How to Develop Marketing Strategy

Marketing strategies are developed in light with the company’s overall goals and in relation with the business’s current standing in the market, as well as vis-à-vis its competition. Once a marketing strategy has been defined, marketing plans can then follow to ensure that all secondary or more specific goals are achieved to help the company achieve its goal – marketing-wise.

1. Find out what the unique selling proposition of your business is. A unique selling proposition (USP) is anything that makes your company stand out from the rest. It is your core strength and competitive advantage. USPs are the things that you can take advantage of in order to increase sales and enjoy better selling success with your products and services.

2. Know who your target market is. You need to find out how to maximize the use of your USP in relation to your target market. Start with the demographics. What is the age range of your target market? Which income level do they come from? Does educational qualifications or job type play a role?

Try to dig deeper and find out what they are hoping to enjoy from the kind of product or service that you are selling. If you are selling a facial cream, find out what the target market hopes to achieve when using your product. Do they want to look prettier or do they just want to look younger?

3. Concentrate on the benefits and not the features of what you are selling. One of the biggest mistakes that companies make when developing a marketing strategy is to focus their strategy or campaign on the features of their products or services instead of the benefits it can offer.

Benefits are based on features. Features are only important because of how people benefit from them, so go straight to the point and start promoting the product or service based on its benefits. Say you are selling a TV set with a remote control. Stating it as it is will not do the trick. You have to emphasize how convenient it is for the viewers to have a remote control because they would no longer have to get up and go to the TV set just to switch channels or turn it off.

4. Choose how you wish to position your merchandise. Do you want your merchandise to be known as the most affordable or the one that offers the most number of benefits?

5. List methods or courses of action that you want your marketing team to carry out in order to make the strategy work. In other words, get down to the details. Make a list of goals that you want your PR team and your sales team to work on so that your marketing strategy will work.