Tuesday, August 28, 2012

The necessity of Strategic Marketing


We find that many companies are spending resources trying to sell to the wrong markets against competitors that are so much stronger than they were in markets that are looking to sell and the lack of critical attention in this area due to not understanding their strategic marketing imperatives . We see companies selling the wrong products with the wrong people to the wrong customers and the strategic marketing planning work could fundamentally alter the odds and get a much more solid base in markets where they compete for the best opportunity to win. Therefore, the strategic planning of marking has a place in every company. Often, entrepreneurs look at marketing plans as strategic documents that are put on the shelf and never really put into practice, but if the strategic marketing planning is done as an exercise regularly and updated as part of the business process of your business planning , you 'll have many more opportunities to accelerate the growth of your business, winning sales and improve revenues and profitability.

Let's talk about strategic marketing planning and why is it so important for companies. Many companies do not have a strategic marketing plan that becomes a source of guidance for the center of their activities. A lot of planning strategic view of business owner, in general, to be a real tedious exercise, but without sound strategic planning of a company would be spending resources to try to sell you should not have a more targeted approach. Strategic marketing planning has a number of different benefits including being a meeting point for all internal employees to understand and be on the same page regarding the focus of your company, understand the market in a much more detailed than competition, figure out who the competition is, what are their strengths and weaknesses and how to compete and develop competitive strategies. The strategic planning of marking allows a company to define its focus in terms of key target markets, target segments, customers and the actual profiles of target customers potential that helps your sales force to be more effective when it comes to selling your products or services. Finally, the strategic marketing planning is really the basis for an effective program to accelerate sales.

Strategic marketing planning begins with defining the target markets the company is after, and basically requires research on how the markets are segmented and a breakdown of these segments, in terms of priority for your company. If you're like most companies, you can not afford to go after every segment of the market in your market. What you do is you need to focus on those segments that have the best opportunities for your business and better align with the main strengths and competencies of your company and what makes you different. This is the key to building a sustainable competitive advantage. Many companies engage in what is called the Red Ocean strategy, so they focus on sales in markets that are highly competitive, where the water is a crimson color as a result of all the blood that is spilled among all competitors fighting for the same key clients. Smart companies, however, focus on what we call a blue ocean strategy, which is finding bodies of water where competition is less strong and where the company has a better chance to win sales and increase its sales win ratio in relation to the total number of prospects and deals that you are watching. This is an example of how strategic marketing planning exercises can help companies define markets that are less competitive and where the company can be more unique.

Strategic marketing planning also focuses, in addition to targeting and segmentation, focusing on target customers and profiling customers in terms of size, industry focus, what their pain is, what it should have and how these needs align with the company's core product offerings and strengths. So, a lot of time must be spent in the process of strategic marketing really determine what is the profiling of target customers. In addition, strategic marketing should focus on who the target buyers are in those positions in terms of security, in terms of work function, in terms of decision-making responsibilities, and try to figure out exactly who are the components of different that the samples are, who the decision makers are in that audience. This works in terms of understanding the target audience within that market eventually leads to the ability to develop messaging and positioning statements. It focuses a lot on the pain and the specific needs of these customers in their target companies.

Another important element of strategic marketing planning is doing competitive analysis. If your company does not have a deep understanding of what the competitive landscape in its key markets, how can you hope to win? Good competitive analysis means categorizing each of the competitors, the main segments, understand their strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats from these competitors and develop a competitive matrix that aligns the competitors at a table and makes a ' comparison analysis between your company and those competitors that are important, depending on the product, service, offer, price, product features, service capabilities, geographic reach, all of these criteria are used to see how well you accumulate against competition.

If you do good, competitive analysis, you will have a much stronger understanding of the details of who your competitors are, how to compete against them and that becomes the basis for developing a good competitive strategy that can be spread even if your company. He has broad implications for the products you produce, the types of services that we offer, and also, perhaps most important, it becomes a foundation for training the sales staff on how to compete against the competition to win and build a sustainable competitive advantage . Every company must define its unique selling proposition and build a sustainable competitive advantage and foundation for this is you know the competition, understand where they are strong where you are strong against them, and how to win.

The next element of a strategic marketing plan is to determine the overall position of your company, what's unique selling proposition of your company, what aspects of your business that you want to make it truly unique that buyers and prospects know first about your company? Most companies that are trying to overcome the confusion competitive advantage in your market today do a great job of articulating what their unique selling proposition is and what is their value proposition is relative to their competitors. To whittle down to a couple of words that can be easily created, a vision in the minds of their prospective buyers where the positioning is easily understandable, is the process of defining how your company is going to position itself in its core market of its prospects and its customers.

The next step in the process of strategic marketing planning, of course, is developing solid messaging - specific words that are designed to provide an exact image of your company's capabilities and its unique selling proposition in its target customers and prospects . Messaging is a skilled operation that requires special attention to the use of words in order to maximize the impact of the marketing message on clients. It is not easy to get your messaging right. A lot of companies make mistakes, using the same kind of ho-hum words that all their competitors are using and then enter into a disadvantageous position untenable noncompetitive. Therefore, the development of solid messaging really resonates with your potential customers and prospects in your target market is extremely important. Messaging, if done well, should be developed in a guide messaging as part of your strategic marketing plan. And this guide messaging becomes a foundation for the exits in your marketing materials, presentation, collateral, website, content, data sheets, all proposals that are written for all customers should be an output from all the guides based Messaging is done in your strategic marketing planning process. So driving becomes really outgoing messaging. Moreover, for all your marketing communications programs, be it advertising, direct mail and other forms of promotion to generate leads.

So why is it important to make strategic marketing planning? Strategic marketing planning is the foundation for the development of a profitable well-focused sales program. Many companies miss this and go on the deployment of sales resources without fundamentally have a marketing strategy. A marketing strategy is your strategic plan by marking. What is your company doing to develop its marketing strategy? How well do you understand your customers, your target markets, segments that are competitive? What is your unique selling proposition, you did a thorough analysis of what the competition is and how you plan to win? Your sales team understand all these matters as it relates to the conduct of their daily work successfully? If your company needs help with marketing strategy, our company can help....

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