Development of Marketing Strategy Essay Example

like other aspects of business philosophy, is a topic open to debate and complexity. In the field of marketing, the term "market environment" refers to external forces that impact a marketing management's ability to establish and maintain successful relationships with target customers. These forces include both the macro environment and the micro environment.

The micro environment consists of forces that are closely related to the company itself and influence its customer service capabilities. Marketing intermediaries, such as resellers, physical distribution firms, marketing services agencies, and financial intermediaries, all play a role in promoting, selling, and distributing the company's products to end customers. Resellers specifically refer to entities that stock and sell the goods produced by this company.

Physical distribution firms, such as warehouses, are essential for storing and transporting a company's products from their origin to their destination. These products are then distributed to customers who may shop at popular retailers like Curry's, PC World, Wal-Mart, Target, and others. Alongside this, marketing services agencies provide different services including marketing research, advertising, and consulting to support companies in their marketing endeavors. Financial intermediaries like banks, credit companies, and insurance companies also make up the microenvironment. Ultimately, customers constitute another significant aspect of the microenvironment.

There are different markets for customers, which include consumer markets, business markets, government markets, international markets, and reseller markets. The consumer market comprises individuals who purchase goods and services for personal or household use. Business markets consist of organizations that buy goods and services to incorporate them into their own products. Reseller markets consist of businesses that acquire goods to sell them as-is for a profit (market intermediaries). The government market consists of governmental agencies

that procure goods for the production of public services or distribution to others in need. International markets involve buyers from other countries and encompass customers from all the mentioned categories.

The microenvironment includes competitors - other companies offering similar goods and services. To maintain competitiveness, a company must analyze its main competitors considering its own size and industry position to gain a strategic advantage. The presence of publics is another crucial aspect in the microenvironment - groups with an interest or influence on the organization's goal achievement. Financial publics can hinder access to funds, affecting credit availability. Media publics like newspapers and magazines can publish articles or editorials influencing customer opinions.

Government publics have the power to impact a company by passing legislation and laws that impose restrictions on the company’s actions. Citizen-action publics, including environmental groups and minority groups, have the ability to question a company’s actions and bring attention to them. Local publics, such as neighborhood and community organizations, also have the right to raise concerns about a company’s impact on the local area and assess their level of responsibility. The general public, which constitutes the company’s customer base, holds significant influence on the company's success as any change in their perception can have a positive or negative impact on sales. Additionally, there are employees within the company who handle organizational matters and product construction. The macro environment encompasses all external forces that exist within society and influence the microenvironment. This includes factors such as demography, economy, natural forces, technology, politics, and culture.

Demography encompasses various crucial aspects for marketers, such as family dynamics, geographic shifts, work force changes, and levels of diversity in specific areas.

Another element of the macro environment is the economic environment, which pertains to the purchasing power of prospective customers and their spending habits. This domain comprises two distinct economies: subsistence and industrialized. Subsistence economies primarily rely on agriculture and consume their own industrial output, whereas industrialized economies feature diverse markets with a wide range of goods.

The marketer values each factor in the macro environment due to their distinct spending patterns and wealth distribution. Additionally, the natural environment plays a crucial role, encompassing the company's utilization of natural resources and its impact on marketing activities. Key concerns within this sphere include escalating pollution, raw material scarcity, and heightened government intervention.

The scarcity of raw materials poses a growing challenge for companies in manufacturing their products. Additionally, if a company has a negative environmental impact, pollution can harm its reputation. Government regulations further complicate matters for companies. Furthermore, the technological landscape is constantly changing, with advancements in healthcare (such as antibiotics and surgery), defense (including nuclear missiles and chemical weapons), and commerce (like automobiles and credit cards).

Companies must continually update their technology as markets evolve to seize new product utilization opportunities and maintain a competitive edge. Staying up-to-date with trends and engaging in future innovations is crucial for companies to avoid financial consequences and prevent falling behind. In society, the political environment encompasses laws, government agencies, and various groups that exert influence on organizations and individuals.

