STRATEGIC MARKETING IS A GROWTH DRIVER
And so it begins, with marketing
From purpose to customer experience, marketing is key for business growth and success
Marketing is the core of a prospering business. At best, marketing encompasses the entire organisation and is unified with the overall strategy. When done right, marketing enables value creation, sustainable competitive advantage and profitable growth. Marketing is an ongoing process that gets your business where you want it. Once your business is viable, you need marketing to secure your future.
As crucial as it is, the field of marketing entails confusion. The terminology is ambiguous and blurry. Business leaders get marketing concepts mixed up all the time and the difference between strategic and tactical level marketing is often misunderstood. The role and benefits of marketing have to be better understood to fully harness the potential that lies within.
Marketing on a tactical level
At a very basic level, marketing can be seen as a variety of marketing actions taking place without a deep insight or strategic thinking. In these cases, executives perceive marketing as a must-have business function, but the understanding of its strategic implications are lacking. Marketing might operate in a silo and the brand is mostly appreciated as the visual identity. In these companies, marketing is typically measured based on tactical metrics.
Tactical marketing focuses on the details helping to reach a specific goal. The problem is that without an overarching strategy, you might be reaching for the wrong goals. While operational level marketing is an important business function, it plays a supporting role. The more marketing is central to the overall business strategy and decision making processes, the better the results.
Marketing needs to be strategic to be effective
Strategic marketing aims for sustainable competitive advantage and creating a growth mindset within an organisation. On a strategic level, marketing leads the brand, business development and customer relationship management.
Ideally, strategic marketing begins and ends with the customer. Business strategy and marketing strategy can be united when strategic marketing is customer-centric and the end goal of the business is a seamless customer experience. On a strategic level, marketing is the way of seeing the organisation as a whole.
It all comes down to value creation
Sustained competitive advantage is obtained through unique customer value proposition and building engaging customer relationships. With comprehensive marketing strategy, you’ll beat the competitors by delivering consistently better value for the customer, the brand and the shareholders.
Modern marketing is customer-centric, placing the customer experience at the core of marketing design and delivery. Identifying customer needs as well as attracting and nourishing the right audiences is central to strategic marketing - and revenue growth. That is why marketing needs to be at the core of your business and strategy.
As the true marketing guru Phillip Kotler has put it;
"Marketing is not the art of finding clever ways to dispose of what you make. It is the art of creating genuine customer value."
Why outsourcing your strategic marketing thinking is a clever move?
Navigating the constantly changing marketing arena is a time-consuming task and requires up-to-date knowledge. Outsourcing your strategic level marketing operations gives you the freedom to focus on your main responsibilities. An outsourced marketing master on board, you can do what you do best and let a pro take over your marketing thinking.
Flexibility is a virtue. Today’s global and digital world calls for the ability to adjust. While striving for profitable growth, on-demand strategic marketing expertise offers a cost effective alternative for full-time headcount. For start-up’s, it’s a worthwhile opportunity to incorporate strategic marketing thinking into the overall business strategy from the get-go, hence ensure starting off on the right foot. Even when you can’t afford a full-time CMO.
