Introduction

Have you ever asked yourself what strategic marketing is and why businesses must adopt strategic marketing?

Strategic marketing is a broad, long-term strategy that connects all marketing efforts to the overall strategic goals of a business, with the aim of creating a sustainable competitive advantage on the basis of market and customer needs.

Strategic marketing management is more specific than an average marketing plan. It’s a more high-level process, needing detail-oriented attention to the whole marketing process.

Each step of action in a strategic marketing management process should be evaluated in an attempt to improve it before moving on to the next step in this current plan.

As Sujit Shukla emphasizes, the strategic marketing process occurs in three main phases: planning, where you establish goals and strategies; implementation, where you put the plan into action; and evaluation, where you measure performance and make adjustments.

It starts with a careful situation analysis using tools such as SWOT analysis, PESTEL analysis, and market research to assess internal capabilities as well as the external environment. It identifies market trends, consumer attitudes, and competitive risks.

Then, businesses proceed with strategy formulation, where they set SMART analysis, craft a strong value proposition, and decide on their target market segmentation. They also design a clear positioning strategy and the best marketing mix (4Ps: product, price, place, promotion) to deliver value and differentiate the brand in the marketplace.

During the implementation phase, businesses devise a detailed action plan, assign resources, and put marketing strategies into action through chosen channels. Budget planning, campaign management, and marketing communications are carried out precisely to ensure that they target the intended audience effectively.

The last step, evaluation and control, consists of monitoring performance indicators, such as KPIs and ROI, through metrics such as a marketing dashboard. Periodic marketing audits and constant feedback allow companies to optimize their strategies, thereby ensuring long-term success and resilience in ever-changing markets.

Through this blog we are trying to elaborate the three phases of the strategic marketing process. So, let’s dive in.

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Why Strategic Marketing is important?

1. Helps in the Evaluation of the Prevailing Environment:

Strategic marketing assists in making an assessment of the value proposition, and performance metrics of an organisation. 

One has to know what the resources are available to an organisation at any given point of time. The data which is collected helps in making an evaluation of whether an organisation is performing within the larger competitive scene. 

This will also assist the organisation in strategising about future strategic marketing tactics or initiatives.

2. Helps in Setting Clear Marketing Goals:

Having a well-drafted strategic marketing plan aids in the setting of attainable marketing objectives. The goals should be definite in terms of time and should be quantifiable.

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3. Streamlines Product Development:

Strategic marketing assists in developing products and services that give the organisation a high return on investment. 

This is due to the fact that strategic marketing begins by carrying out a SWOT analysis of the organisation, an analysis of the consumers and the current trends in the market. 

This data is then utilized in designing the best products and services for the consumers.

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What are the various steps involved in developing marketing strategies?

Below are 7 steps you can follow to develop a strategic marketing plan:

1. Locate your Beginning Point:

To make sure everyone in the team has a common perception of the company, its offerings and its future direction, begin with an exercise in basic questions: 

What does our company exist to do? You can review the company’s mission statement and niche market, then look at what you have done and what is to come.

In order to truly estimate your company’s current status, you can attempt a SWOT analysis which will make you write down the company’s present strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. 

PESTEL stands for political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors.

PESTEL analysis helps businesses in recognizing external influences that may impact their marketing strategies and overall performance.

And also consumer insights are essential for businesses to understand their target market, maintain competitiveness, and make well-informed decisions that enhance customer satisfaction and drive business growth.

From here, you can figure out what opportunities there are and how they can be achieved.

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2. Mission Statement, Goals, and Objectives:

Your mission statement is your guiding principle for your brand. It must clearly articulate what you believe in and how you will make an impact on the market.

Goals and objectives breathe life into this vision, providing your team with a series of specific, measurable targets to work towards. The clarity of this enables every action to have a purpose and contribute to bigger business outcomes.

For instance, take a fitness company with a goal to “empower healthier lifestyles.” Rather than having loose objectives, they could have the specific goal of doubling their market share over the next five years. 

Supporting goals could be to open new regional stores, achieve app downloads, or increase customer retention by 20% each year. These quantifiable targets give a clear direction to work towards, enabling the team to concentrate on outcomes that drive impact.

3. Target Audience Segmentation:

Market segmentation of the audience enables you to communicate in addressing distinct customer segments with appropriate messages.

With demographics, buying habits, lifestyles, or values analyzed, you can create segments to enable you to send the appropriate message to the appropriate target audience with maximum impact and importance.

