| Strategic Aspects for a Functional Marketing Strategy |
Issues to Consider for Each Strategic Aspect: |
| Brand Strategy (Branding) |
- The brand’s role within the given product (SBU), or whether or not it would be beneficial to actively build a brand for the given product or service.
- If it proves beneficial to build a brand for the given product, what will the overall brand strategy be? Will the company build one brand for all of its products, several brands for its range of products or product groups? etc.
- What will the brand’s position be – i.e. a unique position or association that customers should have when coming into contact with the brand – usually one unique feature, e.g. sporting good shops can boast highly-qualified staff, while a travel agency can offer non-commercial sightseeing tours etc. Take into consideration how the brand position fits in with the overall strategy – it should be in line with: the generic competitive strategy, the product’s basic use value, as well as the basic needs of your target audience that you wish to accommodate.
- My brand image – i.e. what other features should customers automatically think of when coming into contact with my brand, what values or traits should my product/service be associated with?
- How will I build my brand image, i.e. how should the company’s marketing (and other) activities actively contribute to building my brand image?
- What measures will I take to ensure that my customers will be loyal to my product or service?
- How will I create and increase brand awareness with my target audience? i.e. so that my target audience is familiar with my brand and so that my brand is popular amongst my target audience.
- Other aspects such as legal protection for the brand – whether, when, and how to apply copyright laws, in which markets etc.
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| Communication Strategy |
- Deciding on WHAT (content – communication) to communicate to the target audience. It is advisable to decide first and foremost on the main benefit (in most cases, this refers to the USP - unique selling proposition – re: business strategy and product strategy) – additional arguments i.e. benefits, comprising the features of the given product or service that influence the customer’s decision to make the purchase.
- Ideally, the content of your company’s marketing communication should differ from your competition’s, while remaining relevant for your customer. It is also imperative that your product delivers on what it promises.
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| Communication Mix Strategy/Sales Strategy |
- Deciding on how and through which channels to sell your product – whether through a private or external network of dealers, conventional forms of advertising, and if so, through which media outlets (newspapers, magazines, outdoor ads, TV, radio, social media etc.- always taking into account your company’s financial options), direct mailing, in-store promotion, with the support of PR and media coverage, using and creating video content, organizing sales promotion campaigns (sales, samples, contests etc.), offering gifts upon purchase etc.
- At this strategic level, there should already be a very specific set of ideas regarding the selection of marketing channels. If, for example, a company decides to sell their products via an external sales channel, it should already have a clear idea regarding the type of channel, how it will work in terms of product economics, affiliate system, how the network will be monitored and managed etc. If the company decides on using its own salespeople, it should establish where it will find an aptly qualified sales team, how the team will be managed and remunerated etc. In terms of media publicity, the company should consider how it will generate media-friendly topics, how it will develop media relations etc.
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| Corporate Design |
At this level, it is advisable to set the terms for the company’s so-called “corporate design” – create a logo and its terms of use (incl. terms of use for third parties), slogan, colour scheme, font, and other aspects of corporate design relevant for the company (i.e. examples of how it should appear on various communication channels, promotional items etc.). When coming up with a new visual style or reinventing the current one, it is useful to consider the following aspects (adapted from Hanzelková, Keřkovský, Odehnalová, Vykypěl, 209):
- The logo and general visual style should be unique and differentiate the company from its competitors.
- The corporate design should incite a positive emotional response in the target audience.
- The logo and general visual style should strengthen the desired perception of the company or its products as a brand.
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| Human Resources in Marketing |
In terms of this strategic aspect, the company should determine the types of qualifications as well as personality traits (regarding the company’s operations and corporate culture, general philosophy, role of individual positions etc.) that will prove beneficial in terms of marketing, where it will recruit these employees or how they will be trained, which skills they will need to develop, how the remuneration system will be implemented, incentives and employee benefits, the organizational structure of marketing, its location (in the event that the company has several locations) etc. |
| Financial and Administrative Marketing Security |
In terms of finance and marketing security, it is beneficial to determine:
- How big of a marketing budget is necessary for a given product (taking into consideration: the competition and required communication intensity, type of channels – channels often differ in the minimum amount of money required to invest in them, realistic options etc.), or possibly divide the marketing budget and invest into several channels.
- The administrative aspect of marketing – IS/IT, job positions, inventory, bookkeeping and logistics of promotional materials etc.
- Marketing in relation to suppliers – deciding which activities should be ensured by the company itself (not only regarding direct costs, but also in terms of quality, the ability to monitor trends in a given market and knowledge of a given marketing area etc.), and which should be outsourced – usually through agencies (graphic design studios, communication agencies, PR agencies, agencies which specialize in the online marketing, optimization and maintenance of websites, direct marketing/mailing agencies, suppliers of POP shop equipment and supplies etc.)
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| Marketing Resources |
The manner in which we obtain, process (databases) and most importantly utilize information for marketing purposes. Companies should, both on a strategic and operational level, work with marketing data systematically – this may include, for example:
- Information on customer satisfaction
- Information on how (time-wise, who decides – the purchase is not always made by the user of the product or service, based on which criteria etc.) the customer makes his/her decision when shopping
- Information on the sales approach/handling orders with individual customers (i.e. CRM systems)
- Information on customers’ demands, recommendations or complaints
- Information on the customers’ lifestyle and needs
- Information on the competition – what they offer, at what price, what they communicate, how they operate, why customers choose to shop with them etc.
- Information on new marketing trends
- Other information about customers – their motivation behind purchasing a product, needs, lifestyle, values etc.
- Information on assessing marketing efficiency and individual channels – assessing media campaigns (i.e. post-buy analysis), assessing website visit statistics (qualitative and quantitative) etc.
It is also advisable to decide on how the company will acquire the data – taking into consideration the company’s realistic options, expenses (acquisition cost or cost of production), access to data (where to acquire the data – e.g. monitoring data regularly from the company’s own sales network is an interesting, albeit systematically underused resource.) Furthermore, it is beneficial to consider how and using which system the data will be processed – whether in CRM or other database systems, or only in Excel, which can be sufficient in some cases. Where larger quantities of customer data are involved (e.g. data about online shopping behaviour and other online applications that provide a wealth of data about customer behaviour), it is worth considering how to efficiently process this information in terms of benefits and labour-intensity/expenses (re: e.g. loyalty programs in supermarkets aimed at obtaining detailed information about the shopping behaviour of their customers) etc. |
