What is meant by marketing strategy? (+examples)

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If you have ever wanted to know what is meant by marketing strategy, you have come to the right place.

In this article we will review the definition of marketing strategy, and provide some fun and easy examples.

What is meant by marketing strategy?
Marketing strategy is the high-level strategy an organization chooses to design how a company: 1. Gains a customer, and 2. Keeps a customer. The marketing strategy is usually composed of a calendar of marketing tactics, often using a Gantt chart style featuring overlapping marketing and advertising campaigns.

I recently had a great conversation with a wonderful consulting professional who works with clients in northern California.

This consultant offers a textbook example of what it takes to develop a successful marketing strategy. There is a great lesson here about marketing a business, and what is meant by 'marketing strategy'.

Let's get into the details now.

What is meant by marketing strategy?

Here is a brief synopsis of my conversation with this business owner as we started to build her marketing strategy ...

After having started a conversation with 10 potential clients that she bought from an online advertising service...

this consultant began questioning her own success.

She largely questioned herself because she had nothing to compare her results to and only focused on the negative.

Marketing strategy example

Let’s put success into perspective using a sports analogy:

Andrew McCutchen was the Center Fielder for the Philadelphia Phillies and played for other teams including the Pittsburgh Pirates. Over the years he held some of baseball’s top batting averages, at one time with a .362 average.

This means Andrew only hit about four times out of 10! 

Another example, at one time, the LA Dodgers team batting average was .285.

This means they strike out over 70% of the time!

Ok, this consultant in California bought 10 ‘new client leads’. 

She hoped all 10 would become a paying client (just like the Dodgers hope to hit 10 times for every 10 at-bats!) 

Each lead cost her $50.

Her marketing strategy consisted of her spending $500 on advertising by buying leads from an industry specific lead generation service.

Her marketing strategy results:

Two out of these people became a paid client for her immediately.

This is a very respectable “batting average” of 20% (.200).

This means that her conversion rate from this online advertising source is an extremely respectable 20%.

In fact, one client has been with her for two years. The second client worked with her for nearly one year.

Now, every business person ALWAYS brings it back to the dollars. And, it turns out that she has earned about …

$20,000 in consulting revenue from a
$500 investment into ‘new client leads’

Would you call that a success?

With a return on advertising investment (ROAI) of $40 (sales) to $1 (invested), every marketer on the planet would call this ratio an amazing success.

But, what about the eight that did not become a client?

It’s called opportunity … which is usually disguised as ‘hard work’.

But this hard work provides you the opportunity to be better in every phase of your marketing strategy, with a:

• faster initial call
• better voicemail greeting
• exciting offer
• clearer unique selling proposition (USP)
• crisper initial e-mail
• more effective return policy
• fun second call
• sharper second e-mail, and
• on and on…

Providing you the option to…

Increase your ‘batting average’ and the key performance indicators that support your marketing strategy

Of course hitting a baseball is not exactly the same as closing sales.

But the point is clear: in order to gain a customer and keep a customer, you have to develop your marketing strategy.

And let's dig deep into this now.

Here's an overview of your plan for championing your marketing strategy:

• Winning in Marketing is not a straight line -- it requires you to "zig and zag", respond to the market and make wise decisions based on your 'data driven marketing'.
• Your success is about how you respond to the wins, losses and fails you undoubtedly will have happen along the way!
• Focus on the important actions that you can do right now to gain a customer and keep a customer
• Identify your "batting average" in business and use the data driven marketing strategies found at Your Strategic Marketing Partner to focus wholeheartedly on increasing your average(s).

Now, it's time to ...

Develop Your Marketing Strategy

Dictionary.com defines ‘strategy’ as …

“a plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for

obtaining a specific goal or result.“

So, what is your strategy for this year and beyond?

One of the fastest ways to transform your life or career is to ...

Optimize the strategy you are implementing

In fact, most people aren’t strategic at all, they are highly tactical — that is, they are intensely focused on doing all the micro ‘in the weeds’ responses to their hourly and daily needs and not really following any real strategy.

However, a much better approach is to try to strategically engineer a business approach that maximizes — at all times — the sales revenue, your position in the marketplace, sustaining growth, and the value of the business asset.

Whether you work for someone else or it's all on you -- taking this marketing strategy approach can skyrocket your effectiveness.

And all of this can be accomplished just by optimizing your strategy.

Strategy is the master purpose that your marketing is all about

Strategy is the explanation of the entire operating approach your marketing is following and why and how every element of it integrates, advances, and deploys the big picture outcome that you are after.

So, how do you put your strategy on the right track for this year and beyond?

Here’s three things to consider when developing your marketing strategy:

1. Understand that you already have a strategy, even if it’s a reactive one. First and foremost, you have to adapt and implement a long-term strategy.
2. You need to figure out what it is you’re trying to accomplish, build, and sustain.
3. You need to figure out what big operating approach will give you the greatest outcome you want in the fastest period of time on the most enduring basis.

Once you figure these three things out, you need to think through your tactics. In other words, what are the best moves and maneuvers to achieve the big outcome you’re after?

Most people go about it completely opposite. They first think about endless mind-numbing actions and tactics and really pay no attention to the big picture strategy unless they stumble upon it.

For example, if your strategy is:

• I’m going to bring in a lot of people to my business and breakeven (ROAI is 1.0 -- more about that shortly). 
• Then, I’m going to give them a great experience. 
• Next, I’ll provide them with more expensive and more expansive products or services. 
• I’m going to resell those services or products over and over again. 
• Then, I’m going to add new products and services as I grow the relationship with my clients and customers.  
• I’m going to make profit from my products and services. 
• I’m also going to take my existing services and develop new products and services, enter new markets, and find new applications.

For an inspiring TED talk video on developing your strategy, you will benefit from a great video called the Golden Circle by Simon Sinek:

If you could wave a magic wand and have three years pass, what are you comfortable ending up with?

• Do you want a huge company with a lot of management issues?
• Do you want a big staff and a lot of overhead requirements?
• Or do you want to achieve similar sales volume or net income with half the people and less management?
• Do you want a one-or-two-person show that is largely dependent upon your own efforts?

There are many ways to craft your strategy.  You have to decide what the best method is for you and then you have to go after it.

Once you’ve decided on your strategy, now your tactics come into the equation.

Your tactics are the approaches, methods, steps and vehicles that you use to accomplish your big picture strategy.

But, of course, knowing how to carve out and make sense from your most important data driven marketing will help you make better decisions and enhance your skills and strategy.

The first step is to review your Website Marketing and Online Advertising partnership and then review the Email Marketing partnership.