Why and how to develop a marketing strategy?

Marketing Strategy: Definition & Approaches

What Does Developing a Marketing Strategy Involve?

Implementing a marketing strategy is essential for defining how a company positions itself in its market or enters new markets. It consists of an action plan targeting long-term marketing and commercial objectives. This approach aims to increase sales, attract and retain customers, capture market share, and launch effective campaigns.

Each company adopts its own strategy, either by focusing on a global vision of its positioning or by developing strategies specific to certain products. This involves decisions about brand positioning, product or service offerings, and target market—critical choices for success.

Why Embark on a Marketing Strategy Journey?

A marketing strategy is crucial for any business, serving as the foundation to stand out in a competitive market with strong marketing performance:

• It strengthens brand or product visibility

• It effectively focuses on the target customer base

• It refines communication to reach consumers in a relevant way

This approach not only allows you to differentiate from competitors by highlighting your unique strengths but also enables you to confidently enter new markets or launch innovations. By building on a solid marketing strategy, a company increases its chances of commercial success, ensuring optimal ROI for product development.

What Are the Three Major Marketing Strategies?

The Differentiation Strategy

Among the major marketing strategies, the differentiation strategy is adopted when a company seeks to distinguish itself. This distinction can be achieved in several ways:

• The company can opt for premium positioning, offering luxury products or services that surpass those of competitors—known as upward differentiation

• Conversely, it can choose to target more accessible positioning by reducing the tier level to differentiate itself—called downward differentiation

The decision to implement a differentiation strategy requires thorough market analysis. Introducing a low-cost product, for example, is only wise if it aligns with the target customer base's expectations and needs. Adopting a differentiation strategy gives the company the opportunity to improve its brand image and capitalize on its competitive advantage by clearly standing out in the market.

The Penetration Strategy

The market penetration strategy aims to introduce a product into a broad market with competitive pricing. The objective is clear: maximize sales from the start by adopting an aggressive approach to quickly capture a significant market share.

To achieve this goal, it's crucial to implement advertising campaigns focused on push marketing (example: mobile marketing). The intention behind this approach is to quickly establish market presence and gain recognition among a broad audience.

Within this strategy, it's common to initially offer particularly attractive prices to draw consumers, with the option to raise these rates after an initial period. This tactic aims to attract maximum users by offering immediate advantage while leaving the door open for pricing adjustments once market presence is solidly established.

The Concentration or Focus Strategy

The concentration (or focus) strategy targets a specific market segment or niche, allowing the company to precisely respond to the unique needs of this audience. By specializing in a particular segment, the company can offer highly personalized products or services and become a leader in this specific domain.

A concentration strategy requires deep knowledge of the chosen segment and the ability to provide clearly perceived added value to the target customer base. It promotes customer loyalty and justifies higher prices through specialization and developed expertise.

To succeed, it's crucial to identify a segment with needs that are poorly or inadequately covered by current offerings and focus on precisely satisfying these needs. The concentration strategy thus allows clear differentiation from competitors and establishment as a reference for the targeted segment.

Other strategies exist, such as skimming strategy, pull and push marketing strategies, etc. The goal is to find and combine marketing techniques that match your company and the tools at your disposal to achieve your objectives (influencer marketing, SEO, SEA, content marketing, social media, etc.).

What Are the Three Major Steps to Define a Marketing Strategy?

Step 1: The Foundations of an Effective Marketing Strategy

Identifying Your Marketing Objectives

Implementing a high-performing marketing strategy relies on defining marketing objectives that are both realistic and ambitious. For this, the SMART objectives method proves particularly effective. The SMART acronym breaks down as follows:

• Specific: A well-formulated objective must be clear and understandable, which means being precise in its definition to facilitate achievement and comprehension

• Measurable: The ability to evaluate progress is essential. It's therefore necessary to define quantitative or qualitative indicators, such as the objective of increasing product sales by 20%, to measure advancement toward the goal

• Attainable: The objective must be realistic. This requires an honest evaluation of the company's and its teams' capabilities to handle the required efforts to reach the set objective

• Relevant: An objective must be meaningful and aligned with the company's overall ambitions. It's crucial to ensure the objective is well-chosen, relevant for the moment, and contributes positively to the global strategy

• Time-bound: Setting a deadline is essential to maintain focus and avoid dispersion. An objective must have a clear deadline to encourage progression and realization within a specific timeframe

Deep Understanding of the Target Market

This crucial step involves knowing how the target market functions, its evolutionary dynamics, and main players (suppliers, competitors, etc.). A precise analysis is a fundamental pillar of any solid marketing plan.

It's then necessary to proceed with an internal diagnosis. This process consists of evaluating the company's current state by identifying its strengths and unique characteristics. This is an opportunity to create a precise portrait of the company at a given moment.

From this data, it's appropriate to synthesize the information via the SWOT matrix, an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This analysis allows methodical breakdown of the following elements:

• Company Strengths: We examine various aspects of the activity to determine the company's competitive advantages, customer perception, financial health, and internal structure

• Weaknesses: This reflection encompasses all areas susceptible to improvement, such as finances, human resources, products, market positioning, and business management

• Opportunities: To detect new growth paths, it's wise to analyze market segments not exploited by the company's current products. It also involves considering available internal resources to launch new services

• Market Threats: It's crucial to examine the company's external environment, including potential challenges that could affect its balance. This includes analyzing legislation, the sector's economic climate, and consumer attitudes toward the product

Target Selection & Study

The third key phase in developing an effective marketing strategy is understanding who you're addressing. To achieve this, it's recommended to create "buyer personas"—detailed profiles representing the company's ideal customers. When constructing a buyer persona, several aspects must be considered:

• Age: What is your typical client's age?

