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Developing Marketing Strategies to Achieve Business Goals

Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, is famous for admitting, “I am the world’s worst salesman,” and his resulting business philosophy “therefore, I must make it easy for people to buy.” Making it easier for customers to buy from you starts with sound marketing strategies—the logic you use to position your organization in the market and achieve your business objectives.

Here is a five-step, relational thinking exercise to get your wheels turning. This exercise focuses your attention on those aspects of your business that most need to be addressed with marketing strategies. Consider the questions indicated under each step.

Step 1. Identify Broad Strategic Goals

What are the organization’s broad strategic goals as outlined in the strategic plan?
What general marketing approach does the organization intend to take this year to meet its strategic goals?

Typically, strategic marketing goals fall into one of four categories:

Market penetration: This approach focuses marketing initiatives on gaining and retaining a greater share of existing targeted markets (i.e., we aim to get and keep relationships with more customers like our current customers).
Product development: This focuses the organization on developing more products or services to sell to existing target audiences (i.e., we want to fulfill a broader range of our customers’ wants or needs in new ways).
Market development: You focus on selling existing products or services to brand new target markets (i.e., let’s figure out who else wants or needs our products or services and form a relationship with them).
Diversification: A combined approach, marketing initiatives focus simultaneously on new target markets and more products whereby existing, modified, and new products are sold in existing and new markets at the same time. (For example, let’s form and keep relationships with our primary target audience, find new and different targets to build relationships with, sell our existing products or services to both, and invent new products or services for both.)

Step 2. Use Strengths to Neutralize Threats

What strengths does our organization possess that neutralize threats from competitors and market dynamics?

Step 3. Build on Strengths to Leverage Opportunities

What strengths does our organization possess that can help us take advantage of our opportunities?

Step 4. Overcome Weaknesses That Aggravate Threats

How can the organization improve those weak spots that would help a threat from our competitors or the market to actualize?

Step 5. Choose Offense or Defense

Will a good “offense” or good “defense” help us use our strengths to neutralize threats, build on strengths to leverage opportunities, and overcome weaknesses that aggravate threats?

As in sports, in marketing there are offensive and defensive strategies. Developing offensive marketing strategies requires you to anticipate and take action accordingly. For example, you foresee customer wants and needs (via market research) and then develop an offensive customer strategy to adjust products or services to meet those needs before or better than competitors. Or you know (via market research) how potential customers think, feel, and experience the organization and then design an offensive communication strategy to build awareness of the mission, clarify any misperceptions, and engender loyalty.

Defensive marketing strategies are reactive in nature—typically in response to competitor activities or market dynamics. For example, you design a defensive cost strategy of incentives (lower sales prices, discounts, buy one, get one free) to attract customers away from competitors. Or, you utilize new or expanded marketing channels to increase the customer’s opportunity to buy from your organization versus competitors as a defensive convenience strategy.

Sample Marketing Strategies

Be sure the priority of your marketing strategies tracks with the expense priorities in your marketing budget. The following are common strategic approaches to consider as you develop appropriate marketing strategies for your organization’s unique situation:

Target a specific market segment where your competitor is weak.
Challenge the market leader in multiple ways simultaneously to erode competition and thereby capture market share.
Follow the market leader to minimize risk while maintaining market share.
Stimulate customers to stay loyal, try products and services, and purchase more via incentives.
Bypass competition by diversifying products and services.
Adapt domestic activities for international markets.
Identify and strengthen your weaknesses with targeted market segments.
Anticipate competitor attacks and position yourself to prevent, delay, or minimize any negative impact.
Build awareness and loyalty by promotion of image and mission.
Expand or diversify marketing channels.
Partner with competitors to cross-market noncompeting products and services.

Excerpted with author permission from Smart Marketing for Associations: Marketing Plans That Work, by M. Michelle Poskaitis.

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