Marketing Strategy
The marketing strategy is an outside-in approach. It’s how you want the world to view your company or product. Marketing strategy also provides guidance in identifying the appropriate marketing tactics to achieve your vision.
By understanding how you want your customers and competitors to view you, you can better understand the specific tactics you need to employ. Unless the change that you wish to undertake is purely cosmetic, the implementation of a marketing strategy will undoubtedly require changes to operations.
Successful organizations are well-aligned, meaning that all aspects of the organizations are aligned to their core values. A good marketing strategy will provide guidance when developing or evolving products and services. It will also assist in determining how resources should be allocated.
Good strategy requires that the organization make some hard choices about where to allocate resources and what the organization is willing to give up in one area in order to excel in another.
Components of marketing strategy are:
- External analysis (political, economic, sociocultural, technological)
- Generic strategy (cost leadership, differentiation, segmentation)
- Five forces (power of buyers, power of suppliers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, rivalry and complements)
- Strategy canvas (relative strengths and weaknesses of your offering)
Further reading suggestions:
Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael E. Porter
Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
