The Steps in a Marketing Strategy

One step in a marketing strategy is determining who your target market will be.

Marketing is a process that begins with market research and continues through the marketing strategies of advertising, promotion, logistics and sales. Your marketing strategy consists of a series of steps that will help you identify and achieve your company's marketing goals. The steps in a marketing strategy include determining your target market; positioning your product or service in the marketplace; determining your marketing mix; and coming up with a plan for how you will allocate your resources.

Determine Your Target Market

Narrow your marketing focus and choose your target market: the people you will market your products and services to. The way you determine your target market is by researching the target customers for your competition. Identify the demographic profiles of your competitors' customers, including their age, sex, ethnicity, household income, media use and technology preferences. Do your own online research by conducting searches related to your industry. For example, to conduct online research to determine the target market for a healthcare consulting business, search with key words such as "target market" and "healthcare consulting." Use the demographic information you identified for your target market to develop a customer profile, which is a detailed description of your key customers.

Identify Your Differentiating Factors

The next stage in a marketing strategy is to figure out how your product or service is different than your competitors' products and services. To do this, first describe how your products or services solve the problems your key customers face. Then write down a list of product features and benefits. Features are a product attribute such as "bucket seats" for a car. Benefits are what those product attributes do for the customer, such as "these bucket seats will allow you to experience the highest level of comfort and lower back support."

Define Your Marketing Mix

Defining your marketing mix -- which is comprised of the "four P's" of price, product, place and promotion -- is the next step in a marketing strategy. First, determine the price for your product. Then identify key product attributes and describe your product life cycle. Next, pick the place and distribution channels where your product will be located. Finally, choose several tactics for promoting your product.

Implement the Marketing Strategy

The last stage of the marketing strategy is implementation. Choose which marketing tactics you will use and determine when you will use each of them. Figure out a plan for measuring and testing the return on investment for each of your marketing tactics. Hire a professional copywriter and graphic designer and start building your marketing materials. Lastly, roll out your implementation strategy and take your plan to market.

References

• Center for Business Planning: Marketing Plan
• Marketing Teacher: Marketing Mix
• Mentors, Ventures & Plans: Marketing Strategy