• Financial situation: What financial means do they have?

• Gender: What is their gender?

• Professional activity: In which sector do they work? What is their position?

• Purchasing behavior: How do they prefer to make purchases? What budget do they allocate?

• Personal situation: What is their family situation? Where do they live?

This information is crucial for understanding the needs and consumption behaviors of your future clients. With deep understanding of these elements, you'll be able to design a marketing strategy that truly resonates with your audience's habits and expectations.

Step 2: Developing a Marketing Plan

Working on Positioning and Unique Value Proposition

After carefully identifying your ideal client's characteristics, it's imperative to design a tailored offer to meet their needs. This step falls within brand positioning and defining the unique value proposition.

Positioning revolves around a clear, coherent, and distinguished value proposition designed specifically for the target customer base. To ensure effective and impactful positioning, a company must clearly communicate the unique advantages and benefits of its product or service. Successful positioning is characterized by its ability to be:

• Explicit: The proposition must be immediately understandable by the target audience, eliminating any ambiguity about the value provided

• Distinctive: In a competitive market, positioning must highlight what makes you unique, emphasizing your differentiation and avoiding confusion with existing offers

• Relevant: An offer must not only respond to current customer needs but also strategically fit within the market context, considering trends and sector developments

Product Definition, Channel Selection & Resource Planning

Creating a marketing action plan relies on a structured approach known as the marketing mix. This strategy revolves around four fundamental components:

• Product: This dimension involves precisely defining product characteristics by identifying its functionalities, advantages, and limitations. The objective is to understand how the product meets target needs and what benefits they can derive

• Price: The pricing strategy must consider the target audience and strive to set a price customers deem acceptable while allowing the company to achieve profit margins. It's about finding balance between customer-perceived value and market conditions

• Communication: This component describes how to effectively communicate product strengths to the target market. It encompasses selecting key messages and choosing tactics and communication channels to reach consumers (influencer marketing, content marketing, social media strategy, SEO, marketing automation, etc.)

• Distribution: This involves determining the most suitable distribution channels to make the product accessible, considering both physical and digital options (mobile marketing, website, press, etc.)

However, a more complete vision of the marketing mix includes three additional dimensions:

• People: Emphasis is placed on ensuring employees are fully convinced of the product's qualities so they can act as brand ambassadors

• Process: This dimension concerns optimizing procedures involved in product design, production, and delivery to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction

• Physical Environment: This involves enriching customer experience through all tangible elements associated with the product, such as packaging or point-of-sale design, to create a memorable and positive experience

Step 3: Execution and Success Measurement

Adjustments and Continuous Optimization

Deploying a marketing strategy is an evolutionary process requiring regular adjustments to remain relevant. It's therefore crucial to constantly monitor this strategy to ensure its effectiveness. Here are some essential elements to track:

• Sales: They constitute a direct indicator of return on investment. Analyzing whether sales objectives are met allows evaluating strategy effectiveness

• Distribution: It's important to verify that the product is distributed effectively to maximize its availability to consumers

• Customer Satisfaction: Gathering customer feedback on the product offers valuable insights regarding satisfaction levels and continuous improvement. This helps adjust the product according to consumer needs and preferences

• Brand Perception: Understanding how the brand is perceived in the market is essential for adjusting communication strategy and strengthening its position

Implementing monitoring of these key performance indicators is essential for adapting marketing strategy based on obtained results and market evolution. Periodic strategy review isn't just recommended—it's necessary to ensure marketing actions remain aligned with commercial objectives and market expectations.

Performance Indicators and Analysis

To evaluate marketing strategy effectiveness and make informed adjustments, it's crucial to base decisions on key performance indicators (KPIs). Here are some of the most relevant KPIs:

• Conversion Rate: Measures the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action (purchase, registration, etc.). This indicator is essential for evaluating marketing campaigns' effectiveness in encouraging action

• Cost per Acquisition (CPA): Calculates the average cost to acquire a client. CPA helps evaluate the efficiency of advertising and marketing expenses in converting prospects to customers

• Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): Estimates the total revenue a customer will generate for the company during their relationship. Knowing LTV allows adjusting marketing and retention strategies to maximize profitability

• Retention Rate: Indicates the percentage of customers who continue using or buying the company's products over a given period. A high retention rate signals high customer satisfaction and strong brand loyalty

• Return on Investment (ROI): Measures the gain or loss generated by marketing campaigns relative to invested amounts. ROI is crucial for evaluating overall marketing strategy effectiveness and justifying expenses

• Share of Voice (SOV): Analyzes the brand's presence in conversations and media compared to competitors. This KPI is useful for evaluating brand visibility and market impact

• Engagement Rate: On social media platforms, measures user interaction with brand content (likes, shares, comments). It indicates content strategy resonance and its ability to engage the audience

Our Tips for Developing Your Marketing Strategy

To close this article, we wanted to offer three tips that seem essential for effectively developing and monitoring your marketing strategy: