Effective Marketing Strategies An effective marketing strategy is essential to achieve the main objective of company and to enhance the

overall revenue. A good marketing strategy reallyhelps in increasing revenue, reducing costs and growing profits. Well plannedstrategy also helps in saving money and of course time. A business owner shouldconsider some important decisions while formulating a strategy. When it comes tomarketing strategies it includes all the possibilities like product strategy, channelstrategy, strategy for communication, and strategy for pricing. The product strategy depends on numerous factors. How this product can benefitthe people if they use it? Try to elaborate all the features and benefits of product. The price of the product should be competitive and with supreme quality. It shouldmeet customers need and requirement. The communication strategy is about theway to present information in front of people. Explore the product as much possibleto create awareness. It is the responsibility of marketing management to createimpressive messages to grab the attention of people. Also, it is better to use allmeans of communication to approach wider network. The pricing strategy should be suitable for customer and business owners as well.Make sure to keep suitable margin for the profit but the price should becompetitive. Market bearing power should be considered while finalizing the productprice. Promotions and discounts play crucial role in the effective marketing strategy,so create accordingly. The best channel partnering should be decided carefully;after all it is a matter of brand awareness. So, all these marketing strategies canwork wonder for enhancing the brand awareness and brand loyalty. Marketing Strategy The Game Plan Your marketing strategy outlines your plan of action to achieve your marketing objectives. The difference between amarketing objective and a marketing strategy is that the objective states what you will do and a strategy states howyou will do it. Where your marketing objective is specific, quantifiable and measurable, your marketing strategy isdescriptive. The marketing strategy discusses how you will affect your target markets buying decisions through theinfamous four Ps product, price, promotion and place (distribution) and how these get used to achieve your objectives. Product Part of developing your strategy is to look at what you currently offer and rank them on their valueto your company. If you are offering a product or service that is not producing the revenue you wish, part of your marketing strategy might be to replace those services with new ones. Price Now is the time to look at your pricing strategy and cost recovery for your products and services.Determine what pricing changes you need to make in order to accomplish your objectives. Promotion All of the tactics you will use you get the word out is part of your promotion strategy.Advertising, direct marketing, events, public relations, and viral marketing (word of mouth) are all types of marketing tactics that

Place many businesses fail to understand the value of distribution channels. Even for small businesses,having partners who help you market and sell your services is valuable. By augmenting your services withpartners, you bring value to your customers by offering them more complete services. Look at your business, find the holes and fill them with partners that can help you develop new clients.Using the marketing objective stated above (to increase repeat business within your client base by 30% this calendar year); you might develop marketing strategies such as: Develop a set of affordable services that help clients increase the productivity of their workforce. Create promotional materials such as an e-Newsletter and complimentary seminar series that includesknowledge and valuable offers to our current clients.In this case, we have defined the type of product and its price (affordable services) we will use to go after increasedsales within our client base. We will promote value through a client-only newsletter and complimentary seminar seriesthat will contain educational information and action oriented offers for these new services.Some marketing folks may feel these strategies are too specific. For small businesses, if you can define how you aregoing to achieve your strategy, you should. Use the marketing program plan to describe the specifics of each tactic,but there is nothing wrong with specificity here. Your mission is to choose the strategies that fit your company andyour products. Planning for Profit Goals, objectives and strategies different but interrelated and play an important role in the success of your business. To develop a successful marketing plan, focus on your marketing objectives and the accompanyingstrategies. Simply define what you are trying to achieve in measurable, specific terms and how you plan to achievethem in descriptive terms. Once you have your objectives and strategies, move on to your positioning, messages,and brand. As you continue to develop each layer of your marketing foundation, you will see your marketing effortbecome more focused, targeted, and consistent the three ingredients for success. In fact, many confuse solid marketing strategy with pure tactics, or what welike to call, "brand juice." Visual identity, clever tag lines, creative "essence"advertising, edgy names, well-designed Web sites, big ticket giveawaypromotions, publicity buzz-making are all key ingredients in brand juice andelements of marketing, but they are supporting elements. To be effective,such supporting elements must be part of a more comprehensive plan.Real marketing strategy provides a roadmap to creating and delivering truevalue to distinct groups of customers. All successful marketing strategiesmust begin and end with the customerthey cannot be an afterthought ortaken as a givenso marketers must test their assumptions about theircustomers constantly.What goes into a marketing strategy? A cohesive combination of: Targeting to whom are you going to market Positioning

