Marketing strategy: key to success in any business

Effective marketing strategy helps to gallop towards success

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Writuparna Kakati | 17 Mar, 2008
There is a lot of confusion over what marketing strategy is, how to create an effective marketing strategy, what is the purpose behind it, and so on. A simple definition of marketing strategy is that is a written guideline that may include definition of a business, position of that business, its position in the market, the target customers, the products and services it provides, the unique characteristics of the products and services, product pricing, distribution channels, advertising and promotional activities to be taken, possible R&D activities, image of the business in the market, etc. The central to any successful marketing strategy is an understanding of the customers, their needs and expectations, and how to achieve customer satisfaction so as to make yourself the most preferred business in the market. An ideal marketing strategy guides a business to manage the different marketing mix variables for effective marketing.

Key Elements of Effective Marketing Strategy

1. Multiple Marketing Tools: Research has revealed that a person is marketed 60-100 times per day in average. The success of a business largely depends how effectively it can reach its customers. The more a business know about its customers, the more it will be able to reach them in a better way. There are so many different means a business can use for this purpose- newspapers, magazines, television and radio broadcast, brochures, or many others. But while using these marketing tools, it should be kept in mind that all customers cannot be reached by using the same media. Everyone has a different attention span and uses different medias to search for different products and services. It is therefore, a business should use multiple marketing tools rather than using only one so that more and more customers can be targeted effectively. Find some good marketing tools below-

Advertisements in newspapers, magazines and other print media
Advertisement on commercial radio or television
Direct mail letters, postcards, etc.
Flyers, brochures, promotional products
Tradeshows, sponsorship of different pogrammes
Bus stops, school buses, regional transportation systems, and many more.

2. Don't Give up Too Early: After choosing a set of effective marketing tools that suits your business requirements and budget, it should be used over long periods of time. It is usually takes a person 8 - 12 times of viewing the same material to recognize the information and take action accordingly. Therefore, business should not grow tired of their marketing campaigns too early. If you want to achieve the desired result, you must have to wait and watch.

3. Using Marketing Tools in Different Places: Customers may come from a variety of sources and an you never really know who comes from where. It is therefore, marketing tools should be used in many different ways and places. Placing an ad in the newspaper, mailing product brochures directly to customers, or displaying products online- all these can help you to attract your prospects from various sources.

The American Marketing Association had rightly said that, "Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders".

Marketing is not merely selling something to somebody for profit. It involves satisfaction of the seller as well as the buyer. In this process, a customer buy a product or service as he requires it or benefit from it. In this respect, there are two major factors of marketing:

How to get new customers (acquisition)? and
How to retain and expand an existing client base (base management)?

Once a business acquires a market, it has to start the continuous process of base management by
using different marketing tools and channels. Thus, marketing is not just a transaction. Marketing involves the objectives of a business, planning to achieve those objectives and tools and channel to use for this purpose, and many more things.