Marketing Process — Marketing Strategy
In this post, I will attempt to demonstrate the steps required to create a powerful marketing strategy.
A marketing plan consists of 6 phases:
- Segmentation
- Targeting
- Positioning
- Marketing Objectives
- Communication Planning
- Budget Setting
Segmentation
The first place to start is with segmentation mapping. Segmentation is the practice of breaking up the market into niches (or segments).
For example, in the car market, a new driver under the age of 25 with low income who is motivated by their new found freedom will have different wants and needs to a 45 year old driver who uses their car to commute to work and as a symbol of their authority and success.
These are two quite different segments in the market, but both still want a car. A car manufacturer will create different products, at different price points with different messaging so that it is desirable to the relevant target market.
There will be plenty of segments in each market. It’s the job of the marketer to break this down so they have a full view of the market. The segmentation process requires mapping the whole market using data from research.
Below is an example of a segmentation map for a company which sells CRM software.
Targeting and Positioning
Once the marketer has a full view of the market, they are then able to pick the segments their company can best compete in. Positioning the brand allows the company to offer something which is desirable for the customer that its competitors match as competitively.
Below is a positioning map for drinks sweetener from Harvard Business Review.
The two competitive areas which brands compete on, according to this perceptional map, are identity/function and commerce/culture. Moleskin’s positioning is located in the upper right-hand quadrant of identity and culture. It will aim to carve out a competitive advantage through its brand positioning, against lifestyle, stationary and publishers notebooks.
Marketing Objectives
Once the target segments have been identified and positioning chosen, a marketer must understand what the brand is to achieve the coming financial year.
Here, a sales funnel is a marketer’s secrete weapon.
The sales funnel is the unique journey a brand’s buyer goes through from cradle to grave — from ignorance of the brand to advocate.
Measuring and locating the weak areas gives the marketer a strategic view on what its communication planning must achieve in the next stage. Objectives should also consider the target market. For example:
- Increase aided awareness from 20% to 25% in the Big Spenders category segment by 30th March, of this financial year.
- Increase Market Share from 14% to 18% in the Cheap and Cheerful segment by 30th March, of this financial year.
Communications Planning
Different channels, such as Sponsorship or Email, are better for different stages of the sales funnel. Sponsorship is better for early funnel stages (awareness), while email is better for later funnel stages (leads/sales).
An appropriate blend of channels is most effective for any marketing plan, which entirely depends on your target market and positioning.
At this stage, creative and messaging enter. Crafting a message and idea that resonates with your audience is an art. Coming up with the ‘Big Idea’ is worth waiting for. To read more about effective creative read David Ogilvy’s ‘Confessions of an Advertising Man’. The book is clearly very dates, but some of the core ideas are still as true today than they were in the 1960's.
Budget Setting
Yes, there can be a science to budget setting (well, kind of). There’s a phenomenon in marketing, to do with market share and relative advertising spending.
First, a definition of share-of-voice (SOV). SOV is your brand’s relative advertising expenditure compared to the market represented as a percentage.
For example, if an entire industry advertises on one page of paper, and you buy a quarter of that space, then your SOV is 25%.
With all things being equal, for every 10% additional share-of-voice over market share, a firm can expect a 0.5% market share gain per annum, this is called excess-share-of-voice (ESOV).
That suggests, if a brand commands 15% market share, they would require 25% SOV (10% ESOV) to gain 0.5% market share.
Understanding media spend and creative spend gives a brand its budget for the upcoming financial year.
Putting all the above together in a succinct document will guide the heart, head an wallet in marketing execution, and hopefully end in great commercial success.
A full customisable, two day marketing strategy document template can be downloaded here -
https://www.brandwerks.agency/products/the-two-day-marketing-strategy