how are you going to differentiate yourself from competitors? Product/Service Attributes what attributes/features will theproduct/service have? Marketing Communications how are you going to reach the target andwith what message? Pricing what price will you charge the target? Distribution what channels will you use to sell the product or service? Customer Service how will you manage additional customer needs? Of these components, targeting and positioning are the two most criticalelements. To paraphrase marketing guru Phil Kotler, if you nail the targetingand positioning, everything else falls into place.The targeting decision identifying the people you want to direct yourmarketing efforts towards is one of the first issues a marketer considers.Targeting is knowing where to concentrate forces. "To win a war you need toknow where to attack," Dwight Eisenhower might have said to an audienceof business managers. "We wouldnt have brought the Nazis to their knees if we had landed the Allied forces at Calais instead of the beaches of Normandy."Most marketers agree that focusing on subsets of current and potentialcustomers is the most efficient way to develop a marketing program, butthis immediately begs the question, which subset?There are literally hundreds of thousands of different ways to dividecustomers into subsets, also called segments. Consider just a few of thepopular market segmentations we have observed among a variety of businesses: heavy, medium, light users; 18-to-49 year-old-women, 18-to-49 year-old men, older women, older men; people who look like currentcustomers, people who dont; current buyers, non-users; big customers the largest 10 percent versus nine other customer size groups; five differentbenefit segments; five different personality segments; and six differentattitude segments.In this day and age of increasing personalization, some might even arguethat the U.S. offers a number of potential target markets equal to the U.S.population.We recommend marketers discover segments by looking at a combination of all possible market drivers such as: Category involvement : how important purchases in this category are tothe buyer? your products and services?

Product preference motivators : what characteristics are most motivating? Product purchasing patterns : how frequently do they buy? Media habits : what do buyers watch, read, listen to? Sociographics : how strong is their ethnic affiliation and religiosity? Demographics : what is their income, age, and level of education? Psychographics : what are their lifestyle attitudes? The key to nailing targeting is finding the most efficient, scientific way of segmenting the market and to choose a target group based on its potentialprofit contribution.Dont believe the hype that companies cant evaluate target groups in termsof profit potential. Marketers can calculate with reasonable accuracy howmuch it will cost to reach people in a target group, how many will buy theproduct or service, and how much money they will give to one particularcompany using both secondary and primary data.For example, for two decades the major gasoline brands were in a stateof pax gasolina they went comfortably about doing their business, marketshares changing only slightly from one year to the next. True, there wereperiodic price wars and promotions characterized by giving away NFL glassesand selling discounted Coca-Cola, but nothing so substantial as to wake theindustry up from a deep complacency.By the mid-1990s, however, new low-price brands began showing upeverywhere, and the major brands started to work hard to differentiatethemselves, with an aim toward gaining more margin from the business. Inthat context, Mobil Corporation (now ExxonMobil), one of the mostinnovative marketers, commissioned a large-scale study to betterunderstand its customers and prospects.The study results, reported in the Wall Street Journal, form the basis for theMobil Friendly Serve campaign. The study found five distinct consumergroups, all roughly the same size numerically. The labels and numbers havebeen changed to maintain confidentiality. Car Buffs

are generally high-income, middle-aged men who drive 25,000 to50,000 miles a year. They buy a premium gasoline with a credit card, purchasesandwiches and drinks from the convenience store, and will sometimes washtheir cars at the car wash. Loyalists are men and women with moderate to high incomes who are loyal to abrand and sometimes to a particular station. They frequently buy premiumgasoline and pay in cash.

Speedsters are upwardly mobile Gen Xers. They are constantly on the go, livein their cars and snack heavily from the convenience store. Soccer Moms are usually housewives who shuttle their children around duringthe day and use whatever gasoline station is based in town or along their routeof travel. Price Shoppers generally are not loyal either to a brand or to a particularstation and rarely buy the premium line. They are frequently on tight budgetsand efforts to woo them have been the basis of marketing strategies for years. Analysis of the data revealed that while Car Buffs and Loyalists representedonly 38 percent of the population, they accounted for 77 percent of thepotential profitability. Once Mobil knew the target, it knew whom to talk toand where to find them, how to communicate with them, in which media,about which products and services, at what price.As the Journal reported: These targets want classier snacks from theconvenience store; human contact; quality products; top-notch, quickservice; privileges for loyal users; attendants who recognize them; and anationally available brand. They also want a reasonably competitive price,but thats not the most important consideration. Mobil addressed the needs of these two groups with Friendly Serve amarketing campaign characterized by clean restrooms, cappuccino in theconvenience stores, a concierge to assist customers, and more recently aSpeedpass payment system. Stations that have implemented the FriendlyServe program have seen double-digit sales and profit increases.Clearly making the right targeting decision takes time certainly more thanthe five minutes most marketers dedicate to it. Intuitively obvious targetgroups are rarely the most profitable so marketers that take the time todevise a market segmentation plan and discover the most profitable targetwill find themselves far ahead of the competition even this early in themarketing strategy process. How to Nail Positioning

