Marketing Strategy – Important Components

In simple basic terms, a marketing strategy is that particular section of one’s business plan that outlines the overall plan of action to find the clients and the customers. The focus is on what you want to achieve for your business. This is then laid out in details in the marketing plan. 

In concrete terms, this is planning, formulating, and building a well-defined approach to achieve the goals and objectives of the business.

The components of these would be to accomplish higher sales, increase the revenue generation for the company, and retain the loyal base of customers while attracting the new set of customers.  All these would all aim to gain a competitive advantage in the market among the others.

Competitive advantage

The foremost importance of the strategy is to help the company gain a decisive advantage in the market.  The aim is to have an edge over the existing players (and new entrants), all of whom also want to make a presence in the market.

Included in the strategy would be the unique selling propositions (USP) of the brand with its associated benefits and features of the products (and services) offered. This will be done in a creative, strategic and planned manner that highlights the brand.  

Branding

A strong and powerful strategy will help establish the brand in the consumer’s minds as a distinctly unique and strong product (or service) that can stand on its own among the many others in market niche it belongs. 

One of the main fundamentals of a strategy in marketing is to highlight and promote the attributes and the other strong qualities of the brand and its overall USP features.

Budget

The right provision of the budget needed in the implementation of the marketing plan needs to be defined first and very clearly in the strategy. The purpose is to keep the budget as planned with no under or over spending in any manner.

The strategy also plans out the allotted expenses on all aspects of the marketing agenda, all the way from concept to implementation. The budget is important because it provides the scope of the expenses and the levels of the expenditures.

Distribution

Once the strategy is set and laid out, management will be able to lay out the distribution scope as well. An effective distribution is one key to the success in the dissemination of the product to the customers.

With the advent of online selling these days, the distribution plan needs a well-defined strategy to map out its product releases in the right areas at the right time. The plan will be able to define the extent of the network needed.

Price

With research and studies on the market dynamics alongside the spending habits (and spending capacities) of the target market, a well wrought-out strategy can help the company. This holds true in arriving at an optimal pricing plan for its products.

The main yardstick is the current overall market confluence of competition and the company’s goals in generating higher sales and profits.  This is one significant point in the importance of marketing strategy for a company.