisition and retention
• Higher return on marketing investment (ROI)
• More effective use of marketing resources

What are some things to consider while implementing strategic marketing techniques?

Keeping some considerations in mind while preparing the strategy of an organisation can ensure that the strategies work efficiently.

• Make a thorough study of the market and the consumers and then prepare the plan. The more information you have on your buyer, the more you know about where you are performing well and where you need to improve. 
• Set goals that are realistic, achievable, and can be measured. 
• The marketing plan should be easy to understand and clear in language. It should align the company's goals with the consumers' needs. This is the most comprehensive and sustainable business development plan. 

Are you looking forward to exploring a career in business strategic marketing? Then explore the Strategic Marketing programme as well as various other programmes offered by the London School of Business and Finance (LSBF UK).