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A comprehensive and accurate strategic marketing plan, assuming that you have the dedication and commitment to follow it, will open new doors with potential and existing clients and connect them with the information that they’re looking for.

This type of dedication is the difference between companies that are “players” in a given sector and those that are “winners” in their sector.

One important thing to watch for is the “Activity for Activities Sake” marketing approach that feels good because you are checking boxes off the list, but doing so without any real strategy or plan. Many companies get sucked into this trap and get an endorphin rush when a blog gets written or they see a post on their company’s social media feed.

Although it can feel good for a minute, it is often empty and doesn’t produce results.

If you want you marketing to really work, it needs to be part of a well-thought strategic marketing strategy and plan.

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The final element that sets strategic marketing apart from any run-of-the-mill approach is mapping out the specific tactics that will help you achieve your overall business goals. While the above five steps lay the foundation for any strategic plan, marketing tactics lay out how you’ll accomplish the “blocking and tackling” of actually getting the word out to your target audience, engaged on the right channels, and moving efficiently down the sales funnel.

Whether it’s digital channels like blogging and social media, or traditional avenues like radio and print, here’s what you’ll want to ask yourself when outlining the specific tactics you’ll take to execute on connecting your clients with your message:

What is the most effective use of your marketing budget?

What mediums (e.g., website, print materials, branding materials, mobile applications, social media, etc.) are the most effective for reaching your target customers?

What is your month-by-month strategic marketing plan for the next year to attract new business and retain current customers?

How can you leverage existing clients to attract new clients?

How can the tactics be interlinked to improve the overall performance of each piece?

Implementing the correct marketing tactics based on the previous four steps and analysis is where a strategic marketing approach really shows how valuable it can be. You’ll be able to see your content generating leads, your social posts generating traffic, and (hopefully) sales going up in the markets and demographics you’re targeting.

Tactics are where all the hard work you’ve done finally starts to pay off, and you can actually see the bottom line impact versus a non-strategic approach to marketing.

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Another key pillar of strategic marketing is figuring out what you’re saying, what you need to be saying, and the best way to say it. In short, conducting a messaging analysis will allow you to fine-tune your communications and make sure that everything from your website copy to your company blog is laser-focused on what connects with your target audience.

Here are some of the key aspects to a strategic marketing message analysis:

What messaging is currently out there about your company?

How did it get there?

What is the “elevator speech” version of what you want your customers to know about your company?

What are the three most important pieces of information that will attract new business?

What messaging drew current customers to you and not to your competition?

A digital marketing partner can help you take many of the above steps, including an inventory of your current messaging and digital assets. Messaging that is nonstrategic can come across generic or haphazard at best, and completely offputting to your target market at worst.

That’s why it’s so important to take a strategic approach to your messaging, and focus on your key differentiators and the problems you solve for your customers.

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A strategic marketing approach needs to be in alignment with the key opportunities that your business is going after. Therefore, you’ll want to conduct a thorough opportunity analysis in conjunction with your marketing plan.

Whether it’s expanding into a new market, shifting your product or service offerings, or going after different demographics, here are some things to consider as you’re on the lookout for new possibilities and opportunities:

Where are we looking to grow our business?

Where is the biggest profit opportunity?

Where is the biggest volume opportunity?

What capabilities do we have now that we didn’t have a year ago?

What action steps are needed to go after these opportunities?

Without conducting a thorough opportunity analysis, you won’t be able to strategically market to the highest value customer segments. You’ll want to also explore adjacent opportunities to your core business that will allow you to easily build upon your current expertise, and brainstorm potential marketing strategies to attack those new verticals. Think of potentially valuable demographic segments that are similar to your current customers, and analyze which ones you might want to start marketing to.

By conducting an opportunity analysis, you’ll have a better idea of where your business should expand next, and start thinking of which marketing capabilities you’ll need to build out to expand.

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Your marketing doesn’t exist in a bubble, plain and simple. Even if you think what you’re doing is effective, prospects and customers are going to stack things up with your direct competitors. One of the key differentiators between strategic and non-strategic marketing is analyzing the competition in order to fine tune your own approach.

Effective competitor analysis should look at what “they” are up to:

Where is the competition spending their marketing dollars?

Where are they ahead and where are you ahead?

Which types of clients are they attracting that you want to go after?

Are you looking to pull even with them or pull ahead?

You can conduct a competitive marketing analysis with a variety of information, tools, and resources available online. Use Google Keyword Planner or Moz to run reports on where your competitors rank for key search terms. Or inventory their content marketing to see what topics they’re blogging on, how often, etc.

Without competitive analysis and the ability to craft a message that stands out from the crowd, your marketing simply won’t be at a strategic level.

