Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategy means a company’s long term plan of action to increase the sales and profit and to get a competitive advantage over the competitors.

Marketing strategy is the key part of the marketing plan for a company. The marketing division of any company devises the marketing strategy for the division. The marketing strategy is an important part of the corporate strategy. It is made in the direction of the organization which is directed by the corporate strategy.

The marketing strategy should be in line with the corporate strategy. When it is in line with the corporate strategy, then it can really succeed. The marketing strategy is devised by the top management. It speaks about the activities and measures to be taken for growth and profit of the organization.

The marketing strategy defines the plan of action to get customers to it products and services and to increase sales. It also devises strategies for the competition in the market.

Market strategies may be classified according to Philip Kotler, the marketing guru and writer of the “Marketing Management”, into different categories. Market dominance strategy – it depends on the market share or dominance. There are three strategies – Leader, Challenger and Follower. Markeing strategies for each one of them will be different. Leader will follow a different strategy, challenger will follow its marketing strategy and the follower will follow another strategy.

Porter generic strategies – It describes the strategic scope and strategic strength. It talks about the penetration and competitive advantages of the different companies. These startegies may be cost leadership, product differentiation, market segmentation. When you follow these strategies you will exercise penetration and competitive advantage

Your strategies will vary if you are a pioneer or a close follower or a late folllower in any innovation. At what rate you develop new products and business models will depend on the strategies you will need to follow. For growth an organization will have to decide its strategy after deciding its opportunities. There may be horizontal growth, vertical growth, diversification, intensification etc. In each case the strategies will be different from the other.

For different customers like prospector, defender, analyzer and reactor you should have different marketing strategies. For combating competition you will need other strategies like guerilla warfare strategies, frontal attack strategies, and side attack strategies.

In different situations, different economic conditions and industry conditions the marketing strategies will be different for the same organization. The marketing strategy sees the future path ahead, it does projection and then the strategy for that situation is devised by the expert minds.

Marketing strategy will require a few strategic models to find out ways and strategies for marketing and planning. The generally used models are 3Cs, Ansoff Matrix and 4Ps etc. All of them have their efetiveness in different areas of marketing strategy formulation

Marketing strategy is for a long term. It gives dirction to the marketing department. All activites like marketing plan preparation, tectics development, advertising, communication, public relation, business development are derived from the marketing strategy taken up by the organization.

For small businesses the marketig strategy will vary from the bigger organization. Marketing strategy is nothing but a tool to achieve the targeted goal of the organization for a period.