Once a marketer has identified the financially optimal target group, the nextstep is positioning. In an increasingly cluttered environment where buyershave very little time to ponder product decisions, producthave an advantages and services thatstand for something important or remembered for something significanthave an advantage. A powerful positioning leads to a powerful brand. But positioning is a difficultconcept because it embodies the value proposition the bundle of benefitsand attributes a company wants to offer buyers at a certain price topositively differentiate the product or brand from competitors.Its a message so clear, so succinct but so powerful that, once launched, itbegins to move customers and prospects toward the brand. Mostimportantly, it is a message to the target group. Usually, the positioning is aoneor two-sentence statement even a word that captures themessage a marketer wants to imprint in the minds of customers andprospects. It describes your product or service and how it is different from and therefore better than the competitions.Examples of long-running positioning strategies for companies or brandsinclude: Easy to useApple Exceptional Performance for driving enthusiastsBMW SoftnessCharmin tissue Authentic, real, originalCoke Guaranteed next-day deliveryFederal Express Wholesome family entertainmentDisney Improves the quality of lifeGE StrengthHefty plastic bags Accepted everywhereVisa SafetyVolvo For the youthful, hip generationPepsi Thrills and excitement for preteens and adultsUniversal Studios ThemePark Nutritious, low-fat, low-calorie foodHealthy Choice Pure, clean, naturalIvory Soap Good value for family mealsTaco Bell At its core, positioning is the reason why people buy one product rather thananother. They believe it offers greater value, strength, prestige, fun, safetyor nutrition (or some combination of elements) than another product orservice.If marketers had unlimited time and a prospects undivided attention,

theycould tell him everything about the product or service.But a company does not have endless time, and prospects are notoriouslyinattentive. The most any business can say are those few things prospectscare about and will re Marketers want to fix a succinct message in peoples heads to induce trialand use among prospective buyers or reinforce current purchasing amongcurrent customers. Positioning is valuable because when you have it, theother marketing elements follow naturally: pricing, marketingcommunications and promotion, and distribution.As you segment a market, simultaneously investigate all potential attributesand benefits that might motivate customers in a category. These include allthe ways a business can differentiate itself: product, service, personnel,image.At this point the company does not know if any of them actually motivatebehavior. The goal is to generate a long list of attributes and benefits thatmight form the basis for a powerful positioning strategy. These shouldrepresent both attributes and benefits of the product and tangible andintangible facets.To uncover these attributes and benefits, a company might do a categoryscan, exploratory research, personality assessment, social values analysis,emotional exploration, or some combination of all five: A category scan is a close review of all the attributes and benefits, tangible andemotional, that competitive brands in the category employ. Exploratory research includes focus groups, in-depth interviews, or both. Thefocus groups do not produce the positioning, but rather ideas for the list of attributes and benefits. Marketers should not rely on the outcome of focusgroups to make the final positioning decision. Personality assessment is an analysis based on primary or secondary data onthe key personality traits that potentially underlie behavior in the product orservice category. Since there are literally thousands of potential personalitytraits, it takes an expert to provide some insight into which ones might berelevant in the product category and to select the measures of those relevanttraits a study ought to include. Social values analysis breaks social values and how they drive human behaviorinto eight categories. A marketer can establish how relevant each of thesevalues is to consumers either directly, by measuring relevance in a researchstudy, or indirectly, by inspecting secondary sources closely. Emotional exploration looks at peoples psychological needs and how aparticular product or service category addresses them. All of these techniquesare just as appropriate for business-to-business as for consumer marketers andappropriate for both services and products

