Marketing strategy helps you to understand your target customers, the company’s goals, and advertising methods and techniques to reach more audiences. So that you could plan everything on time, and avoid unexpected circumstances in the future. Today, we’ll discuss different types of marketing strategies, and how you can choose an effective marketing strategy. Here it follows;
Table of Contents
What is Marketing Strategy?
Marketing strategy is the company’s overall forward-looking approach and a game plan to reach potential customers and convert them into actual customers for the product/service that you’re selling. A marketing strategy usually comprises customers’ demographic data, brand message, core values of your company, and some other important elements.
Some people confuse marketing strategy with the marketing plan. A marketing plan is a small part of the marketing strategy, and it includes marketing schedules and activities that the company has to undertake.
Marketing strategy, on the other hand, is much wider in scope and has a longer period. It includes many plans and activities to reach the overall picture of the company.
In short, marketing strategy encourages and convinces people to buy your product or service that you’re offering. Coming up with the right marketing strategy involves a lot of trials and tests. The point of the marketing strategy is to have a competitive edge over competitors in the market.
How to Choose Marketing Strategy
There are different types of marketing strategies and it is not possible the implement all types of strategies at the same. Now, the question is how to choose an effective marketing strategy for your business. Here are some of the points that you should keep in mind while choosing the marketing strategy;
Identify Your Marketing Goals
Identifying and defining your marketing goal is the most important step; your whole marketing strategy relies on this stage. Therefore, you should choose your marketing goals carefully. For instance, where you want to reach in terms of finances, you should know your target audience, and how you would reach them. You should know the answer to these questions at this stage.
Who Is Your Target Audience?
Knowing your target customers is equally the next most important thing after identifying your marketing goals. Where they live geographically and other demographic details like their age, education level, income level, their preferences and choices, their needs and wants, and their product requirements. When you know your target audience, then it becomes much easier to prepare your product accordingly.
Choose the Right Marketing Strategy
After setting your overall goals and identifying your target audience, the next thing you should do is choose the right marketing strategy based on your audience’s demographic.
Evaluate those Strategies
Once you’ve found the right marketing strategy based on the needs and wants of customers, you should carefully implement the marketing strategy and evaluate its results. If the results meet your initial goals, it means that you’ve chosen the right marketing strategy. Otherwise, you should follow different marketing strategies until you achieve your goals.
Type of Marketing Strategies
Some of the main types of marketing strategies under the category of business to customer (B2C) marketing are as follows;
Cause Marketing
Cause-Marketing is the type when businesses and companies support social causes to raise funds or spread awareness and receive marketing benefits like customers and brand loyalty in return. According to some recent studies, approximately more than 90% of the customers say that they would purchase from those companies and businesses that support their social cause like; breast cancer, anti-bullying, anti-smoking, anti-suicide, etc.
Example: Slap her by Fanpage.it
Domestic violence is a serious issue across the world. Fanpage.it created a video in 2015, where they ask the young children to slap their female friend and their reaction and response are so innocent. The point was to make adults realize that what changed them from innocence to cruelty. Slap-Her video went viral and it gained more than 50 million views since then.
In return, Fanpage.it received a lot of personal branding and customers’ loyalty worldwide which they couldn’t have done it without it.
Relationship Marketing
Relationship marketing is the art and process of developing a long-term relationship with customers. It’s much more than a conventional transactional sale relationship, where your primary focus is on just selling the product/service.
Technological advancement has made customers more informed and empowered. Nowadays, the customer has all the power and businesses follow this principle that the customer is always right. Relationship marketing is all about satisfying the needs and wants of customers, getting their feedback, and making the product/service better.
Example: Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Some companies offer CLV to those customers who make repetitive purchases over time. Some companies make their loyal customers “brand ambassadors” to their brand. The point is to recognize their importance to the company and it attracts many new customers towards the brand.
Worth of Mouth Marketing
Word of mouth marketing is based on the principle of making a good impression on customers. If the customers have good experience with the company’s product/service, they would refer it to their friends and relatives and do the same in return. Word of mouth marketing creates a chain reaction; if it works then it’s one of the most interesting marketing techniques.
Example: Happiness Machine by Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola, of the world’s leading soft drinks brand, started a campaign by the name of ‘Happiness Machine’ in 2012. It means that the company has installed specific machines at different location points worldwide. If you hug the machine, then it would give you free coke.
Later on, Coca-Cola launched a WOM campaign, where the company installed phone booth in Dubai that allowed customers to make telephone calls using the coke-cape instead of real money.
Paid Marketing
Paid marketing also goes by the name of digital marketing, it’s a marketing strategy where businesses and companies target customers based on their interests and previous interaction with the brand. It’s a costly technique, but if you plan it well, then it would give you better results.
Businesses usually use different channels for paid marketing campaigns like social media platforms, search engine result pages, sponsored posts on social media, affiliate marketing, pay-per-click, TV advertisements, banners on different websites, and guest posts.
Examples
Social media ads pay per click, banner ads, influencer marketing, and ad retargeting are some of the prominent examples of paid marketing that companies and businesses employ to reach their target audience.
Diversity Marketing
Diversity marketing is a technique that businesses employ when they have to deal with a diverse population. It means devising a different marketing plan for different customer segments based on their attitude, behavior, beliefs, views, and needs.
Example: BornAndMade Campaign
Beauty companies and brands have recently realized that the only way to succeed and take their business worldwide is to follow diverse marketing. You must have observed that beauty companies and competitions take models from different backgrounds and ethnicities. The point is to target different segments of the customers’ market.
Transactional Marketing
Transactional marketing is a marketing type when retailers employ different methods like discounts and coupons to increase sales. The purpose is to encourage and motivate customers to purchase more and more products. It’s because sales have become very difficult in recent times due to crowded competition in the market. Transactional marketing is the opposite to relationship marketing.
Discounts, coupons, special bundles, and offers, bundle offers, group offers, and buy-one and get-one-free offers are examples of transactional marketing that retail businesses employ to increase the sale volume.
E-Marketing
E-Marketing also goes by the name of internet marketing strategy. It means that the company or business would use the internet for marketing its product and services.
Search engine optimization (SEO), paid marketing, sponsored post, guest posts, advertisements, banners, video and written ads, and e-mail marketing are some of the main examples of e-marketing.
Undercover Marketing
Undercover Marketing also goes by the name of stealth marketing. It’s a very intelligent form of marketing strategy where businesses and companies advertise their product/service or brand without showing that they’re marketing it. In undercover marketing strategy, brands manipulate the perception of customer into believing that they aren’t aware of them.
Examples: Scandals of Celebrities
Undercover marketing is very common in the showbiz industry, where celebrities leak their private photos and videos from an unknown source. When their private life all over the media, they behave like they don’t know anything about it.
Offline Marketing
Offline Marketing also goes by the name of traditional marketing. It means businesses the business and companies employ traditional channels for marketing. Like, TV, radio, print media, billboards, pamphlets, and newspaper ads are some of the main examples of offline marketing.
In this age of technological revolution and e-marketing, it may seem like offline or traditional marketing is out of business. But the worlds’ leading brands still rely on the traditional marketing channels to reach more audiences along with e-marketing.
Conclusion
After discussing different types of marketing strategies with examples, we have concluded that each marketing strategy has its specific purpose and usage, and the customers have different needs and wants worldwide. Therefore, you should choose and implement the marketing strategy based on your marketing goals and customers’ requirements.
