Strategic Marketing: Creating Competitive Advantage.

The Importance of Strategic Marketing

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The company is currently successful but is going through a period of intense change. There are new competitors entering the market, whilst new technologies are changing both production capabilities and consumer preferences.

All the work from the FLDP should be retained in a personal file which will be reviewed at the end of the programme.

Task 1 – Understand the principles of strategic marketing.

Your first task of the programme is to prepare a presentation, with accompanying notes. The presentation will be viewed by the CEO, other senior managers and programme delegates. The content of the presentation and notes should:

• analyse the relationship between corporate strategy and marketing strategy.
• analyse the development of marketing strategies.

The presentation and notes should also:
• explain, using examples, how different marketing strategies contribute to competitive advantage.

Extension activity:

To gain a Distinction grade you should also produce a report for your line manager that:
• evaluates the relationship between: strategic intent, strategic assessment, strategic choice and their impact on the formulation of marketing strategy.

LO 1. AC 1.1, 1.2, 1.3. 1D.1
Task 2 – Understand how to carry out strategic environmental analysis

The participants in the FLDP are taking part in a training day and each member of the programme has been given a task to complete. You must prepare a set of briefing notes for the other programme delegates.

The briefing notes should:
• evaluate different approaches to conducting an internal environmental analysis.
• evaluate different approaches to conducting an external environmental analysis.

The third briefing note should:
• assess the integration of internal and external analyses.

LO2. AC. 2.1, 2.2. 2.3.

Task 3 – Understand the role of customer behaviour in marketing strategies.

Your next task is to prepare a section of an information file to be used by future participants in the FLDP. You are responsible for the section on Strategic Marketing; the finished section will be reviewed by the CEO.
The information file should:
• analyse the role of marketing research process and its relationship to consumer behaviour
• explain the different types of consumers and their behaviour in B2B and B2C markets and factors underpinning customer loyalty.
• evaluate the role of relationship marketing in customer behaviour analysis.


Extension activities:
To gain a Merit grade you must also:
• analyse the influences on and the psychology of consumer behaviour.

LO3. AC. 3.1, 3.2. 3.3. 3M 1

Task 4 – Understand how to develop an implementable strategic marketing plan.

This is a major element of the development programme. You are required to develop a realistic and workable strategic marketing plan for a given organisation. The choice of organisation is important to ensure successful completion of this task.

For the selected and named organisation you must:
• analyse the factors to be taken into account in the development of a marketing plan
• develop an implementable plan for your named organisation: you should select the most appropriate format for the plan
• design monitoring systems that are capable of identifying performance deviations from the plan’s original objectives
• anticipate the need for contingency plans.

Extension activities:
To gain a Merit grade you must also:
• develop alternative marketing mix related action plans that address selected objectives and selected strategies.

LO4. AC. 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4. 4M 1
Task 5 – Understand how to create a marketing strategy to meet business objectives

This is the final task of the development programme and on its completion your file will be ready to submit to your line manager.
You must:
• evaluate the requirements of a marketing strategy
• explain the relationship between a marketing strategy and a corporate strategy
• explain how the marketing strategy should address competitive forces and their likely impact
• design a dissemination process to ensure internal stakeholders are informed and committed to the marketing strategy.

Extension activities:
To gain a Merit grade you must also:
• create monitoring systems to ensure the successful implementation of a marketing strategy.

To gain a Distinction grade you must also:
• construct a marketing strategy for a named organisation.

Strategies are plans that are put in place to achieve a specific objective. In business, some of these objectives include to have a more significant market share or to have a competitive advantage (Proctor, 2014).

For the external aspects, there are different strategies to create marketing development.

The marketing process involves quite some things which must be taken into account while creating a market strategy. They include. The strategic intent, the strategic assessment, and the strategic choices. The strategic purpose here involves what the organization aims to achieve. In our case, the company seeks to boost its sales levels

The strategic choices are the means by which the marketing strategy seeks to reach its targets. This can be through social media, advertisements, and promotions. Strategic Assessments are the methods of analyzing what the market wants and how best to satisfy their needs.  This is done through assessing the customer’s needs, the company's capabilities and how the competitors are doing.

Some of the marketing strategies that may result in a competitive advantage for the company include:

1. Alignment of products with customer needs
2. Expanding the distribution channels
3. Improving customer service procedures

Understand how to create a marketing strategy to meet business objectives

• The corporate strategy of a company is what the company plans to internally to boost its revenues and increase its market share while at the same time staying ahead of its competition (Elenkov, D. 2014). The corporate strategy mainly focuses on the industrial value chain, product and services that the company offers and the physical location of the business.
• The external form of this is the marketing strategy. The marketing strategy of a company involves those activities that are conducted by the company in an attempt to ensure that the company gets more customers.

The customer being the most important individual for a business that is aiming at creating a competitive advantage, the management has to come up with ways that the products will satisfy customer’s needs. Methods of achieving this include asking employees of their views on how to meet customer’s needs and conducting surveys online and physically about the needs of customers and how they can be met.

How to carry out strategic environmental analysis

Strategic marketing analysis can be done by analyzing both the internal and the external environment of the business.

Approaches to conducting an internal environmental analysis.

The internal environmental analysis can be carried out through the following approaches:

1. Through the portfolio analysis.- this is whereby the marketing team looks at all the products that the company is selling and ranks them based on their levels of demand. This is done over a specified period.
2. Appreciative inquiry- this is whereby the organization assesses itself by identifying their positives/ their strengths and dedicates all the possible time to it.
3. Assessing the core competencies-this is whereby the organization comes up with a list of all the areas that they have much expertise. This assessment can either be taken as an individual, a team or a company.

