LECTURE DES ARTICLES - CLASS 90

Marketing Strategy

Marketing Strategy by Jenna Tiffany Overcome Common Pitfalls and Create Effective Marketing What's it about? Marketing & Sales Entrepreneurship Marketing Strategy (2021) is a comprehensive guide that decodes the intricacies of crafting and implementing effective marketing strategies. It introduces the reader to a practical framework known as STRATEGY, exploring each component through real-world examples and actionable insights. From setting smart objectives and understanding target audiences, to measuring performance and conducting post-mortem analyses, it provides a roadmap to marketing success. Marketing Strategy Introduction What’s in it for me? Make your marketing campaigns count. Imagine launching a marketing campaign with high hopes, only to see it underperform. Or spending hours poring over customer data, yet struggling to translate it into actionable insights. Such scenarios are common in the world of marketing. That’s where this Blink comes in. In it, we’ll introduce you to a practical and data-driven approach to crafting and implementing marketing strategies, known as the STRATEGY framework. This sequential guide will help you navigate every stage of the marketing process, from understanding your target audience, establishing clear objectives, and developing a keen understanding of your customers, to driving awareness, choosing the right tactics, and, finally, executing your plan efficiently. As a marketing professional or student, you’ll find here the practical solutions you need to overcome marketing challenges and succeed in today’s saturated and competitive market. Key idea 1 Understanding strategy Think of a successful marketing campaign as an exciting journey. Your well-planned strategy is your compass, guiding your way. And your tactics are the dependable vehicles helping you reach your destination. Both components are necessary. Imagine launching a promotional campaign, such as a holiday discount, without a robust strategy in place. In today’s increasingly saturated market, such an effort would just get lost in the crowd. Our world has gone digital, and mobile technology has dramatically reshaped public expectations. Consumers’ patience has dwindled. Now, people expect instant gratification and highly personalized experiences. Furthermore, customers’ budgets have been cinched tighter in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. So it’s even more crucial that your marketing campaigns be sharply focused and timely, have an impact, and consistently convey your brand’s message. Well-recognized brands haven’t achieved their status by accident –⁠ they're backed by exceptional marketing strategies. Just look at Apple and Google. Their names are practically interchangeable with technology and innovation. Compare that to a brand like Nokia, once a market leader but now relegated to the sidelines. Brand success or failure often comes down to strategy. The author’s STRATEGY framework encapsulates this concept in a digestible, sequential approach. It stands for Scenario, Targets, Reach, Awareness, Tactics, Execution, Generate, and Yield, representing the key elements that constitute a marketing strategy. This simple yet effective framework provides a step-by-step guide to crafting a compelling marketing strategy. Key idea 2 Considering the scenario In marketing, gaining a competitive advantage is one of your major quests. This is where the first element of the STRATEGY framework comes in: the Scenario. This is where you take stock of both the internal and external environments within which your business stands. When it comes to understanding the internal dynamics of your business, a handy tool is the SWOT model. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. What does your company do best, and where could it improve? What opportunities could you capitalize on? Or what kinds of threats –⁠ such as an increase in competition –⁠ could affect the company’s success? By analyzing each of these elements, you get a clear picture of the factors that could influence your strategic direction. Next up is understanding the wider, external context within which your business exists. The PESTLE model is the tool to use here. This acronym represents Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental factors. By considering each of these elements, you're better equipped to understand the broader forces that could shape your marketing strategy. Nike offers a striking example of a brand that successfully navigated its macro environment. In 2018, they appointed Colin Kaepernick, known for protesting against police violence toward Black Americans, as their US figurehead. Aligning with Kaepernick's profound message at a highly politically charged time earned Nike enormous success. Conversely, Pepsi’s infamous ad featuring Kendall Jenner faced backlash due to its lack of understanding of the social and political climate. Once you’ve conducted these analyses with the help of SWOT and PESTLE, the key is to synthesize your findings into a digestible form. A well-organized summary will provide the backbone for your marketing strategy, streamlining the subsequent steps of your strategic journey. Key idea 3 Setting targets Next up in our journey through the STRATEGY framework is setting Targets. This is the stage at which you define your objectives. A good objective serves as a yardstick for success or failure, providing clarity and focus for your team and stakeholders alike. To craft effective objectives, the SCALE framework provides invaluable guidance. This nifty acronym breaks down the core attributes that every objective should possess: Strategic, Considered, Audience, Lift, and End. The Strategic facet ensures that your marketing objectives are clearly defined and purposeful. Maybe your mission is to dispel misinformation about your product, or perhaps you want to captivate a new