Strategic marketing is a process that entails carrying out research and setting targets and goals that will increase the success and effectiveness of your overall marketing strategy.
This process is beneficial as it allows you to focus and fine-tune your marketing. For instance, it helps you ensure you’re targeting the right audience, entering the appropriate markets, and using the best marketing instruments.
In short, strategic marketing is an activity that aims to uncover the information you will need to curate a successful marketing strategy and implement effective campaigns.
Here is a complete guide on how strategic marketing works.
1. Planning Phase
This is the most pivotal stage of strategic marketing as it forms the foundation of all your efforts. Here, you will identify and establish your business needs, purposes, and the objectives and goals you wish to achieve.
If you don’t have this information, it will be tough to proceed to the next stage as you won’t know the objective of your marketing strategy. This way, it will be even more challenging to curate a comprehensive plan that helps you succeed.
2. Analysis Phase
In this stage, you will be required to perform competitor analysis and market research. A competitor analysis will equip you with the details of how your competitors work, their position in the industry, any possible gaps you can leverage to outdo them. Moreover, market research will give you a broad picture of the industry, including market share, current trends, etc.
You will also invest time to learn about your target market and develop buyer personas to get a holistic understanding of your customers, their interests, desires, needs, etc.
3. Development Phase
This stage entails deciding your marketing mix, which is how you’ll attain the goals from the planning phase regarding the details you found in the analysis phase.
A marketing mix comprises 4 Ps – product, price, place, and promotion. Here is a concise explanation of each:
- Product: What your organization is selling.
- Price: The price at which consumers will purchase the product.
- Place: Where your product will be sold, such as in-store or online.
- Promotion: How you will market your offering, such as through social media, TV, radio, etc.
4. Implementation Phase
The final step of the process is when you start acting on your marketing efforts. As the name suggests, you will implement the strategy you have created based on your planning, market research, and competitor analysis. You will introduce your product to the market and start making sales.
Once you have completed the implementation phase, you should re-evaluate your processes and make any necessary changes. Since the market is continuously evolving, you might have to redo specific things from the second stage due to changing consumer needs or the emergence of new trends.
Last Few Words
If you invest time, effort, and resources in your over-arching strategic marketing process, you will encourage customers to purchase your product, increase revenue, and attain the objectives and goals you established in the planning stage.
