Strategic Marketing – A Complete Guide To Strategic Marketing In 2021

Marketing is one of the most important aspects of a business that helps to get new customers and retain them for a long time. Although every business wants to increase its customer base, only a few can make it because of their strategic marketing plan. They implement the best marketing practices and tactics to grow opportunities.  

Usually, beginners make the mistake of preparing a marketing strategy without understanding their audience, market size, and their strength. In this guide, you will learn how to develop a marketing strategy that can help you drive more loyal customers to your business. Before that, let?s understand what strategic marketing is and its purpose. 

What Is Strategic Marketing?

Strategic marketing is the process of developing a roadmap for getting a competitive advantage in their niche. It is a process where a company will clearly understand its audience, identify market opportunities, aim to plan and develop a solution based on the market need. It also includes setting clear goals for achieving success on different products. 

No doubt, the primary purpose of strategic marketing is customer satisfaction and becoming an industry leader. For that, marketers need to develop a strategy by following the three phases of developing a winning marketing strategy. 

Phases Of Strategic Marketing

Although every business has unique needs, the marketing strategy can be divided into these three fundamental phases. 

• Planning Phase
• Implementation Phase
• Evaluation Phase

Now, let?s dive deep into the three phases of strategic marketing in detail. After reading it, you will learn how to improve your marketing strategy for your business. 

1. Planning Phase 

The planning phase is the first and most important part of your strategic marketing journey. It includes identifying your strength, weakness, opportunities, audience, and competition. It also involves setting practical goals along with the proper roadmap to execute your marketing strategy. There are four main components in the planning phase, and they are: 

Market Research 

Market research is the first step in the planning phase, where you figure out your audience?s main problem. It also helps you to understand your audience clearly and what they actually expect from you. 

While doing research, it?s also essential to know about your competitors. You should also find if other companies or individuals are providing the same solutions and where you stand in the competition. For that, you need to do a SWOT analysis which is the second step of the planning phase in your strategic marketing guide. 

SWOT Analysis

It?s a crucial step that helps you understand your strengths and weaknesses based on finding opportunities and identifying the challenges on your way. 

After you do the analysis, you should follow the below steps to grow more market opportunities and overcome the challenges:

1. You should clearly distinguish yourself from your competitors.
2. Research about your company?s existing and potential customers.
3. Work on your weaknesses to overcome the market threats. 

Setting Goals

Next, you should set clear goals for your strategic marketing. Once you figure out the market needs, you can set goals for you to meet the customer needs for the success of a product or service that you will launch.

While setting your goals, you should define what?s your unique selling point. That means what areas you are superior to your competitors. You should emphasize the aspect of your products which is best from the rest of all the existing products. For example, your product can beat every other product in the market in terms of durability.

Strategy Development

After setting goals, you need to develop strategies for different aspects of your business. Every successful marketing strategy includes four common strategies, which are also known as the 4Ps. They are product positioning, promotion, and pricing strategies. 

All of these strategies focus on different elements. Your price strategy will involve all the pricing-related factors like offers, discounts, payment periods, etc. Product strategy involves packaging, branding. The promotional strategy will help you figure out how to advertise your product through various online and offline marketing channels. 

2. Implementation Phase

Secondly, implementation plays a vital role in your strategic marketing. If you cannot carry out the action plan that you determined from the early stages, there is no point in planning. Ensure that your plan is structured correctly and you include the following four components to execute effectively. 

• Obtain Resources: Execution requires resources, money, and time. So, obtain the necessary resources at the right time to ensure that there is no hindrance in implementation. 
• Design Marketing Hierarchy: You should design a proper marketing structure on a priority basis to streamline the execution of different marketing processes. 
• Time Allocation and Scheduling: You need to allocate time for each task and schedule them properly. 
• Executing the Marketing Plan: Finally, you need to pay attention to every task?s details while executing your marketing plan. 

After you develop a strategy for executing your marketing plan, it?s essential to know whether they meet your marketing goals. So, you need to have an evaluation phase to control your execution process. 

3. Evaluation Phase

The evaluation phase plays a vital role in your strategic marketing. It?s the checking phase that ensures whether you are in line with the desired goals. Your marketing manager should observe this and ensure that the progress is in line with the goals set. 

Apart from monitoring, you should also decide your key performance indicators to measure your progress and return on investments. Remember, you should identify your KPIs while setting goals ensuring that they are relevant to measure your progress. 

Conclusion

I hope the above information is useful for developing a strategic marketing plan for your business in 2021. Remember, you should focus on your audience?s needs, specify clear goals, and develop feasible processes. You should also define the metrics that will help you evaluate your marketing plan. Lastly, don?t forget to share your opinion on this post in the comments section.

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