Marketing Strategy Development

Marketing strategy is vital. It will be a cornerstone of your growth. Alongside your adoption of tech, marketing strategy will be a main driver of your digital transformation and key part of your business achieving digital maturity. Use marketing to bring people to your business - your web presence, social media pages and your bricks-and-mortar store, if you have one.

Marketing Strategy: 4 main steps 

1. Understand you business - its strengths and weaknesses 
2. Understand your market, and your position in it
3. Understand technology 
4. Create time to think

Understanding your business 

The first element in creating a successful marketing strategy is understanding your business. If you are an entrepreneur who has grown a business, you will know its history in intricate detail but you may be too close to that detail. Take time to step back and look at your business through objective eyes. Where are your strengths? Where are your weaknesses? 

If you are an employee you will need to make an effort to reach out to people in other areas of the business. Make sure you understand the goals and challenges faced by each department, and the political tensions within the business. Political tensions and people-politics are often underestimated, but in some businesses can be the main driving factor behind decision making. Discover how to create company culture to avoid the problems of an over politicised workplace.

The first thing to consider when analysing strengths and weaknesses is people. Take time to understand the different personalities and their impact. Minimise or remove personalities who create animosity, chaos and unnecessary conflict. Those people waste energy with lateral movement (movement within your business - side to side, rather than forwards). People who do that will kill any business. Recognise the skills you have within your team, and the skills you don’t. If you don’t have a skill, consider whether you actually need it or whether you can refocus so you can succeed without it. 

Understanding your market 

Research, research and research. Know your competitors. Get as much information about them, and the way they work. Think about how they treat their staff, how they manage, what their priorities might be. Think about where their business is stronger than yours, and where it is weaker. Create a marketing strategy that plays to something you are in strong in, but also that your competitors are weak in - or at least less strong. 

Understand technology and the potential of digital transformation

Digitally mature businesses have significantly higher turnovers and profit margins than their non-digitally mature competitors. Whether you like it or not, technology and digital innovation are something that you need to be an expert in. If you are a technophobe, or tech just bores you, then you need to surround yourself with people who love tech. Technological innovation and digital maturity are not an option, they are a necessity. Accept this and learn to enjoy seeing the possibilities that technology can provide for your business. Read more about digital transformation in our series of posts.

Create time to think, and dream

All of these elements can be very fast moving, so make sure you have someone devoted to strategy who can keep abreast of developments and critically has the time needed to think. Time to think is all too often overlooked by employers, and especially by business owners and entrepreneurs. People get bogged down in the day-to-day tasks. It is impossible to create great strategies when you are constantly busy. You need to make time. Realise who your strategic thinkers are and then make sure that you make time for them to think. If you are the strategic thinker in your business, make time for yourself to think. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that only time spent 'doing things' is valuable. Thinking, reflecting, innovating, pondering and dreaming are all vital functions, and they all take time. 

Marketing Strategy: 3 market positions

The next thing to consider is the market position you have. You will have one of 3 positions:

1. You are a market-changer: you are creating a brand new market, or bringing a brand new product or service into a market
2. You are a market leader: you are considered the best in your field
3. You are a market follower: you are entering a new field, or are well established within a new field but not considered a market leader - there is another business doing the same thing you are and ahead of you already

Each of these three positions can be a platform for success, or for failure. No one is better than another, but it is important to realise which one your business is, as this will have a huge impact on your strategies. 

A market-changing position

If you are focusing on a market-changing product or service, then you will need to invest huge energy in convincing the market that your service or product is needed, is valuable and is better than any alternative. You will need to focus on communication and highly intelligent marketing strategy to achieve growth. There is always a heavy price to pay for being a market changer, but there can be huge rewards if you manage to achieve and maintain your dominant position. People will follow and imitate you. You will need to keep a close eye on your competitors and make sure you stay ahead of them. Achieving a market-changing position is exciting, exhausting and hard work!

A market leading position

If you are a market leader, your energies will need to go into maintaining your position. You cannot rest on your laurels. Adopt a strategy of pre-eminence. Invest energy in innovation and the maintenance of high standards. Strive to constantly improve standards. Adopt new technologies early so that you can maintain your market leading position.

A market following position

If you are a market follower you can swim in the slipstream of the market leader, or market-changer. A market following approach may sound less glamorous, but there can be a lot of sense in adopting this position. Firstly, you already know that there is a market for what you are offering. Secondly, you know that it is possible for a business like yours to be successful, because at least one other business is already achieving success.  Thirdly, it is usually a lot cheaper to be a follower as you are not investing in innovation and testing new approaches.

There are two main strategies with a market following position. The first is to remain in the slip stream, letting the leader/changer do the hard work of creating or innovating the market, whilst you watch them closely and then imitate them, preferably doing it slightly better because you have an example you can improve upon.

The second strategy is to use their slipstream to chase them down. This approach will use more resources and, at some point, you will become the leader/changer and will need to change strategies. Ask yourself - what do we both do that we can do better? What can we add to our product/service that theirs doesn’t have? 

Marketing Strategy: Conclusions 

Being a market follower sounds less glamorous: it is less appealing to the ego, but it is a business model that does not require huge investment in innovation and can therefore be appealing and a cheaper way to conduct business. If you are an entrepreneur, think about what strategy suits your life and your personality. Some people will be natural drawn to market change or market leading. Others will prefer to take the easier route of market following. Choose the marketing strategy that you are naturally drawn to: there is no point trying to do something that goes against your nature.

Understanding technology is a crucial aspect of any marketing strategy or growth strategy. Technology develops so quickly that within a short space of time something that was impossible becomes possible. Make sure there is at least one person in your business who is genuinely interested in technology and digital transformation. Encourage them to take time to keep up to date and allow them to experiment with new technologies. If you are a very small business, be reassured that you do not have to spend a fortune if you are innovative - find free Saas platforms that can work for your business. These free services will not give you the detailed functionality that more expensive versions will, but they will give you the key functionality that you need whilst you grow.

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Volanto is a strategic growth consultancy specialising in digital transformation and technology. We help businesses achieve their potential through leveraging the power of digital, technology and strategy. Marketing strategy is one of the areas we can assist with.  Contact us now to see how we can help.