How To Create a Marketing Strategy
In the marketing world, there are a number of phrases that sound quite similar: marketing strategy, marketing plan, marketing campaign, and marketing tactics are just a few that come to mind. Each of these is important, but without a unified and well-planned marketing strategy, the rest of the marketing jargon is likely to amount to a haphazard collection of activities that don’t drive your business growth.
Defining marketing strategy
In this section, we’ll cover what a marketing strategy is, the various types of marketing strategies you could employ for your business, and how to create your own marketing strategy.
What is a marketing strategy?
We’ll start with a simple marketing strategy definition. According to Wikipedia, a marketing strategy is “a long-term, forward-looking approach and an overall game plan of any organization or any business with the fundamental goal of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage by understanding the needs and wants of customers.” A company’s marketing strategy is its overall approach to gaining an advantage over competitors in the field, including the content, channels, campaigns, and marketing tools required to get there.
Why do you need a marketing strategy?
As previously mentioned, without a marketing strategy, a company is likely to work on disparate marketing activities with no unifying approach to gaining a competitive advantage. These strategies are critical for companies as they outline the avenues and ways their marketing department will reach, attract and retain customers.
In fact, the act of creating a marketing strategy gives a company a considerable competitive advantage if that strategy is cohesive, responds creatively and effectively to market needs, and is backed by appropriate resources.
It’s important to note how marketing strategy differs from the marketing plan. The marketing strategy contains the company’s approach for gaining a competitive advantage, whereas the marketing plan will contain the activities needed to carry out each approach.
Different types of marketing strategies
Marketing strategies also differ depending on whether a company sells services or products business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C). In the case of B2B marketing strategies, they typically focus more on process-driven decisions, whereas B2C marketing strategies focus more heavily on more personal and emotional purchasing decisions.
