What Is Strategic Marketing And Its Benefits To Your Brand

Offering an enticing product can set you off to a great start, but it is not enough to make your brand stand out. If you are looking to get your offer in front of the right people at the right time, strategic marketing will make that happen.

In this article, we’ll discuss strategic marketing’s key concepts—from conducting market research to executing your marketing strategies. We’ll also include various marketing and analytic tools to track your progress and measure success. We’ll highlight real-world examples to show how it works.

After reading this article, you’ll learn how to maximize your marketing efforts and ensure your value proposition resonates with your customer base.

What Is Strategic Marketing & Why It Matters

Strategic marketing is a business plan that outlines your long-term business goals and aligns them with your marketing efforts. Aligning these 2 helps you identify where, how, and when to compete. You can figure out the most effective actions to:

• Anticipate sudden changes in the market and be quick to adapt
• Budget and allocate resources better, preventing wasted resources and efforts
• Hook your customers with your content and keep them engaged with your brand
• Allow your business to grow and expand globally without losing focus on your goals

2 Core Benefits Of Strategic Marketing To Your Brand

Strategic marketing helps define the overall direction and goals of your business. Here are the top 2 reasons to convince you to take strategic marketing seriously today.

I. Strengthen Your Brand Awareness

Strong brand awareness helps you build loyal customers and improves your market position using personalization. You should tailor your messages and content based on your target audience’s specific behaviors, needs, and preferences.

When publishing your content, stay consistent at all times. The more your audience sees or reads your content, the better they can remember your brand. This isn’t only about delivering valuable content—it also touches on how your brand looks. Add white space to make it easier to read and user-friendly navigation to prevent confusion.

Prosple, an online career resource platform, is one successful brand that has solidified its brand awareness using these strategies. The brand produces informative content on career planning articles, industry news, and interview advice to help its audience prepare and ace their interviews.

Lesson:

Create content to bridge the gap between your reader’s goals and what they need to get there.

Prosple also actively nurtures strategic partnerships with multiple universities and other industry bodies around the globe which opens opportunities for the brand to reach new audiences and builds reliable credibility.

II. Effective Crisis Management

A strategic marketing plan also serves as a contingency plan. It outlines all potential risks (financial, operational, etc.) and solutions to fix them. Here’s a breakdown of potential risks, including an example:

a. Product Recalls

Product recalls are the process of retrieving a product from the market after the company or manufacturer discovers defects or safety issues. A famous brand that experienced a product recall is PepsiCo. They recall 277 multipacks of Tropicana Kids orange juice after discovering microbiological contamination.

The brand urged the public to return the affected cartons to the store in exchange for a full refund. Because of PepsiCo’s quick response, the public continues to trust them. Customers understood the situation and took the steps to contact customer support.

b. Data Breaches

A data breach occurs when unauthorized parties access and disclose confidential information. In 2023, there were 2,365 cyberattacks. Make sure you add proven safety measures to your strategic marketing plan to keep your marketing campaigns secure and trustworthy.

Styiens, a brand that offers personalized services, sets an excellent example for complying with data protection laws and regulations to protect their customers’ personal data. One regulation they observe is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which ensures:

• Consumers have the right to access, modify, and remove their personal data
• Styiens will only use customers’ data to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our policies

The data privacy laws and regulations you should follow depend on your business and customers’ location. Check them out beforehand to avoid potential legal issues.

Listing down the benefits isn’t enough to understand the concept of strategic marketing. So, we’ll discuss how it works to give you a bigger and clearer picture.

How Does Strategic Marketing Work?

Pay close attention to each phase and consider which practices can improve your marketing approach.

Phase 1: Analyze Your Target Market

This is the phase where you uncover the right market for your brand to enter and compete in. Start the process with in-depth market research to give you a clear picture of who you want to reach and how to resonate with them.

Set up surveys, focus groups, and interviews to collect as many insights as possible. The more detailed the feedback is, the better you can tailor your marketing campaigns. You can also use social media listening tools like Brandwatch and Hootsuite to monitor industry trends and help you understand your ideal customer’s interests and behaviors.

Here’s a sample dashboard of Brandwatch to show how easily you can monitor your target market.

Running a SWOT analysis is ideal for assessing the internal (strengths and weaknesses) and external (opportunities and threats) factors that might affect your target market.

Do a SWOT analysis for your brand and competitors to understand the differences between them and pinpoint areas where you can leverage your strengths.