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Whether you’re a software startup or a mom and pop auto shop, your marketing only becomes strategic when you know your audience inside and out. More importantly, remember that whatever you sell fulfills a need or solves a problem for your target market.

Therefore, when identifying and analyzing your target audience, always start at the end:

Who is your audience?

What information are they looking for?

Where would they look for this information?

How often are they looking?

If you sell technology or software to help small businesses manage finances, then you should build out strategic target personas of who might be buying your product. Don’t be afraid to engage with some of your current customers to help develop this, as their word will be better than you simply “filling in the blanks.” You can then determine how they look for software like yours (google search, review sites, online forums, etc.) and when they typically look for solutions like yours.

Audience identification and analysis takes marketing to the strategic level because you’ll be able to target your message to achieve the highest ROI, instead of simply taking a “spitball” approach that often too many businesses take.

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Product development typically refers to all of the stages involved in bringing a product from concept or idea, through market release and beyond. In other words, product development incorporates a product’s entire journey, including:

Identifying a market need

Conceptualizing and designing the product

Building the product roadmap

Developing a minimum viable product (MVP)

Releasing the MVP to users

Iterating based on user feedback

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1. Idea Generation
Is the continous and systematic quest for new product opportunities,

including updating or changing an existing product.

2. Idea Screening

Takes the less attractive, infeasible and unwanted product ideas out of the running. Unsuitable ideas should be determined through objective consideration.

3. Concept Development and Testing
Is Vital. The internal, objective analysis of step 2 is replaced by customer opinión in this stage. The idea, or product concept at this point, must be tested on a true customer base to get feedback.

4. MarketStrategy/Businessanalysis: It is comprised of 4Ps.

5. Feasibility Analysis / Study

Yields information that is critical to the product ́s success.
It entails organizing private groups that will test a prototype, of the product, then evalute the experience in a test panel.

6. ProductTechnincalDesign/ProductDevelopment
It integrates the results of the feasibility analyses and feedback from

the prototype tests from stage five into the product.

7. TestMarketing
The goal of this stage is to validate the entire concept from marketing

angle and message to packaging to advertising to distribution.

8. Marketing Entry/Commercializaion

Is the stage in which the product is introduced to the target market. All the data obtained throughout the previus 7 states of this approac are used to produce.

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Marketers use labeling to their products to bring identification. This kind of labeling helps a viewer to differentiate the product from the rest in the shelves of the market. There are several used of the label for the products in the market.

Labeling is used for packaging the product. In marketing, a marketer can also use a sticker inedible products to impart knowledge of the ingredients of the food items. This helps to spread awareness among the customers about the item they are consuming and labeling also helps to mention ingredients.

Types of labeling in marketing

Branded Product Labels

Products need to be branded to help with identification and play a key role in company brand building programs. Branded Product Labels need to be securely bonded to the product surface in a way that is best suited to that product.

There are two types of branded labels:
•  Removable and
•  None Removable labels

With permanent labels, the bonding has to be permanent and the label must be difficult to remove and resistant to a number of factors.

Removable product labels, on the other hand, need to adhere to the product only until they need to be removed.

Eco or Information Labels

Information Labels or Eco-Labels are used on consumer products such as foodstuff and fast moving consumer goods. They are used to impart information to the consumer about the product. Often these types are made out of eco-friendly substances so that they do not interfere with the products they are associated with.

Other Product Label Types

There are a number of different label types that are in common usage around the world that are regular mass produced by specialist printing services.

What is product labeling?

Product Labeling is a key feature in marketing. It helps to market the product allowing customers to know about the item and give necessary messages including ingredients, instructions, and uses.

Product labeling can be done in a variety of sizes, materials, and shapes. It plays a key role as a point of sale display in the market shelves. They can also communicate information about how to handle a product or how to dispose of it. You can use the labeling for security reasons so that a product should not be misused. It is for these purposes the labeling having the logo or the trademark of the company. All these are different types of uses of the label for a product in the world of business.

What must you include in your label?

A label needs to comply with the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (CCA). This Act is required to give information to consumers, such as:
•  The mandatory consumer product information standards under the CCA

• Industry specific regulations, such as the Food Standards Code

• Labels required by customs for some imported products under the Commerce (Trade Descriptions) Act.

Importance of labeling and packaging

Another main purpose of the use of labeling and packaging is to exaggerate the product. A marketer needs to grab the attention of a viewer to purchase the product. Labeling and packaging should be able to beautify a product to add to its visual appeal.

This can instantly grab a viewer’s attention towards a product. You can arouse interest in the mind of a customer towards a product through an attractively designed label. It is essential to use a good quality material for the sticker.