Finalizing the Positioning Decision Like the targeting decision, the positioning decision is not one that should bemade in a one-hour meeting. Since the items on the list become theelements of the brands positioning and the connecting threads of an entirestrategy, the list must be as all encompassing and creative as possible.Once a company has a list, management reduces it so it can go into aquestionnaire to determine how motivating each of the attribute and benefitcharacteristics is to the market target and how buyers perceive competingbrands on each of them. After marketers discover what motivatesconsumers and the perception of their products or services and those of competitors, they can rank-order a final list of category characteristics orpotential positioning themes.Now the task becomes a creative one. Marketers develop a messagestrategy that puts the product or service in the most positive light. Fromthere the advertising and marketing communications people go to work. For example, facing deregulation, a tiny company called Green Mountain Power(now Green Mountain Energy) located in Burlington, Vermont, started to worryabout competing with national power companies that could afford price cuts toattract customers. The company could not become the lowcost provider.Instead, it began to look at other differentiating factors for power. The companydiscovered a significant number of customers wanted clean energy and wouldpay more for environmentally friendly power. Green Mountain created a powerfulpositioning statement, Power provided by the raging rivers of North America,the prevailing winds, and the sun. No coal, no nuke, no kidding. As the Green Mountain example illustrates, do not automatically select alow-price positioning even in a commodity category.Although many companies use the low-price positioning, offering the lowestprice only works in the long run when the company is in fact the categoryslowest cost producer. Otherwise the lowest-price positioning is notsustainable and will drive the company toward bankruptcy.Formulating the remaining components of marketing strategy should reflectthe needs, interests, habits, and behaviors of the target group and themotivating attributes of the positioning.As emphasized throughout this tutorial, building a marketing strategy takestime. We often hear marketers say, I dont have time to do the research. Ineed to make a decision now! They go on to make decisions based onintuition and gut-instinct about what they feel customers want.

Yet these same marketers somehow find the time to make the samedecisions over again later when the marketing plan is not working. Theymake the same mistakes repeatedly, rather than try to get it right in thefirst place.These marketers have learned the hard way that, while just about anyonecan make a decision, not everyone can turn the decision into a sustainablecompetitive advantage and profits. Those that have discovered andsustained an advantage recognized the critical nature and inherentcomplexity of the components of marketing strategy.Many tools and technologies exist today to help marketers make thesecomplex decisions; all thats required is the will to use them. Setting out clear marketing strategies is a crucial step for any business, not least forsmaller businesses.While having a clear marketing strategy doesn't guarantee success, research showsthat it's

a key ingredient in improving your odds of profitable growth.In short, a successful marketing strategy ensures a need in your target marketmatches a product or service your business can deliver.Once you've found a match, your goal is to cost effectively communicate thebenefits of choosing your offering to the target market.Remember though that acquiring customers is a difficult and expensive business, sowhen you've found a new customer how much are they worth to you: is it a oneoff transaction or a more profitable relationship you hope to nurture over many years?Any marketing strategy you choose needs to be flexible, so imagine the strategyyou set out as a series of sign posts rather than a fixed train track. By taking aflexible approach you'll be able to navigate unforeseen circumstances you'll comeacross along the way.Here are the 5 steps to developing a strong marketing strategy:1.Understand your strengths and make your weaknesses irrelevantSo what are you good at?A marketing strategy with substance must play to your strengths as a business. To lay strong foundations for your marketing strategy it's worth spending some timeputting together a SWOT analysis, assessing your business' strengths andweaknesses; the market opportunities and market threats.

During this stage it might be worthwhile conducting some market research withyour existing customers to get a more honest idea of your reputation in the marketplace.An anonymous email survey may give you more candid response - so be preparedfor praise and criticism! If you're sending a survey out to 100 or fewer people trywww.Zoomerang.com as it's free to use and easy to create a professional lookingsurvey.Strengths might include: specialist knowledge, unique product features, personalservice, flexible service.Weaknesses might include: inefficient computer systems, high customer attrition,limited financial resources, low employee skills.Opportunities might include: growth in market sector, change in governmentregulation, using the internet to reach new markets. Threats might include: new competition, economic downturn, more attractivealternative to your product/service2) Segment your marketMany small businesses fall into the trap of thinking that their product or service willappeal to 'everyone'. Often the reason they do this is because they fear thatexcluding certain groups of people will limit their opportunity. This thinking couldn't be further from the truth - and remember that while you maythink your target market is limitless your marketing budget certainly isn't!So, instead of trying to 'boil the ocean' let's instead try to characterise the needs of particular segments or groups of a market. The focus of your marketing strategyshould be to identify their needs through market research and address those needsmore successfully than your competition.By matching your strengths to the particular needs of a segment in the marketplace will give you the greatest chance of success. For example, there might be amarket segment that considers quality first and foremost. If this matches yourstrength as a business that delivers a quality product then all your marketingactivity should highlight the high quality of your product or service.3) Write a marketing planOnce you've clarified your strengths, the market opportunity and your targetmarket it's time to write it down in a marketing plan. Your marketing plan will crystallise much of the thinking you've done

so far andhelp you to formulate the actions needed to put your strategy into place and theresources needed to make your goals a reality

