Marketing strategy is the overarching plan of a company to sell its products or services and enhance the perception of its brand. Developing a marketing strategy requires understanding your customers through market research, conducting market analysis to segment the market and position your value proposition, and then developing a communications and marketing plan to reach your target customers effectively. Appropriate marketing strategies may vary widely depending on the product or service you’re selling, but it’s a vitally important part of any successful business.
Traditionally, developing a market strategy relied on in-person focus groups and surveys for market research and channels like print and television advertising to reach customers. However, the internet and today’s world of e-commerce has created a new digital marketing landscape that many companies are exploring. Your target customers’ online shopping habits, social media activities, and internet searches create a vast amount of data that can be harnessed with marketing analytics to yield important insights for market research. And emerging online channels like content marketing and social media marketing give you new ways to reach your customers in ways that are often more engaging and effective than traditional media.
At the end of the day, however, marketing strategy still relies on the tried-and-true maxim of “know your customer.” Regardless of who your customers are and how you decide to reach them, a good marketing strategy will focus on presenting them with products and services that meet their needs in a way they can understand and connect with.
