What is Marketing Strategy? Guide to Building an Effective Marketing Strategy

Discover how to build a marketing strategy that helps businesses understand the market, understand competitors, and optimize business opportunities - key factors to achieve outstanding performance and build a strong brand.

What is Marketing Strategy?

Marketing strategy is a comprehensive and long-term plan to promote a business's products or services to the right target customer group. In it, the business analyzes customer needs, understands competitors, and determines its position in the market. An effective Marketing strategy not only helps the brand develop but also brings sustainable value to customers.

The importance of marketing strategy in business

Increase brand awareness and reputation

Building a marketing strategy helps your brand appear consistently to the public, strengthens your reputation and increases recognition.

Balance the budget

With the right strategy, businesses can use their budgets more effectively, control costs, and optimize profits. Small businesses can even compete better with large corporations thanks to this strategy.

Increase customer engagement

Engagement reflects the success of the strategy. A smart marketing strategy helps businesses attract potential customers and maintain their loyalty.

Enhance brand image

A systematic marketing strategy not only promotes products but also builds a positive, consistent image, highlighting the core values ​​of the business.

Common Types of Marketing Strategies

1. Mass Marketing Strategy

Targeting the entire market without distinguishing between customer segments, mass marketing creates a common message to convey to everyone.

2. Differentiated Marketing Strategy

In Differentiated Marketing , businesses design different campaigns, each targeting a specific customer segment, increasing coverage and meeting diverse needs.

3. Focused Marketing Strategy

Concentrated marketing allows a business to focus all its resources on a specific segment. Often suitable for small and medium-sized businesses, this strategy helps build a strong position in a small market.

Basic Components of a Marketing Strategy

Integrated Marketing

This is a strategy that synchronizes all media, creating a consistent message across multiple channels. Integrated marketing aims for consistency and effective customer engagement across all media.

Relationship Marketing

Relationship marketing focuses on building long-term and sustainable relationships with customers and partners.

Social Marketing

Social marketing focuses on community values, demonstrates corporate social responsibility, and helps increase customer sympathy for the brand.

Internal Marketing

Aiming to build a harmonious working environment, Internal Marketing keeps employees united, helps them bond and commit to growing with the business.

6 Steps to Build a Scientific Marketing Strategy

Step 1: Research your target audience

Understanding customer behavior and preferences is the foundation for creating a successful marketing strategy.

Step 2: Analyze competitors

Explore competitor strengths, weaknesses and market opportunities.

Step 3: Break down the sales funnel

A sales funnel is the journey from when a customer becomes aware of a product to when they make a purchase. Segmenting the funnel helps optimize each stage and attract more customers.

Step 4: Build an overall marketing strategy

Defining the message and choosing the right communication channel helps the campaign to be deployed easily and effectively.

Step 5: Deployment

Start implementing the strategy as planned. Businesses need to prioritize tasks to ensure quality.

Step 6: Measure, Evaluate, Edit

Evaluate campaign effectiveness based on KPIs and customer feedback to quickly adjust and optimize strategies.

Examples of Marketing Strategies of Famous Brands

Vinamilk's Marketing Strategy

Vinamilk is a major milk brand in Vietnam with a 4P Marketing strategy including diverse products, reasonable prices, a widespread distribution system, and a strong promotional campaign.

Chanel – 3 No Marketing Strategy

Chanel stands out with its "3 no's" strategy : no discounts, no selling on social media, and no attention to competitors. The brand focuses on creating differentiation and maintaining class.

Distinguishing Marketing Strategy from Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy is a big picture and long-term direction that helps a business determine how to approach and distribute its products. In contrast, a marketing plan is a detailed description of short-term activities and tasks to realize the marketing strategy.

Some frequently asked questions about Marketing strategy

1. Which businesses need a Marketing strategy?

Any business, large or small, needs a marketing strategy to clearly define its direction, create a competitive advantage and attract customers.

2. Does Marketing Strategy Have a Big Impact on Budget?

The budget level depends on the specific strategy and goals. The clearer the strategy, the more effectively the budget is used.

3. Can Marketing Strategies Work at the Same Time?

Depending on the business's goals, strategies can complement each other when implemented in a coordinated and consistent manner.

4. Who builds the marketing strategy for the business?

Marketing strategists are often senior marketing professionals such as Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) or Marketing Managers.

Brand Manager – Specializing in Providing Marketing Services

Marketing strategies cannot be fully effective without someone who can lead and control the implementation process. This is where the Brand Manager – the person responsible for developing, positioning, and promoting the brand – plays a pivotal role. With an overview, the Brand Manager not only builds campaigns that are in line with the marketing strategy but also coordinates other factors such as budget, product positioning, and core values, to ensure the brand is closely connected to the target customers.

The Role of Brand Manager in Marketing Strategy

A professional Brand Manager will turn marketing strategy goals into specific, optimized, and engaging campaigns. Specifically, a Brand Manager helps:

• Branding: Ensuring that the brand is recognized and loved by customers, through its image, message and core values.
• Manage and execute campaigns: Combine marketing channels from advertising, social media marketing, to PR to build a consistent image and increase market presence.
• Optimize costs and resources: Identify the most effective channels and methods, and balance budgets to stay within limits, creating a balance between costs and profits.
• Analyze and measure effectiveness: From performance metrics, Brand Manager evaluates campaigns and quickly adjusts direction accordingly.

Thanks to Brand Manager, Marketing strategy does not stop at planning but is implemented and controlled comprehensively, helping the brand maintain its appeal, increase competitiveness and develop sustainably in the market.