It is important for marketers to comprehend the intricate nature of these regulations, as they can apply on both state and federal levels. Certain products have audience restrictions, such as cigarettes not being allowed to be advertised to young children. Additionally, multiple limitations

are imposed on subliminal messages and monopolies.

It is crucial for marketers to monitor laws and regulations as they frequently change. The cultural environment, which includes institutions, values, and beliefs of a specific group, also plays a vital role in the macroenvironment. These values can be divided into core beliefs that are deeply ingrained and difficult to change, as well as secondary beliefs that are more easily influenced. Marketers need to understand this distinction and adapt their campaigns accordingly to align with the values of their target audience.

To ensure success, companies should take a proactive approach in managing the marketing environment by creating an environment that fosters their achievements and focusing on areas with significant customer potential. Both the macro and microenvironment require equal attention, with any modifications being promptly addressed.

A marketing strategy is a process that helps an organization prioritize its resources towards the best opportunities for increasing sales and gaining a competitive advantage. The main focus of a marketing strategy is to ensure customer satisfaction. It involves directing an organization's efforts and resources towards a specific course of action that can result in higher sales and dominance in a particular market niche. A marketing strategy encompasses various aspects such as product development, promotion, distribution, pricing, and relationship management. Additionally, it defines the marketing goals of the company and outlines the steps to achieve them within a specified timeframe.

Marketing strategy involves decision-making regarding target market segments, positioning, marketing mix, and resource allocation. An example of this is using a low-cost product to attract consumers. By establishing a relationship with consumers through the low-cost product, our organization can then sell additional higher-margin products and services that

enhance the consumer's experience.

A strategy encompasses carefully planned tactics that improve the effectiveness of a marketing plan. Marketing strategies are crucial for meeting market needs and achieving marketing objectives. Plans and objectives are typically evaluated based on measurable results. A marketing strategy integrates an organization's marketing goals, policies, and action sequences (tactics) into a unified approach.

In the same way, companies can orchestrate the different strands of their strategy such as advertising, channel marketing, internet marketing, promotion, and public relations. They often cascade the strategy throughout the organization by creating tactics for each level or group, which then become the goals for the next level or group. Each group is responsible for developing tactics to achieve their assigned strategy goals. It is crucial to make each strategy goal measurable to ensure success.

Marketing strategies encompass a blend of planned and unplanned approaches, making them dynamic and interactive. The specific circumstances of each business influence the types of strategies employed, resulting in variation. Nonetheless, there exist numerous generic categorization methods to depict these strategies. Below is a concise summary of the frequently utilized schemes.

The Marketing departments of companies are always looking for "Growth Opportunities" in their specific categories. These opportunities are identified through analyzing relevant insights about the mindsets and behaviors of target Consumers, Shoppers, and retail partners. They stem from changes in market trends, segment dynamics, and internal brand or operational challenges. Once found, the Marketing team can prioritize these opportunities and create strategies to take advantage of them. This may involve introducing new or modified products, services, or making organizational changes. Real Life Marketing focuses on practical application by using common sense to navigate a complex

landscape with limited information and resources. Classical marketing techniques only have partial effectiveness in these situations. Consequently, the development of new products may follow unconventional processes and decision-making may rely on instinct rather than rational approaches. Creative minds within the organization are responsible for designing advertising and packaging while management provides final approval based on intuition and reasonable judgement.

Marketing managers often rely on their intuition and experience to navigate complex and unique situations without referring to theory. This approach is sometimes referred to as "flying by the seat of the pants" or "gut-reaction." The overall strategy and absorbed knowledge of the customer determine the effectiveness of the marketing employed. This instinctive management is contrasted with a more refined, aesthetically pleasing form known as "coarse marketing" favored by theorists.

Internal marketing (IM) is a process that occurs within a company or organization. It aligns, motivates, and empowers employees at all management levels to provide a satisfying customer experience. In recent years, internal marketing has become integrated with employer branding and employer brand management. This integration aims to strengthen the connection between employee brand experience and customer brand experience.