audience segment. The main thing is to have a concrete goal. Next, Considered objectives are all about staying grounded in reality. Your targets should be ambitious, yes, but also realistic. For instance, aiming to skyrocket sales in the midst of an economic downturn might not be a smart move. The Audience element is just as it sounds. Your objectives should always keep the target audience in mind. After all, you’re crafting this strategy for them. Track your campaign’s progress carefully, monitoring whether you’re pulling in the right crowd. Now let's talk Lift. This is about taking your key performance indicators, or KPIs, and breaking them down into manageable milestones. Whether you’re tracking new leads, web visits, or conversions, establishing weekly or monthly targets helps to keep your strategy dynamic and agile. Finally, End serves as a reminder to set a clear deadline. A definitive end date not only keeps everyone on track but also fosters a sense of urgency and momentum. An illustrative example of the SCALE framework in action comes from the author’s process of writing her book. The Strategic objective was to write a marketing book 78,000 words in length, planned out as a chapter per month for 39 weeks. The Considered goal was a realistic 2,000 words written every weekend. The Audience was the first round of readers – namely a proofreader and marketing colleagues. The Lift was the weekly target of 2,000 words, while the End was set as the book’s launch in May 2021. In this way, by harnessing the power of the SCALE framework to set your targets, you can chart a focused, realistic, and timely path to your strategic marketing objectives. Key idea 4 Reaching your customers Getting to know your customers is a critical step in the STRATEGY framework –⁠ the Reach stage. The better you know them, the better you can tailor your products and services to their needs, leading to increased conversions. One way to acquire a deep understanding of your customers is through ethical data collection. Options include questionnaires and preference centers, which offer transparent and respectful ways to gather data. Coupling this with market research, like focus groups, interviews, and surveys, or secondary data like trend reports and sales data, can provide comprehensive insights into your customers. Understanding customer segmentation is another crucial factor. By dividing your target audience into smaller groups based on location, demographics, interests, and behaviors, you can tailor your marketing efforts to each segment’s unique needs. This approach can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Creating “personas,” or customer profiles, is a great way to help with this. Personas are fictional representations of potential customers. They include details like age, where they live, how they shop, and what they’re interested in. Use these personas to position your product or service, matching it to what your customers want. Finally, keep an eye on your competitors. Understand how they position themselves, and use this knowledge to spot chances to stand out in the marketplace. You could sum up your unique position in one sentence. This clarity helps set your business apart. Key idea 5 Planning with awareness Now that we've understood our customers, we move on to the Awareness step in the STRATEGY framework. Here, we focus on driving a response, reaching our audience, and positioning our message accurately.  One way to ensure that your marketing strategy is balanced is to use the marketing mix, otherwise called the 7Ps. These are Product, Place, Price, Promotion, People, Process, and Physical Evidence. Let’s consider Promotion. This involves sharing what your product or service is, how to use it, and its benefits to the customer. You’ll want to use different marketing channels to get your message across, including ones that target a wide audience, like radio and TV, as well as ones that target a narrower group, like email marketing and social media.  Take Process as another example. This part of the marketing mix refers to the systems and procedures that a customer encounters when purchasing your product or service. This could involve the transaction process on your website, the web design, or the customer service process. Take Amazon Go’s supermarkets. These stores don’t have checkouts; instead, shoppers use their smartphones to add items to their baskets, and payment happens automatically when they leave the store. This process is efficient and saves the customer time. At every stage of the process, always keep your target market at the heart of your planning. In this way, you ensure your efforts align with your audience’s needs. Key idea 6 Deciding on tactics As we move along our STRATEGY framework, we arrive at a pivotal point –⁠ determining which tactics to deploy to reach your target audience. At this stage, it’s crucial to align your tactics with the values of each segment in your audience. This will ensure maximum resonance and engagement with your messaging. First, it’s important to recall the difference between a marketing channel and a tactic. A marketing channel is a path you choose to promote your product or service, such as social media, email marketing, or TV advertisements. A tactic, on the other hand, is how you use this chosen channel. Now, there are myriad marketing channels at your disposal, both digital and physical. Let's zoom in on social media as a key example.  