When organizing your marketing data, rank strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats based on their potential impact and importance. It’s simpler to prioritize the most critical factors and create contingency plans to improve weaknesses and address potential threats.

Phase 2: Assess Your Product’s Success Potential

The next phase focuses on evaluating your products’ potential. Using your market data, determine whether the product meets your ideal customers’ needs and current trends in your target market.

How do you evaluate a product? First, define your product’s features, benefits, and functions to identify its unique features and what problems it solves. Offer a solution that isn’t available from competitors so that your products stand out immediately. Here are other criteria you should consider assessing:

A. Weight & Size

The product’s weight and size have different shipping costs and storage requirements. Assess them upfront to see if they significantly impact your profitability and customer pricing.

Small and lightweight products are the most cost-effective to sell because they require less storage space and are cheaper to ship. The exact weight varies on the product type, but it typically weighs less than 1 kg or 2.2 lbs. Offering more convenience and flexibility to consumers will increase your sales volume further.

Green Supply, a health and wellness product provider, excels in these areas. They offer bulk selling to reduce the overall shipping costs, saving money for both the customer and the company. They also provide multiple fast shipping options to ensure customers receive their orders based on urgency.

The shipping cost may still change (increase or decrease) depending on the customer’s location. They also offer free shipping for their U.S. customers and a 25% discount for their KN95 mask boxes.

On the other hand, oversized and heavy products are much more challenging to sell. It requires more packaging materials, may require special handling, and has a higher potential for return. Here are the marketing strategies that can help overcome these challenges:

• Hire local distribution centers/warehouses
• Partner with reliable shipping carriers (ex. UPS, DHL, or FedEx)
• Design right-sizing packaging to minimize using excess materials
• Offer financing options (ex. installment plans or special promotions)
• Create 3D models or augmented reality to show how the product looks in real life
• Use recycled materials for the packaging to reduce cost and environmental impact

B. Pricing

Pricing is one of the toughest decisions you will make when marketing your product. Calculate a competitive yet profitable price that your customers are willing to pay. The price should also cover all expenses for materials, labor, production, etc.

Positioning plays a significant role in this. Instead of presenting the product as a regular commodity, you should market it as a reliable solution. Since a solution addresses a specific problem or customer needs, consumers will see more of its benefits and value rather than its price. Dove is one of the few successful brands that deliver this marketing strategy well.

Dove’s approach focuses on relatable marketing campaigns to strengthen its connection with its target audience. Most of its campaigns address its audience’s emotional needs–promoting self-esteem and body positivity. Meanwhile, its product description displays the real-life problems that its product solves.

You can also pick a pricing model to fine-tune your prices. The most common options are:

• Flat rate: Fixed price for every single item (regular consumer products)
• Subscription: Set a recurring fee to access a specific service (online platforms with recurring content)
• Pay-As-You-Go: Charge a fee based on actual consumption or usage (ex., utilities or cloud storage)
• Tier levels or price per user: Products that offer multiple features (ex. software and SaaS products)

Phase 3: Develop Your Marketing Plan & Strategies

This is where you will translate the data you collected from your market research into actionable strategies. 

3.1 Do Market Segmentation

Market segmentation is the strategic marketing process that divides your customer base into smaller, more manageable groups. Each group shares similar criteria.

Let’s take a company selling product data management software for example. They can segment their market data by company size (small, mid-sized, and large enterprises) or industry (ex., healthcare, manufacturing, retail). From the data they collect, they can run targeted marketing campaigns highlighting the most relevant benefits and features for each segment.

• Large enterprises focus on advanced features and customization options.
• Small businesses require user-friendly and affordable product data management.
• In the retail industry, retailers prefer product data management with comprehensive multichannel selling tools. These tools help them streamline and optimize workflows across eCommerce platforms (e.g., Magento, Amazon).

3.2 Create Your Action Plan

The action plan outlines specific marketing activities to help you achieve one or more of your marketing goals. When creating an action plan, focus on:

• List down your goals and break them into smaller tasks
• Describe all the steps needed to complete the task, including tools and specific methods
• Create a timeline and set deadlines and milestones to make sure you’ll meet your goals and track progress

The marketing mix is one strategic marketing process that can help you create a detailed action plan. Break down the four Ps of marketing and create a specific action plan for each.

When implementing the marketing mix, make sure you have the necessary resources (budget, technology, and tools). Also, assign tasks based on your employees’ specialized skills and knowledge. This will help them excel at their roles and accomplish the tasks accurately.