According to Burkitt and Zealley, the main challenge for internal marketing is not just to communicate the right messages, but to incorporate them in a way that both changes and reinforces employee behavior. Key concepts of internal marketing include IM as an ongoing internal 'up skilling' process, aligning the organization's purpose with employee behavior, employees internalizing the core values of the organization, motivating, reframing, and empowering employee attitude, and adopting an inside-out management approach. Additionally, an internal marketing-oriented business focuses on creating an enabling culture by empowering employees with creativity,

innovation, initiatives, accountability, and responsibility. They also practice participative hiring by involving current employees in the hiring process and ensure equitable recognition and reward for employees' achievements. Furthermore, they demonstrate fairness during difficult times such as the death of a close family member.

The implementation of internal marketing faces various challenges, including managerial incompetence in interpersonal, technical, and conceptual skills, a poor understanding of the internal marketing concept, conflicts at both individual and departmental levels, a rigid organizational structure with bureaucratic leadership, ignoring and not listening to subordinate staff, treating employees like mere tools of the business, and unnecessary protection of information against employees. When it comes to performance management, it is a crucial process applied to various business operations such as manufacturing, logistics, and product development. The main goals of performance management are to achieve desired outcomes and optimize individual, group, or organizational performance. However, marketing performance management (MPM) focuses specifically on measuring, managing, and analyzing marketing performance to enhance effectiveness and maximize the return on investment (ROI) in marketing. Three key elements that play a critical role in managing marketing performance are data, analytics, and metrics.Analytics: Market-mix models are one of the essential methods for measuring marketing effectiveness, and collecting the right data plays a crucial role in this process. [pic]

The gathering of accurate data is pivotal in measuring marketing performance. It is important for the marketing department and senior management to agree on the appropriate data to collect. While data collection is simple, a comprehensive analysis of the collected data is vital. This analysis allows organizations to gain actionable insights that can improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of their marketing efforts. For

instance, analytics can be used to enhance the marketing return on investment and make more informed business decisions. A common application of analytics is optimizing marketing spending through market mix models, which evaluate the impact of marketing activities, competitive effects, and market conditions on product sales.

The Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry widely utilizes this method, which is now being adopted in other industries as well. These models leverage data to establish a connection between spending in different channels, geographies, and other factors with incremental sales. The concepts and tools of these models have been around for over 30 years. However, the interest in them is growing due to the increased usage of the Internet, social networking sites, mobile advertising, and text messaging. Metrics and management: Measurement and metrics allow marketing professionals to justify budgets based on returns and drive growth and innovation within organizations.

Marketers utilize metrics and performance measurement to showcase the value and impact of marketing on the organization. [pic] Histograms aid in analysis by utilizing popular metrics, such as activity-based metrics that involve numerical counting and reporting. These metrics include tracking downloads, website visitors, and attendees at events. However, they often fail to establish a connection between marketing efforts and business outcomes.

Instead of focusing on traditional business metrics, such as revenue and profit, MPM (Marketing Performance Metrics) looks at metrics that are more closely correlated with business outcomes, such as market share, customer value, and new product adoption. MPM measures the effectiveness and efficiency of the marketing organization as a whole. Common metrics include the impact of marketing on share of preference, rate of customer acquisition, average order value, rate of

new product and service adoptions, growth in customer buying frequency, volume and share of business, net advocacy and loyalty, rate of growth compared to competition and the market, margin, and customer engagement. MPM also includes metrics for monitoring operational efficiency and external performance. In some organizations, marketing functions are managed as a business and referred to as operations performance metrics. As part of their commitment to MPM implementation, organizations may create positions such as marketing operations director and marketing finance director.

The typical data that is collected and analyzed includes program-to-people ratios, awareness-to-demand ratios, the cost vs. lead, the cost vs. sale, and conversation rates. These operational performance metrics help the organization rationalize marketing investments but do not correlate marketing to business strategy and business performance. MPM focuses on operating measures to help marketers see how efficiently resources of the organization such as people, facilities, and capital are used. External performance measures that align with business outcomes assess the value an organization provides to customers or its performance relative to competitors.

