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Strategic Marketing
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• What Is A Marketing Strategy?
• Any culmination of activities, whether online or offline,that helps a business to move closer to its short term orlong-term strategic sales goals are part of its marketingstrategy. It includes a thorough evaluation of the marketdynamics, demographics and competitive environment ofany industry or niche prior to creating an overall plan ofaction.
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• Strategic marketing: A specialised field of study in marketing.• Marketing strategy and market strategy: Organisational strategy
constructs that are central to the field of strategic marketing.• Strategic management: A specialised field of study in management.• Corporate strategy: An organisational strategy construct that is central to
the field of strategic management.• Business strategy: An organisational strategy construct that is common
to the fields of strategic management and strategic marketing (abusiness’ competitive strategy is a composite of multiple functional areastrategies, including marketing strategy
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Domain of strategic marketing
• ‘The study of organizational, inter-organizational, andenvironmental phenomena concerned with (1) the behaviourof organizations in the marketplace in their interactions withconsumers, customers, competitors and other externalconstituencies, in the context of creation, communication anddelivery of products that offer value to customers in exchangeswith organizations, and (2) the general managementresponsibilities associated with the boundary spanning role ofthe marketing function in organizations’ (Varadarajan, 2010, p.119).
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Strategic marketing decisions
• A firm’s marketing decisions that are ofcrucial importance from the standpoint oftheir potential impact on the long-termperformance of the firm. A firm’s marketingdecisions that are the basis for its actionsor activities or behaviours in themarketplace.
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Characteristics of strategic marketing decisions
Entail resource commitments that are:(a) relatively large in magnitude,(b) made with a relatively longer term outlook
(c) spread over a relatively longer time period,(d) made with a relatively greater emphasis on the achievement of acompetitive cost and/or differentiation advantage and(e) either irreversible or relatively difficult to reverse.
• Entail trade-offs (i.e. pursuing a particular course of action wouldentail foregoing other courses of action, in light of the relativelylarge resource outlays that pursuing any one of these courses ofaction would involve).
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• Are made at higher levels in an organisation (e.g. the topmanagement level – the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) andexecutives directly reporting to the CEO), and/or at higher levelswithin the marketing function – the Chief Marketing Officer(CMO) and executives directly reporting to the CMO.
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• Strategic marketing underpins the importance of thevarious markets, the customers and the competitorswithin the represented market.
• Strategic marketing implies that organisations identifythe customers’ needs and apply solutions to satisfythese needs. Decisions made and solutions applied arenot only to satisfy the needs of customers, but to achievea competitive advantage and to reach organisationalgoals set out in the organisational strategy (Proctor,2008).
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• Wind and Robertson (1983:12) explain that a marketingstrategy focuses unequivocally on the establishment andmaintenance for long-term competitive and consumeradvantage. They state that strategic marketing can beperceived as an integral part of the business strategy.Marketing strategy functions as an interactive linkbetween an organisation, its customers, competitors andvarious other stakeholders.
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• Strategic marketing focuses on theproducts and services, the market andcustomers relationships. But seeing thatthe customers are such an important partof an organisation, it overlaps with variousother strategic business units andbecomes an active part of theorganisational strategy.
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Strategic Marketing Process
Step 1 — Strategic Analysis.• Prior to the development of strategy, analyses of
the environment and role-players of the marketmust be performed. The sum total of the analysesare used as the platform on which to develop thestrategies.
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Step 2 — Strategy Formulation.• Strategists are required to craft a strategy based
on the strategic analysis. The organisation'svision, mission, corporate values and theorganisational strategic intent play a vital role inthe direction of the design. The marketingstrategy and the corporate strategy should alignin order to achieve greatest advantage andorganisational growth. The marketing strategycan be single faceted or have more than oneinterrelated focus.
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Step 3 — Implementation, Control,Measurement and Interventions.• Implement the strategy and ensure that
the implementation is well executed. Thesuccess of the strategy and theimplementation should be measured andevaluated. If the expectation is not met, anintervention should be developed andimplemented.
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Need Strategic Marketing
• The intensifying battle for market share• Ferocious competition in world markets• Create new and uphold competitive advantages• Shift to an integrated offer of superior value (competition driven)