A staggering 3.8 billion people use social media globally, but the usage of preference for social media platforms can vary greatly among different segments of your target audience. For instance, Facebook’s monthly user base consists of 2.5 billion users, predominantly males aged 25 to 34 years old. On the other hand, Pinterest has 322 million monthly users, 72 percent of whom are female, primarily aged between 25 and 34 years old. Such disparities highlight the importance of choosing the right platform to reach the right audience. One effective way to leverage social media is to identify and collaborate with a “micro-influencer.” These are individuals who may not boast millions of followers but hold significant sway in their niche areas. For example, a parent with a blog popular among other parents could provide a lot of value to a brand that targets a similar demographic. So remember: when picking marketing tactics, always keep your target audience front and center.  Key idea 7 Determining the execution Delving into the next part of the STRATEGY framework, we now focus on the who, what, and when of implementing your all-encompassing marketing strategy. It’s about meticulously planning out the resources, budget, timing, and the approach to measuring your KPIs. A crucial element to remember during this phase is consistency. If your messaging oscillates in tone or style, it can confuse your audience, causing a misfire in your marketing efforts. For example, a lack of a clear target demographic in the marketing messages of Marks & Spencer clothing resulted in confusion and underperformance. Also, remember to roll out your tactics strategically, paying particular attention to the customer journey. A customer journey traces the path a customer takes from first identifying a problem to finally making a purchasing decision. For instance, consider a scenario in which a customer's car needs repair. She searches online for a solution, comes across a company, signs up for emails, compares this company to others, and finally decides to go ahead with their services. At almost every stage in this journey, a timely email or push notification could sway her decision. Appropriate KPIs can serve as invaluable guides during each phase of the customer journey. For example, when your aim is to increase the customer’s awareness of your brand, you might use marketing tactics such as landing pages, email newsletters, or YouTube videos. Relevant KPIs might include email marketing subscribers or content downloads. As we piece together all of these insights, we are gradually painting a comprehensive picture of what a successful marketing strategy looks like. Key idea 8 Generating results At the Generate phase of our STRATEGY framework, you’re now assessing whether you’re on the right path to your set objectives. This is the time to get constructive feedback, explore your results, and ascertain the responses you’ve received. It’s vital to gather data from multiple channels. For instance, website analytics could be a gold mine of information. Or you can track visits to exclusive URLs that people can only access if they’ve interacted with your offline marketing. Let’s consider that your goal was to boost the sales of a certain product for a specific customer segment. Your yardstick would be revenue generation and the number of sales in contrast to the objective you initially set. Also, take a closer look at the quality of the traffic you attract. Do visitors spend considerable time on your website, or is the bounce rate worryingly high? If it hovers above 40 percent, it’s time for some investigative work. Now, to transform raw data into valuable insights, consider this four-step plan. Start by defining your benchmark. Following that, set objective KPIs, such as conversion rate, engagement score, and click-through rate, to track performance. Make sure your approach to measuring performance remains consistent over time, or document any changes made. Finally, ensure you align your insights with your objectives to make certain your time and effort are invested in the right areas. Remember, regular monitoring and measuring of performance is crucial. It equips your marketing team with the ability to make quick adjustments when things don’t go as planned. Key idea 9 Analyzing yield The finale of the STRATEGY framework, the Yield phase, is all about analyzing outcomes and learning for the future. The endgame of any well-crafted marketing strategy is to evaluate whether the set objectives were achieved and by what margin. To figure this out, consider KPIs and year-on-year (YOY) results, both crucial metrics that will help you understand what worked, what didn’t, and why. Consider the example of British Gas. In 2013, the company invited its Twitter followers to ask questions of its customer services director about a recent 9.2 percent price rise. But the campaign was not well-received. Within a short time, the company was bombarded by tweets, with customers publicly expressing their outrage. The episode proved to be a PR disaster. By failing to analyze its audience’s past reactions to similar price hikes, British Gas also failed to anticipate the public outcry. Going back to the Yield phase, one essential aspect of a strategic approach to evaluation is mapping your data against your set goals. If, for example, the goal was to boost web traffic through SEO, that's exactly what your analysis should focus on. There are several KPIs associated with each marketing channel that can be explored to better understand their individual contributions to achieving the overarching goal. Once the analysis has been thoroughly done, the next step is to convert these measurements into actionable plans. A post-campaign analysis, or PCA, is an effective way to do this. It involves collecting visual examples of published content and advertising, such as screenshots of email marketing campaigns, and conducting a critical review. The aim is to be brutally honest about the aspects that didn’t work or could have been more efficient. A PCA also involves answering three critical questions: What strategies will you repeat? What will you change? And what will you stop doing altogether? These answers will ultimately shape your future marketing strategies, ensuring you’re continually learning, growing, and refining your approach based on real data and results.