For instance, hire in-house or outsourced sales staff to handle sales functions like lead generation, while others are focused on maintaining customer relationships and closing deals.

Once everything is set, you can plan your strategic marketing campaigns.

3.3 Create Effective Marketing Content

Once you aligned your business objectives and marketing strategies, figure out which marketing content you should create. Make sure to prioritize creating content that matches your target audience’s preferred social and sales channels. Here are 2 popular content types.

A. Blog Post

Use blog posts to share valuable information that aims to educate, inform, and engage your target audience. If you add the most relevant keywords, it attracts organic search traffic to your website or blog making your content visible and accessible to a broader audience.

ExportYourStore is an excellent example of how a brand can use relevant and helpful content to become a trusted industry expert. They produce blog posts focusing on industry news and practical advice on how to sell everywhere with ease. They also cover other topics that they believe provide real value to their target audience, products, and overall business operations.

TikTok became an invaluable tool for driving engagement, so ExportYourStore publishes and shares a guide about selling on TikTok. The blog post combines first- and third-person narratives to make the content feel more genuine while keeping its professional and informative aspect. Other vital elements that contribute to its success are:

• Well-structured layout, making it easier to read and understand
• Create specific calls to action and place them in prominent places
• Support the topic with well-research information, including statistics and other relevant references
• Break text using appropriate visual elements, presenting key points and additional context (infographic, app screenshots, etc.)

B. Video

Use videos to demonstrate how a product and its features work. SaaS companies often share videos to provide new customers step-by-step instructions on how to use their applications. The simplest tutorial video you can copy is from Whop, where they teach how to create your own Whop.

The video shows Whop’s actual dashboard, available features, and how easy it is to get started. It’s on-point and short, so your viewers will never feel overwhelmed by too much information. How long should marketing videos be? It depends on the channels you will publish them to.

If you want to tell your brand story or simply inspire, Nike’s product demo is an excellent video to copy. The brand uses a live-action video with an actual human narrating the story to create a strong emotional connection with their customers.

The video focuses on sharing the idea and vision behind the product, helping customers understand how the brand is improving the product to improve their lives.

THE ORIGINS OF NIKE FREE – behind the design

C. Web Articles

Publishing web articles is one of the best ways to share industry news and reports. Like with a blog post, you should add appealing visual elements (ex., high-resolution images, infographics, or videos) to help your readers quickly understand the key points. Business Upturn excels in sharing informative, reliable, and engaging web articles.

They collaborate with experienced journalists and editors to help them keep up with the latest industry trends and developments. All of their articles include:

• Charts and graphs to show market expansion and financial growth
• Infographics to present statistics, market research findings, trends, and summaries

For the length, they create a mix of short-form and long-form articles. Use short-form articles (500-1200 words) to share quick updates and brief summaries. While long-form articles are best for sharing:

• Complete reports about a specific company
• Articles that include expert opinions and background information
• Research study with supporting information (data, charts, and references)
• Explaining new industry trends and its potential impact on companies or sectors

Phase 4: Implement Your Marketing Strategies & Monitor Performance

The final phase is implementing your strategic marketing plan. Before you start the process, build a detailed timeline for each task to prevent unnecessary delays and missed deadlines.

You should also communicate the entire marketing campaign and plan to the whole team to keep everyone on the same page. When implementing the campaign, explain to each team member their specific responsibilities and how their task contributes to the overall success.

Strategic marketing is an ongoing process. Ensure you get the right project management platform like TeamGantt and Monday so you can confidently streamline, manage, and monitor your marketing activities. It will also help you stay on top of every progress, sudden change, and issue.

Project management involves communication, documentation, and planning. You should pick one that offers all the features you need to deliver your project successfully. Here are more handy tools you can use to monitor and measure your performance success:

Conclusion

The main goal of strategic marketing is to help businesses put a well-developed plan into action. Make sure you describe every step and goal of your marketing process in detail to get your desired result. To keep you on the right track, make sure you:

• Stay flexible to sudden changes in the market
• Build a unified brand experience across all marketing channels
• Create strategies that focus on providing a sustainable competitive advantage

Are you struggling to create a solid strategic marketing plan that drives meaningful results? Business Upturn can help you through its comprehensive marketing guides. These guides include industry leaders’ insights, helping you make informed decisions and apply only the current best practices. Check out the website and explore their articles today.