What do you mean by strategic marketing decision

Strategic marketing is a method through which an organisation differentiates itself from its competition by focusing on its strengths to provide better service and value to its customers. In a nutshell, the goal of strategic marketing is to make the most of an organisation’s positive differentiation over its competition through the consumers’ perspective.

Strategic marketing involves the recognition of competition, the identification of competitive advantage and as a result, serving markets you can serve better than your rivals. Consequently it involves deciding which markets NOT to serve, because rivals can do it better.

This requires both an accurate understanding of market needs, and a willingness to shape the business and its products around the needs of selected customers (instead of trying to shape the customer to fit the enterprise’s products and services.)

Strategic Marketing is at the heart of devising a feasible Business Formula because a Business Formula has to take into account an enterprise’s competitive advantage and its choices to serve some markets and not others.

In short, Strategic Marketing requires a complete change of thinking, from:

‘Let’s do everything we can – and try to sell to everyone’ to ‘Let’s do only what our rivals cannot do as well as us – and sell only to those markets that want what we excel at.’

Only when the big issues of marketing strategy have been decided that we can turn to the details of operational marketing (marketing communications).

Having decided which precise markets to focus on, we can tailor our messages to the precise needs of our chosen customers.

Furthermore, we can listen to customers in our chosen markets, in order to understand more fully what they really want to buy.

Marketing can be described as ‘looking at the enterprise from the customer’s point of view’.

Or, as marketing guru Peter Drucker said:

“Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialised activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view.”

In the end, Strategic Marketing is about deliberately aligning the whole enterprise to the changing needs of carefully chosen customers. This means that some markets are deliberately avoided in order to focus entirely on strategically selected markets, niches and customers.

Consequently Strategic Marketing is about high level decisions about the direction of the enterprise as it manoeuvres successfully amongst competitors, uses its competitive advantage and selects particular customer groups to serve in order to fulfill its objectives and achieve its Vision.

That’s why David Packard of Hewlett Packard said: “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.”

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. Strategic marketing helps businesses to market the products or the services that will help them realise those goals efficiently.

Strategic marketing developed as a subject in the late 1970s and 80s, based on the strategic management of organisations. Having a solid marketing strategy allows businesses to successfully connect  with  current customers and reach a wider audience of potential customers.

There are some steps towards achieving strategic marketing. They are as follows : 

Detailed Process of Strategic Marketing 

• Picking the target market: Every organisation has a specific target market or type of people they sell their products or services to. Hence, not all segments of the market bring profits or have the potential for every business. but every organisation has a market for itself that guarantees fast profits with excellent potential and some of these market barriers may even be very tough to enter. Strategic marketing involves several processes but one of the main ones is to identify and conduct in-depth research on the buyers as well as potential buyers including their buying traits, budget and distinct needs.
• 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 marketing strategy?

Let us discuss some benefits of a marketing strategy:

• Marketing strategy offers an edge to an organisation over its competitors.
• Strategising marketing techniques helps to develop goods and services that have the best profit-making potential.
• The marketing strategy also helps to discover business areas that are affected by different factors and allows 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 on 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 penetrate their desired market easily. By dividing the segment of the market a company wants to penetrate and understanding its functional value, its customers and their needs, organisations can determine the right footing of their products.

After having studied the audience, marketing strategies can now be more focused on connecting with the right demographic of your customers. It can be achieved by studying and analysing the consumers’ needs. This measure is followed to increase the reach of the brand.

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.

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 in outlining their goals and then achieving them.

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 bring alignment between the goals of the company as well as the needs of the consumers. 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) 

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