Like all aspects of business formation, developing marketing strategies requires careful planning. A successful marketing strategy presents a product or service to customers at a price that meets the business’s profit goals and in such a way that the customer wants to buy a lot of it.

Steps in Developing a Marketing Strategy

1. Identify the Target Market

Your business cannot be “all things to all people.” Target marketing simply means identifying the characteristics of your potential customers (segmenting) and planning your marketing strategy around them. Think of your customers as belonging to specific groups with each group having common characteristics, such as sex, age, ethnic origin, motivation, lifestyle, or hobbies. By focusing on the specific customer, your marketing efforts will be more effective.

2. Establishing your Unique Value Proposition

The owner of a new venture must distinguish the business from those already in the marketplace. Establishing a market niche involves discovering what unique qualities will give you an advantage over already established competitors. Without such a niche, customers will not see any reason to leave the company they presently deal with.

3. Developing the Marketing Mix

After identifying your target customers and establishing a firm concept of your market niche, you should next develop the following four ingredients of the marketing mix:

• • Product/Service: Business owners should first learn what customers want most, and then provide that product/service. This order of procedure has a much greater chance of success than the reverse. A successful product/service is one which has all the utilities, services, warranties, and follow-up care included.
  • Promotion: Promotions include all forms of communication between the business and the customer. The right promotion means communicating clearly to your customers what specific product/service you have available. Promotion includes all forms of advertising, whether it is paid or unpaid, public relations, marketing materials or personal selling. Successful promotional campaigns are not only seen and heard by customers; they are also remembered.
  • Place: The right place means having the product/service available where the customer can expect to find it. A combination of business location, distribution network and store layout all help to determine where the right place is. The importance of location cannot be understated. For some businesses, especially retail operators, site location can determine your success or failure.
  • Price: The right price is what your customer is willing to pay. It must be sufficient to cover all costs of production, overhead and marketing as well as provide the business with the desired profit. Establishing the right price is a delicate balancing act. If it is set too high, you won’t attract enough customers to cover fixed costs; but if it is set too low, then even many customers may not generate enough revenue to cover all costs.

Conclusion

Planning marketing strategies does not end once your business is in operation. You must evaluate your strategies on a regular basis and make changes when necessary. If something is not working well, revise your strategies on paper first and then take the appropriate measures. Successful marketing strategies are based on satisfying and serving customers. Therefore, a quality marketing strategy is one that is based on really knowing and understanding the needs and wants of customers.