Developing a Marketing Strategy

As a marketing professional, you will likely be involved in the development of both marketing strategies and marketing plans. It is important to have an understanding of what differentiates these terms.

A marketing strategy is an explanation of the goals you need to achieve through your marketing, which is shaped by your business goals. By contrast, a marketing plan is how you are going to achieve your marketing goals. Your marketing strategy serves as a road map that will guide you from one point to another within your marketing plan. In other words, the strategy is the thinking (the “what”) and the plan is the doing (the “how”). The purpose of your marketing strategy should be to identify and communicate the benefits of your business offering to your target market.

For example, if your business objective is to gain broader market adoption, your marketing strategy might be to introduce into new market segments, and your marketing plan might be to develop a marketing campaign that reaches out, identifies with, and focuses on a specific segment.

For your Final Project, you will apply the concepts and topics you have learned throughout this course to create a marketing strategy. You will not be creating a marketing plan.

To prepare for completing this Final Project, review the following articles provided in the Week 6 Learning Resources:

AK Advisory Partners, LLC. (n.d.). Creating a successful marketing strategy. Retrieved July 23, 2014, from http://www.akadvisorypartners.com/files/Creating-a-Successful-Marketing-Strategy.pdf

Info Entrepreneurs. (n.d.). Create your marketing strategy. Retrieved July 23, 2014, from http://www.infoentrepreneurs.org/en/guides/create-your-marketing-strategy/

Klausner, A. (2013). Creating a successful marketing strategy. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/advisor/2013/04/17/creating-a-successful-marketing-strategy/

Requirements Length, and Format

Create a 2–3 page marketing strategy by completing the Final Project Template, filling in each field with the required information, including:

·        Target market segment(s)

o   Who are your existing and potential customers (target market)?

o   What are the needs of your target market, as identified through market research?

·        Business strengths

o   What are your company’s strengths?

o   How do the strengths of your company match the needs of your target market?

·        Marketing activities

o   What marketing activities are likely to ensure that your target market knows about the products and/or services you offer, and why these products/services meet their needs?

o   Why did you select each of these marketing activities?

·        Monitoring and evaluation

o   How will you monitor and evaluate how effective your marketing strategy has been?

The Final Project is due on Day 7 of Week 6.

Be sure to apply any relevant conceptual or theoretical understanding gained from the readings, media, and other Learning Resources throughout this course to your Final Project. Note that this project should be clearly organized and illustrate what you have learned throughout the context of the course.

Use the Final Project Template to organize and format your paper.