Defining Your Marketing Strategy

Does your marketing strategy follow one of these proven methods?

There are a variety of marketing strategies you can employ to drive results. The strategies discussed in this article are some of the more popular strategies that have proven themselves effective time and again. After learning about each marketing strategy, determine which will work for you.

Customer Experience

The main focus of this marketing strategy is to "delight" the customer at every interaction. This drives customer loyalty and over time, increases share-of-wallet. The customer experience marketing strategy requires a disciplined effort to coordinate all touch points under a single brand image. This image must consider brand voice, look and feel, etc.

Fast Follower

Under this marketing strategy, your business introduces comparable or slightly superior offerings at a lower cost. When considering this marketing strategy for implementation, you must analyze your capabilities for production, market research, etc., to determine if you can efficiently follow your competitors.

Innovation

Does your business have a history of innovation? Some businesses thrive on developing new products, technologies, or services. This marketing strategy is appropriate for those companies that introduce ground breaking products or services as the key source of differentiation.

Operational Excellence

While many companies excel at developing new products, others effectively manage the process by which they create and deliver their products or services. Those employing operational excellence optimize the value chain to provide convenient, low cost products and services

Solutions

When you aggregate products and/or services to holistically address larger customer-specific needs, you are using a solutions marketing approach. Instead of promoting single products or services, you are pitching a solution to meet a series of customer needs - real or perceived.

Value

When a company continually strives to reduce costs from every aspect of the value chain to drive high margins, they are following a value marketing strategy. Examples of companies who abide by this strategy would include Dell and Walmart.

To effectively manage your marketing, determine which strategy is appropriate for your business. Start by defining your core competency, select a marketing strategy, and communicate it throughout all of your marketing communications.