Identifying the target market is also an important part of the development and implementation of a successful marketing plan for a new product.

For example, a gym can address obese customers with obesity and other health issues while the education sector can address younger, weaker students. This segmented messaging can allow you to have the biggest influence.

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4. Value Proposition and Brand Positioning

Your value proposition is your brand promise—why customers should select you instead of the competition.

A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is something that differentiates a business from the competition. It’s a short statement expressing the special value a company can provide, along with the reasons why customers need to go to them instead of the competition.

Brand Positioning, on the other hand, is how you speak to this value in a way that will resonate. Combined, these factors define your brand’s distinct advantages and establish a unique space in the customer’s mind.

For instance, if you’re a technology firm providing “secure, reliable cloud storage,” your value proposition is security and reliability.

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5. Marketing Mix (4 Ps):

The marketing mix—product, price, place, and promotion—concepts structure the way you deliver value to your customers. All the elements must be aligned to your overall strategy and brand position, providing an integrated experience meeting customer expectations and differentiating your company.

• Product Strategy: This is focused on the products or services a company offers, including design, features, branding, and packaging. It’s all about designing a product that suits customers’ needs and desires.

• Pricing Strategy: This involves setting the price of the product or service, taking into account production costs, demand in the market, and the prices of competitors. It’s about setting the optimal price that brings the highest profitability.

• Place (Distribution) Strategy: This refers to how and where the product becomes available to customers, such as in retail stores, on websites, or via direct selling. It ensures that the product is made readily accessible to customers.

• Promotion/Communication Strategy: This involves all the communications to inform, persuade, and remind customers regarding the product or service. This includes advertising, public relations, social media marketing, and other promotional activities.

For instance, a high-end coffee company might employ the 4 Ps to support its positioning as a superior, craft product. The product is carefully sourced, with emphasis on origin and quality; the price is a touch higher to convey premium value; the place is deliberately selected—specialty food stores or coffee shops; and promotion highlights the craft and heritage of the coffee beans. 

6. Marketing strategy implementation

A plan fails if it is not implemented effectively. Implementation is the conversion of plans into action using properly structured resources, well-defined timelines, and roles for the team. 

All members of the team need to understand their roles, timelines, and KPIs to execute the plan successfully and hold themselves responsible.

A marketing calendar serves as an essential resource for coordinating and monitoring marketing initiatives, guaranteeing their alignment with broader objectives and strategies.

The implementation manager supervises the entire procedure, guaranteeing that the plan is carried out efficiently.

Team roles and responsibilities include the implementation of new systems, networks, and processes for the organization’s workforce.

For example, in a product launch scenario, responsibilities may be shared across departments — marketing handles pre-launch initiatives, sales handles retail partnerships, and customer support prepares for questions.

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7. Monitoring and Evaluation

Sujit Shukla States that strategic marketing is a continuous process, and periodic checks are vital to optimize and refine your method. Monitor with key performance indicators (KPIs) and review data to see what is succeeding—and failing.

Measuring results enables you to evolve your strategy with the passage of time, ensuring your approach stays consistent with your objectives and reactive to changes in the market.

To successfully manage Return on Investment (ROI), it is essential to consistently track performance, assess results in relation to established objectives, and implement necessary adjustments to enhance outcomes.

For instance, a store introducing a new loyalty program may monitor sign-up rates, customer interaction, and retention. If the interaction is low, they can examine customer feedback to adjust program incentives or enhance communications.

What Are The Three Stages Involved in The Strategic Marketing Process?

1. Planning Phase:

The planning phase is the most critical because it examines internal strengths and weaknesses, external competition, technological changes, industry culture changes and gives an overall picture of the organization’s state. The planning phase has four major components that will give a clear diagram of where your company stands and what it is doing.

SWOT Analysis – Identifies your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and uncover the position of your company in relation to the market. In order to maximize the strengths and eliminate weaknesses an organization has to do the following:

Identifying trends in the company’s business

After this analysis is finished the findings should be applied as a foundation for constructing the marketing plan of the company, which should be measurable and achievable.

Marketing program – After the customers’ needs have been identified, and decisions have been reached regarding which products will meet those needs, a marketing program or mix must be created. 

This marketing program is the how part of the planning stage, and it deals with the 4Ps and the budget required for each component of the mix.

Set marketing and product goals:After the customer requirements are known, marketing objectives can be established to satisfy them, thereby enhancing the prospects of success with new products.