Approaches to conducting an external environmental analysis

The external environmental analysis can be carried out through the following approaches:

1. Processed form approach- this is whereby the organization uses data that has been collected from an external source such as the government.
2. A systematic approach- this is whereby the company collects information on consumers that are in one way or another related to the market for its products

Integration of internal and external analyses

Both the internal and the external analysis information is always collected to identify the best ways of satisfying the customer (Elenkov, D. 2014). This analyses also reveal those areas that the organization needs to work on to have a competitive edge over the rivals.

Internal and External Analyses in Strategic Marketing

Marketing Research and its impact

Marketing research- is the process by which the company assesses the needs of the market and identifies effective ways of satisfying this needs. By conducting this research, the company benefits a lot. This is because it gets the insights of precisely what the consumers want in their products, the different age groups of people and how best to capture their attention by the product (West, D.C., Ford, J. and Ibrahim, E., 2015). Marketing research also helps the customer issue his or her feedback about a specific product.

These consumers are grouped into:

1. The potential Customer- this is the customer who has not yet established a particular liking for a specific brand of product. It is for that reason that in the B2C market, they are the most targeted. These consumers need the product and are easily swayed. Therefore the use of effective customer services and constant advertisements will play a huge role in capturing the consumer’s attention and making them loyal customers.
2. The New customer- these are the people who have just bought the company’s product for the first time. These individuals in both B2B and B2C setups need to be protected. This can be done through the provision of excellent after-sales service. This will help the product remain constant in the mind of the consumer (Moutinho,2018).
3. The impulsive customer- this is those customers who purchase the company’s product when they see it. This type of consumer does not need much convincing however in both B2B and B2C setups; these consumers need through value proposition. This can be done through making sure that the company’s products are marketed well enough and at all times are displayed for this type of consumers.

The role of relationship marketing in Consumers Behavioral analysis.

Relationship marketing creates a great setting by establishing a link between the business and the customers. Therefore with the use of marketing analysis, the business can identify the links to the different age groups of the customers. This will help the company establish and maintain a relationship with the customer. Once this is done in the psychological mind of the consumer, he/she will be associating the something they like with the company. Therefore they will become customers and frequently purchase the goods (Tomczak, 2018,1-18).

Understand how to develop an implementable strategic marketing plan.

In the toy creation market, there are numerous changes especially with the technological changes that are being observed. This means that for Discovery toys to stay relevant in the market, it has to assess a few things that relate to its customer's interest. Some of the factors that Discovery toys need to take into account in their marketing plans include:

The children’s age groups-different children on different age groups have specific preferences regarding the toys that they use. The children’s Gender- this is one of the primary contents that the company can use to segment its market. The company should know the types of product that girls want and those that boys want.

The current trends- this includes the use of existing famous cartoon personalities in marketing the product. This will attract more customers to the brand.

Implementation plan

For the Age groups, the company should focus on children aged between 2 years to 6 years. This is because these children can communicate to their parents on what type of toys they need. In addition to that, at this age children are more likely to follow what their favorite cartoon personality says.

1. Step one- identify the different segments of children that are most likely to purchase the product.
2. Step two- identify the most influential cartoon personality for both cartoons watched by boys and girls
3. Step there- creation and airing of an advert that will be able to capture the needs of the children. The advert should feature both the two personalities.
4. Step four- ensuring that the advert is placed at the right time of the day such as during the weekends when children are not in school, and the parents are free to go to the stores to look for the products.

Monitoring System & contingency plan

For this, the company can assess the influence of the implemented strategies based on the sales after some period such as after one or two months. The monitoring system will run in concurrence with the contingency plan which will involve the use of promotions which will happen in kid’s events and shopping malls. This will ensure that effective marketing is created for the product (Proctor, T. 2014).

Requirements of a marketing strategy

A simple and effective marketing strategy contains the following:

1. A time frame- this is the time that the organization has set out to assess whether the marketing strategy has succeeded or failed.
2. A budget- this is the amount of money that is used to make the marketing strategy a success.

The relationship between a marketing strategy and a corporate strategy

The corporate strategy of a company is what the company plans to internally to boost its revenues and increase its market share while at the same time staying ahead of its competition. The corporate strategy mainly focuses on the industrial value chain, product and services that the company offers and the physical location of the business (Kaynak, 2017,47-64).

On the other hand, the external form of this is the marketing strategy. The marketing strategy of a company involves those activities that are conducted by the company in an attempt to ensure that the company gets more customers.

How the marketing strategy should address competitive forces and their likely impact

The Marketing Strategy is more of a distinct strategy. This means that in the marketing strategy, the business ought to assess what their competitors are doing and do everything within their powers to come up with a more significant number of customers than them (Proctor, T. 2014).

A dissemination process to ensure internal stakeholders are informed and committed to the marketing strategy

References:

Elenkov, D., 2014. Experiential Exercise with Multinational Student Teams: Researching Together a Multinational Corporation and Developing Jointly a Strategic Marketing Plan for IT Using Blackboard. Developments in Business Simulation and Experiential Learning, 41.

Kaynak, E. 2017. Strategic Marketing Objectives in Mergers and Acquisitions in the Greek Food

Industry. In Food and Agribusiness Marketing in Europe (pp. 47-64). CRC Press.

Moutinho, L. 2018. Strategic Management in Tourism, CABI Tourism Texts. Cabi.

Tomczak, 2018. Introduction. In Strategic Marketing ( pp. 1-18). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.

Proctor, T., 2014. Strategic marketing: an introduction. Routledge.

West, D.C., Ford, J. and Ibrahim, E., 2015. Strategic marketing: creating competitive advantage. Oxford University Press, USA.