We call ” strategic marketing ” the marketing aspect focused on the medium and long term, which uses different market analysis techniques to detect opportunities that allow the company to grow and stand out from its consumers, always keeping in mind the needs of the user. .
Instead of manufacturing products and services and then thinking about how to sell them to users, strategic marketing first analyzes the situation of the market, the competition and the consumers, and elaborates the products and services based on the detected niches.
In contrast to this concept we have operational marketing , which focuses on the short term and seeks to put into action the strategies that we have previously defined. Within operational marketing we would have budgeting and working on the different marketing actions at a tactical level. Within these actions we can find, for example, SEM campaigns and advertising on social networks, contests and raffles, promotions, communication of product launches and a long etcetera.
It is important to be clear that both variants, the strategic and the operational, are necessary for success. It is not advisable to launch actions without a strategy behind it, but planning is useless if we do not take it into action.
To make your work easier, when putting your strategic marketing plan into action , I recommend that you download: ” Checklist: list of prerequisites to launch your digital marketing campaigns “.
The steps to develop a strategic marketing plan
Since it is a vision of the future, strategic marketing is characterized by developing the company’s marketing plan. To do this, it will be necessary to carry out a series of previous steps:
- Market study . Before launching products and services on the market, it is necessary to take into account what is the scenario we are facing. How is the situation of the economy in general and of our sector in particular? Are there already other similar or complementary products? What unmet needs can we detect?
- Definition and segmentation of the target audience . Here we will stop to elaborate the ideal buyer person or client of our services, attending to their needs, challenges and psychodemographic characteristics. We will also study if we can distinguish between different subtypes that need to be segmented separately. The objective is to end up with a clear idea of who we want to address in order to be able to segment our campaigns properly.
- Competition study . The study of the competition is still one more factor in the study of the market, but it is convenient to delve into it because it can provide us with a lot of valuable information. At the very least, we need to investigate the most important companies that are direct competitors and find out Russian Federation Email List what their product catalog, positioning, price and strategies are. The final objective will be to know how we can distinguish ourselves from them and improve their offer.
- Strategy definition . Once we have all this information on the table, we can choose between different strategies that allow the company to achieve its objectives (don’t miss the examples at the end of this article!).
Benefits of strategic marketing
- Know where we are . Strategic marketing allows us to obtain an overview of the market, the competition and our potential customers. If we start from there, our actions will have a much better chance of success than if we shoot blindly.
- Get to know the consumer better . In today’s TR Numbers marketing, consumers are always at the center. Each time we have more demanding and informed users, so it will be necessary to know their needs and preferences in depth and take them into account in each step of our marketing.
- Set clear goals . Strategic marketing provides solid research on the situation. From there, it will be much easier to see what we want and how we can quantify it into a series of achievable goals.