Identify differences: such as your company’s unique selling proposition, every product must also have its own set of features or attributes that will make it better than the competitive alternative. 

Your product may, for instance, last longer, be easier to access, be more dependable or extremely easy to use so the consumers will select it over the competition every time.

Place your product: market so that in the minds of people your product is the “go to” solution to their problem. With emotional and mental marketing customers will link your brand to their solution and remove choice. 

For example, most moms use “Pampers,” when they say diaper, because this brand has been positioned as the go to in infant diapering needs.

Choose target markets: on the basis of the research and their similarities, thereby needs and objectives are both fulfilled.

Market-Product focus and SMART goals – After the questions of where the business is and where it wants to go are resolved, the second step in the planning process is where the resources will be directed, and how to convert plans into concerted action. 

Market Segmentation and Target Market Selection – customers are to be segmented to know which particular marketing method will be effective in reaching the different target groups and what exactly the different groups require. 

Thereafter measurable business goals should be defined in order to distribute the desired products to the different groups effectively, thereby fulfilling the marketing mission. 

For example, if the customers are segmented into groups of similar needs it’s simpler to sell them and offer what they have already proven to require at the moment. 

• Price strategy: concentrates on the list price, price allowances (discounts), reductions, payment terms, and credit agreements.

• Place (Distribution) Strategy: the last ‘P’ in the marketing mix ought to concentrate on distribution networks, outlets and transport in order to deliver the product to the customer at the time of need.

• Promotion Strategy: this aspect of the program should concentrate on direct marketing, advertising, public relations and sales promotions that generate brand awareness.

• Product Strategy: this element focuses on the features, packaging, branding and warranty of the product.

2. Implementation Phase:

Implementation stage is the action phase of the process. If the company is not able to execute the plan that was established in the initial phases, then the planning hours were useless. But if the planning was properly and professionally formulated, then the program may be implemented through a sales forecast and a budget, utilizing the below four components.

• Obtaining Resources – amounts of money to create and sell new goods.
• Designing marketing organizations – in place needs to be organized a marketing structure in order to see the plans to completion in an appropriate way.

• Developing planning schedules – time must be dedicated to given tasks so that they can be completed.

• Implementing the marketing plan – implementing the marketing plan effectively will require attention to detail, and emphasis on the strategy and tactics outlined in your marketing plan.

3. Evaluation or Control Phase:

The evaluation phase is the check phase. This is the process of verifying that the outcome of the program is aligned with the set goals. 

The marketing department, particularly the manager will have to notice any deviations from the plan and promptly deal with negative deviations to remain on track; for instance, dollar fluctuations create a smaller demand for the product than before, then manufacturing of the said product should be redirected for a new more wanted product. 

And they must utilize the positive divergences as well, such as if sales are improving than anticipated for some of the products then there might be increased resources towards increased production or distribution of the same product.

Some of the means to check for the effectiveness of your marketing strategy are by observing:

• Strategy vs. tactic – strategy sets goals and tactic specifies actions that will be taken in order to achieve goals.

• Measurable versus vague – have milestones that define when you’ve achieved your goals.

• Actionable versus Contingent – According to Inc.com: “A strategic goal should be achievable through the tactics that support it, rather than dependent upon uncontrollable outside forces.

Marketing strategy should be backed by a business plan with tactical moves to accomplish goals, or it is useless.

Examples of strategic marketing:

1. Nike: Emotional Branding and Athlete Endorsements:

Strategy:

Nike uses emotional branding and sponsorship by athletes to emotionally connect with clients on a deeper level and stress the fact that their brand is lifestyle and not products.

Examples:

Slogans like “Just Do It”

Collaborations with celebrity endorsers

Social media promotions with athletes overcoming challenges.

2. Apple: Innovation and Image:

Strategy: 

Apple focuses on establishing a reputation for reliability, excellence, and innovation, presenting its products as groundbreaking and transformative.

Examples:

“Think Different” advertising campaign

Emphasis on user experience and design quality.

3. Amazon: Data-Driven Personalization:

Strategy: 

Amazon utilizes customer data to create extremely personalized marketing experiences, from product recommendations to email campaigns.

Examples:

Personalized product recommendations

Targeted email campaigns

4. Starbucks: Social Media and Customer Engagement:

Strategy: 

Starbucks employs social media for customer engagement and building a brand community.

