It’s well known that strategic marketing term, but it is also true that sometimes it may sound quite boring. Actually, there is something in business strategies that repels. Maybe it sounds too old. It sounds like a lot of suited up gentlemen in meeting rooms. We get it, although in reality, strategy is something vital for the company, it’s the basis and it doesn’t wear ties; it takes to roll up our brains and start researching to think and make the best decisions.
Without a business strategy it’s as if we had a capuccino with toppings Served in a jar of jam on our sofa in the loft, leaving death ideals with our Instagram post and, with a business strategy, we put on overalls and investigate those we want to sell to and retain. We don’t hesitate if we have to enter our customer’s store to see how they buy, go on a business visit as many days as it takes or make calls to our client type, the so-called buyer persona.
The other day we talked about the marketing plan in our article how to design a marketing plan and not die trying. We were talking about we had to design competitive strategies, positioning, segmentation to go on to design them in each area or marketing policy (product, price, distribution, communication, client, people, physical evidence…). Well, yes, we keep what we said, only this time we want you to keep in mind, for the time being, with the most important basic marketing strategies in this post.
Marketing strategies
- Competitive advantage: your company surely has a super main advantage over your competitors. I imagine you won’t tell me that it’s because you are very professional, I’m not saying that you are not, but everyone says that! Surely you have something that others don’t have or won’t have and if you can’t think of what it is, you’re not ready to go live yet.
- Michael Porter’s competitive strategies: differentiating between whether you are going to choose a cost leadership strategy, differentiation or focus seems irrelevant, but in addition to distribution and pricing strategies, it is reflected in the tone of a TikTok publication. Imagine you choose a focus strategy and go talk about cheap prices for everyone in your ‘bragging’ video… It sounds somehow incoherent, right?
- Competitive strategies with Ansoff’s matrix: thanks to this matrix you can make decisions regarding products and the market: depending on how attractive they are – current or new – you will decide if you are going to penetrate the market with more or less aggressive strategies, you are going to develop new products, new markets or you are going to diversify. Realize how the strategy, we insist, is key, that in a Google Ads campaign having made the decision to develop a new market implies that ads appear, for example, in a new country or for a new age range.
- Mc Kinsey Matrix Strategy: with this matrix we can make decisions about products according to whether the market appeal and our competitive position is more or less strong.
- Decisions about product life cycle:it is clear that it’s not the same to have recently launched the product as having it on the market for years. Products in the introduction phase and in the maturity phase deserve different strategies.
- Product decisions using the Boston Consulting Group matrix:dogs, cows, questions and stars. We want stars, we also want cows, some questions but please, fewer dogs. Decisions about our products with this matrix will remind you of the life cycle one, but also, as you practice, you will find similarities and interrelationships with other strategies we are analyzing.
- Competitive integrative strategies backward and forward, up and down. The thing is to make the decision to acquire or “eat” anyone in your distribution chain to make you stronger.
- Positioning strategy: warning, it has nothing to do with the SEO we know (search engine positioning) but it is brand positioning, which is perception, the image about the place our brand occupies in the minds of our consumers. If we want our brand to share place with another you like, sorry, it’s not possible. It may happen that you share criteria and ratings regarding different attributes, but you will never be in the same place as another brand. Positioning strategy is brand strategy, that’s why, it is essential to work on it. We squeeze our brains out with it and that’s exactly where we work the most, on developing territories and creative concepts. You can hear about it in the podcast about branding Description, about the importance of messages for a brand with our creative head, Mana Perales. When we start with a new project, we don’t move a finger until we are certain about the real and desired brand positioning. How is it found? Through market research we will have to ask our customers what attributes they are identifying us with.
- Segmentation strategy: if we want to reach the customers we are interested in, we have to know who they are and exactly what how they are like. In class we go through it all, as if we were putting the entire audience in one spot. Boys and girls between the ages of 16 and 28 who like urban sports. Obviously I may want to segment them by geographical area and launch different strategies for each one. In this example, lifestyle is what sets the tone and the geographical area can be decisive in terms of prices, for instance. The segmentation strategy is a complex process and we find it very fun to solve. Skill is acquired through practice, like so many things in life. And to land after our ramblings in order to defend the importance of this strategy we could say that a deep knowledge of our segments (consumer groups) and our buyers (prototype) will help us connect with them. Imagine an inbound marketing strategy that is destined to seduce our x client segment, we send you content that we know he loves because we have researched it ad nauseam: BINGO.
This is how we end today. We’d like you to expand the information about strategy with throughout other posts on this website, there are many interesting articles, both from marketing blogs, as well as from other colleagues and agencies that are doing super well and always run from those who do not talk to you about business strategy.