Importance:
• The role of packaging and labeling has become quite significant as it helps to grab the attention of the audience.

• Labelling and packaging can be used by marketers to encourage potential buyers to purchase the product.

•  Packaging is also used for convenience and information transmission. Packages and labels communicate how to use, transport, recycle or dispose of the package or product.

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Packaging is more than just your product's pretty face. Your package design may affect everything from breakage rates in shipment to whether stores will be willing to stock it. For example, "displayability" is an important concern. The original slanted-roof metal container used for Log Cabin Syrup was changed to a design that was easier to stack after grocers became reluctant to devote the necessary amounts of shelf space to the awkward packages. Other distribution-related packaging considerations include:

Labeling. You may be required to include certain information on the label of your product when it is distributed in specific ways. For example, labels of food products sold in retail outlets must contain information about their ingredients and nutritional value.

Opening. If your product is one that will be distributed in such a way that customers will want to--and should be able to--sample or examine it before buying, your packaging will have to be easy to open and to reclose. If, on the other hand, your product should not be opened by anyone other than the purchaser--an over-the-counter medication, for instance--then the packaging will have to be designed to resist and reveal tampering.

Size. If your product must be shipped a long distance to its distribution point, then bulky or heavy packaging may add too much to transportation costs.

Durability. Many products endure rough handling between their production point and their ultimate consumer. If your distribution system can't be relied upon to protect your product, your packaging will have to do the job.

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Creativity, the ability to make or otherwise bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form.

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Creative thinking - how to get out of the box and generate ideas: Giovanni Corazza at TEDxRoma

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You can see examples of market segmentation in the products, marketing and advertising that people use every day. Auto manufacturers thrive on their ability to identify market segments correctly and create products and advertising campaigns that appeal to those segments. Cereal producers market actively to three or four market segments at a time, pushing their traditional brands that appeal to older consumers and their healthy brands to health-conscious consumers while building brand loyalty among the youngest consumers by tying their products to popular movie themes.

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Market segmentation is a marketing term referring to the aggregating of prospective buyers into groups or segments with common needs and who respond similarly to a marketing action.

Companies can use three criteria to identify different market segments:

homogeneity, or common needs within a segment;

distinction, or being unique from other groups;

and reaction, or a similar response to the market.

For example, an athletic footwear company might have market segments for basketball players and long-distance runners. As distinct groups, basketball players and long-distance runners respond to very different advertisements.

Market segmentation is an extension of market research that seeks to identify targeted groups of consumers to tailor products and branding in a way that is attractive to the group.

Companies can segment markets several ways:

· geographically by region or area

· demographically by age, gender,  family size, income or life cycle

· psychographically by social class, lifestyle or personality

· or behaviorally by benefit, uses or response.

The objective is to enable the company to differentiate its products or message according to the common dimensions of the market segment.

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What is a "Value Proposition"?

Value proposition refers to a business or marketing statement that a company uses to summarize why a consumer should buy a product or use a service. This statement convinces a potential consumer that one particular product or service will add more value or better solve a problem than other similar offerings will. Companies use this statement to target customers who will benefit most from using the company's products.

What is a "Target Market"?

A target market is the market a company wants to sell its products and services to, and it includes a targeted set of customers for whom it directs its marketing efforts. A target market can be separated from the market as a whole by geography, buying power, demographics and psychographics.

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A marketing strategy grows out of a company’s value proposition. The value proposition summarizes the competitive advantage a company has in its market. The value proposition usually provides the key message for all marketing. Walmart, for example, is a discount retailer with “everyday low prices,” and its business operations and marketing revolve around that.

A company is never creating a marketing strategy from scratch. They start with the value proposition and distill the key marketing message(s) from that.

Any marketing asset, from a print ad design to a social media campaign, can be judged by how well it communicates the value proposition.

Marketing plans are operational documents that get more attention because they are the day-to-day work that a company does to sell itself to the world. That said, a marketing plan would be meaningless without a message, a target market and a goal — the core of every marketing strategy.

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A marketing strategy is a business's overall game plan for reaching people and turning them into customers of the product or service that the business provides. The marketing strategy of a company contains the company’s value proposition, key marketing messages, information on the target customer and other elements.
A company’s marketing strategy should have a longer lifespan than any individual marketing plan as the strategy is where the value proposition and the key elements of a company’s brand reside. These things ideally do not shift very much over time.

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The Best Marketing Advice EVER By Steve Jobs | Apple Motivation & Inspiration

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The 4 Ps of The Marketing Mix Simplified

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Product Development - Marketing Concept 

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Product Development - Marketing Concept 