Examples:

Active social media presence

Customer loyalty programs

5. Red Bull: Experiential Marketing

Strategy: 

Red Bull focuses on creating experiences with the sponsorship of extreme sports, high-adrenaline activities, and experiential content marketing.

Examples:

Sponsoring events of extreme sports

Red Bull TV

Viral campaigns

6. Airbnb: Global Social Media Campaigns

Strategy: Airbnb employs social media to create a global message and connect with travelers across the globe.

Examples:

Social media user-generated content

Social media campaigns that resonate globally

7. IKEA: Standardization and Localization

Strategy:

IKEA achieves a balance between global standardization and localization through offering customers low-cost and sustainable living solutions.

Examples:

Global marketing campaigns with local variations

Emphasis on sustainability and affordability

What Advantages Does Strategic Marketing Offer?

1. Increased Brand Awareness:

As Sujit Shukla emphasizes, a successful marketing campaign is one that builds brand awareness, which is the process of attracting a wider population to sell a product or service. Key strategies involve targeted advertisement, creating blog or website material, and using social media to communicate your message. This exercise will enhance brand recognition, which in turn results in more sales and business success.

2. Engaged Audience:

A well-set marketing plan allows you to build an interested customer base interested in your services or products. This platform provides you with the avenue to implement specialized communications and campaigns and guarantees that you get to the right people at the right moment with the correct message. Hence, your messages are more likely to leave an impression on the target customers, which will provide them with a greater chance to act upon seeing your advertised product or service.

3. Higher Conversions:

Creating a robust marketing strategy significantly increases the likelihood of converting potential customers into actual buyers. This transformation leads to an increase in conversion rates of leads into paying clients, therefore increasing your business’s revenue. 

Sujit Shukla States that a clear understanding of your target audience and the identification of effective marketing techniques to engage them enables you to develop campaigns which increase conversions and improve the profit margins of your organization.

4. Helps You To Know Your Customers:

You need to conduct market research prior to marketing strategy development, and such research can yield you reams of data that you can reuse time and time again to aid you in refining product development and to remain current with trends and changes in the way your target market behaves. 

With the advancement of digital information, even small companies can access hyper-detailed information on potential customers. It is referred to in the online world as “big data,” vast data sets that provide you with an in-depth look at customer activity based on everything from online activity, purchase activity, mobile activity, and activity within stores and shops.

5. Encourages Your Business to a Target Audience

You can’t sell your services or products without appealing to the individuals most likely to purchase your services and products. These individuals are known as your target audience, and an effective marketing strategy serves as the optimal means to engage this crucial group. 

Proper analysis of audiences will allow businesses to understand needs, demands, practices and habits, and the social media outlets which the consumers prefer for engagement. 

This information is essential in shaping the strategies you will implement to advertise your business. For example, if you own a salon, then online advertising is more useful than conventional advertising enabling you to reach audiences on social media sites.

Conclusion:

Strategic marketing planning is an appropriately considered procedure for furthering your marketing efforts, through setting clear business objectives.

The strategic marketing process is a formal procedure that assists firms to successfully reach their target markets and achieve long-term objectives. It involves three necessary stages:

• Planning Stage: Companies in this stage need to understand the current situation, opportunities and evolve a marketing plan. In this phase, setting of goals, conducting SWOT analysis and preparing a comprehensive marketing plan is done.

• Implementation Phase: Here, the marketing plan actually gets implemented. Resources are deployed, marketing campaigns are rolled out, and teams implement the strategy as per the timeline and objectives outlined in the planning phase.

• Evaluation Phase: The last phase is directed towards measuring the outcomes of the marketing activities. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are observed, and results are juxtaposed with goals. Adjustments are made to future marketing strategies based on this evaluation.

In short, the three phases—planning, implementation, and evaluation—represent a perpetual cycle under which businesses can be responsive, fine-tune performance, and keep pace with market needs.

Gaining more information regarding strategic marketing can not only assist you in getting a sound idea of where the organisation stands now, when it comes to brand awareness, but also gives you a greater understanding of the industry that you are presently working with.

Now’s the time to move from fast wins to a strategy that fuels sustained growth. Prioritize aligning every campaign with your brand’s purpose, defining your positioning, and establishing customer loyalty. 

Make strategy the foundation of your marketing—and see the payoff build. If you still have any queries regarding any phase in the strategic marketing process, then reach us out at sujithshukla.com expertise and we are glad to assist you.