Using a top-down approach, marketers develop key performance indicators (KPI) and metrics to set specific performance targets. The first step is making business decisions to define the scope. In MPM, marketers brainstorm the desired business outcome and then ask opposite questions to evaluate their impact on this outcome. They also identify the necessary supporting data to answer these questions. Once the data requirements are determined, marketers search for the data and establish the decisions and actions that need to be taken based on the findings. A marketing performance dashboard functions as a speedometer for reporting marketing performance.

MPM implementation professionals utilize a dashboard to report marketing performance.

This dashboard serves as a centralized location where all data and metrics are collected and presented in a meaningful manner for the organization. Marketing professionals create these dashboards by incorporating various metrics and KPIs. Subsequently, organizations can make informed decisions regarding their marketing strategies based on this information. Essentially, a dashboard functions as a comprehensive performance management tool that allows organizations to assess, monitor, and control business activity using both financial and non-financial measures.

A valuable aid is the process map. Process mapping is a technique to create a clearly defined objective to meeting business results. It provides a systematic description of the actions taken by marketing personnel as they use a specific set of activities to produce a defined set of outcomes. It can also help identify skills the organization may need to implement the plan. In addition, an organization can use the process map to identify technology and training requirements. For organizations committed to implementing ISO 9001, process maps are an integral part of quality management. The Marketing Metrics Continuum provides a framework for how to categorize metrics from the Tactical to Strategic: The marketing metrics continuum provides a framework for how to categorize metrics from the tactical to strategic. By navigating this metrics continuum, from activity-based to predictive, marketers can move towards more effective marketing measurement and align measurement and metrics with business outcomes.

System and Tools: The creation of a performance-driven organization requires two elements, according to Marketing Metrics in Action: Creating a Performance-Driven Marketing Organization. These elements include a set of standards and processes for accessing relevant data, as well as the ability to generate performance metrics from that

data. By using systems and tools, organizations can determine which investments are performing well and how marketing efforts contribute to overall success. Without implementing and utilizing these systems and tools, it is difficult to achieve a performance-driven marketing organization.

Management ; Skills: The Evolved CMO, a study conducted by Forrester Research and Heidrick and Struggles, found that 20% of 115 chief and senior marketing professionals lacked a comprehensive understanding of marketing measurement, customer relationship management (CRM), and customer data analytics. Marketing professionals must possess the ability to access customer information in order to provide strategic guidance that meets the organization's requirements.

This enables companies to expand their business into emerging markets and introduce innovative products. Professionals with expertise in measurement, analytics, and data management can drive growth by anticipating customer needs and enhancing marketing capabilities within their organization. These marketing professionals can then evaluate the impact of marketing on the business and present the findings in easily understandable charts, data, and figures for top management, including executive personnel. A study conducted by management consultants Bersin and Associates in the United States revealed that over 40% of American corporations consider "driving a performance-based culture" as one of their top three talent strategies.

"Creating a culture that emphasizes teamwork, employee development, and resource empowerment is essential for achieving high-quality outcomes. This is similar to other optimization processes, such as a six sigma quality management program. Implementing MPM (Marketing Performance Management) requires a culture of accountability within the organization. Without a disciplined approach, the efforts to drive productivity through MPM would not produce tangible results.

The stakeholders responsible for implementing MPM include the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), and

marketing operations professionals. The CMO plays a crucial role in ensuring marketing accountability within the organization. They work closely with MPM professionals to establish marketing objectives, determine investments, and demonstrate the value of marketing."

Marketing operations and analysis professionals are responsible for creating new metrics and processes to measure and improve operations performance. Their role includes evaluating and implementing systems to enhance marketing efficiency and effectiveness. They also encounter challenges in gathering essential data and analytics for developing marketing dashboards and devising the marketing operations road map.

The chief financial officer (CFO) is the main corporate officer responsible for managing the financial risks of a company or public agency. This role entails financial planning, record-keeping, and reporting to higher management. Given the significance of marketing in any organization, the CFO plays a crucial role as a stakeholder for marketing and other finance-related tasks.