Using SMART (Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-based) objectivesin your strategy should make measurement of your success easier to judge later on. Your plan is a working document and should be regularly reviewed so that it reflectsany changes in your market. If you've not written a marketing plan before you candownload a marketing plan template at Marketing Strategies 1014) Decide on tactics to reach your marketNow you need to consider how you're going to reach your market.Will you sell direct, through a partner channel, a retailer....? These decisions will affect how you go about making your target market aware of the products or services you have to offer and why they meet their needs. Typical approaches to communicating your message might be through printadvertising, direct mail, telemarketing, public relations stunts, online, and point of sale (POS).While an approach that uses several communication channels usually works well,try to stay disciplined otherwise you'll burn your budget up fast and lose focus.It's worth considering some of the emerging marketing channels presented bysocial networking sites, too. However, while these channels might be a free or lowcost way to promote your business, they can still take a lot of time to nurture.Ultimately the channels you choose should be dictated by what your targetaudience is most responsive to. By building up a detailed picture of a typical 'buyer'of your product (their gender, age, income level, family circumstances), you'll beable to start thinking more creatively about how to reach them.5) Measure your progress and refineWhile marketing is not always an exact science, you should still be able to build afairly accurate picture of the impact of your marketing activities and strategy.A simple start to measuring your success is to ask every new customer how theyheard about your business.By putting in place mechanisms to track the effectiveness of your strategy you can judge how well you're performing today and use the results to shape futuremarketing strategy. Competition-based pricing Setting the price based upon prices of the similar competitor

products.Competitive pricing is based on three types of competitive product:

Products have lasting distinctiveness from competitor's product. Here we can assume

The product has low price elasticity.

The product has lowcross elasticity

The demand of the product will rise.

Products have perishable distinctiveness from competitor's product, assuming the productfeatures are medium distinctiveness.

Products have little distinctiveness from competitor's product. assuming that:

The product has high price elasticity.

The product has somecross elasticity

No expectation that demand of the product will rise.[edit] Cost-plus pricing Main article:cost-plus pricing

Cost-plus pricing is the simplest pricing method. The firm calculates the cost of producing the product andadds on a percentage (profit) to that price to give the selling price. This method although simple has twoflaws; it takes no account of demand and there is no way of determining if potential customers willpurchase the product at the calculated price.This appears in 2 forms, Full cost pricing which takes

into consideration both variable and fixed costs andadds a % markup. The other is Direct cost pricing which is variable costs plus a % markup, the latter isonly used in periods of high competition as this method usually leads to a loss in the long run.[edit] Creaming or skimming Selling a product at a high price, sacrificing high sales to gain a high profit, therefore skimming themarket. Usually employed to reimburse the cost of investment of the original research into the product:commonly used in electronic markets when a new range, such asDVDplayers, are firstly dispatched intothe market at a high price. This strategy is often used to target "early adopters" of a product or service.These early adopters are relatively less price-sensitive because either their need for the product is more han others or they understand the value of the product better than others. In market skimming goods aresold at higher prices so that fewer sales are needed to break even.This strategy is employed only for a limited duration to recover most of investment made to build theproduct. To gain further market share, a seller must use other pricing tactics such as economy or penetration. This method can come with some setbacks as it could leave the product at a high price tocompetitors. [1] [edit] Limit pricing

Main article:Limit price

A limit price is the price set by a monopolist to discourage economic entry into a market, and is illegal inmany countries. The limit price is the price that the entrant would face upon entering as long as theincumbent firm did not decrease output. The limit price is often lower than the average cost of productionor just low enough to make entering not profitable. The quantity produced by the incumbent firm to act asa deterrent to entry is usually larger than would be optimal for a monopolist, but might still produce higher economic profits than would be earned under perfect competition.The problem with limit pricing as strategic behavior is that once the entrant has entered the market, thequantity used as a threat to deter entry is no longer the incumbent firm's best response. This means thatfor limit pricing to be an effective deterrent to entry, the threat must in some way be made credible. A wayto achieve this is for the incumbent firm to constrain itself to produce a certain quantity whether entryoccurs or not. An example of this would be if the firm signed a union contract to employ a certain (high)level of labor for a long period of time. Loss leader

Main article:loss leader A loss leader or leader is a product sold at a low price (at cost or below cost) to stimulate other profitablesales. Market-oriented pricing Setting a price based upon analysis and research compiled from the targeted market. Penetration pricing Main article: penetration pricing Setting the price low in order to attract customers and gain market share. The price will be raised later once this market share is gained. Price discrimination Main article: price discrimination

Setting a different price for the same product in different segments to the market. For example, this canbe for different ages or for different opening times, such as cinema tickets.