Definitions and meanings
Marketing:
Marketing means knowing your customer’s demand. Companies or businesses keep on finding new ways and techniques to satisfy the needs and wants of customers through marketing. Usually, people confused the concept of marketing with selling but, these are “two” entirely different concepts. Selling means attracting your customers towards your product to exchange it with cash whereas, marketing is related to the value that the exchange is all about. Simply, marketing is all about discovering, developing, creating and satisfying customer needs.
Strategic Marketing:
Strategic marketing can be defined as the aim of identifying or designing a plan of action to satisfy customer needs and achieve long-term objectives of company i.e., increasing productivity and profitability of the company as well as improving its overall performance. Strategic marketing moves with a well researched written strategic marketing plan that explains what type of marketing techniques or programs are going to be used within the given time frame and how these programs will be implemented in the near future.
Differences between marketing and strategic marketing:
The difference between brand awareness and brand positioning has been detailed below:
1. Conceptual overview
Marketing as a concept is related to all the steps or actions a company or business takes to make a healthy relation with its customer. The concept of networking is also included in marketing where potential or past clients are also taken into consideration. Promotions and advertising are also involved to attract target audiences by writing catchy slogans, impressive packaging, and overall media exposure. The concept of strategic marketing, on the other hand, is related to devising new strategic market plans to engage customers for market domination. Strategic marketing is not only involved in identifying or creating programs to satisfy customer needs but, it helps companies become more innovative and penetrate the market without any obstacles.
2. Objectives
Marketing is one of the significant factors for any company or organisation who wants to make it’s brand a household name. The objectives of the company concerning marketing can be list down as:
- To increase business sales
- Create/improve product awareness
- Establish yourself in the market
- Grow market share
The major objective of the Strategic marketing manager is to identify marketing goals by meeting employees and administration in operation and decide the time or set the date to meet these goals. Some other objectives can be list down as:
- Setting pragmatic objectives
- Creating effective business techniques or tactics
- Trying to find out past marketing failures
- Improving the performance of the organisation
- Taking into considerations the most effective ways for changing business operations
3. Tools and techniques
Many tools and techniques can be used to plan marketing activities. Important tools and techniques that can be used by marketing experts to keep their marketing activities in line with company objectives are named as 4P’s of marketing or called marketing mix (price, product, place, promotion). Strategic marketing tools and techniques are named as 3C’s, corporation, customer and competitors. According to Mintzberg, top strategic marketers spend most of their time for the analysis of each factor from 3C’s to successfully formulate a market strategy.
4. Importance in business success
As far as business success is concerned, marketing and strategic marketing both have their place. Marketing helps businesses in researching, promoting and selling products and services to your target population. Marketing is also important for promoting the business, its brand, and offerings. Strategic marketing is just like an edge of business over its competitors. It helps businesses to use all the available resources in such a way to convey a sales message to its target audience. Strategic marketing is also helpful in the development of products and services with the best profit-making perspective.
Marketing and Strategic Marketing – tabular comparison
A tabular comparison of Marketing and Strategic Marketing is given below:
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| Conceptual overview | ||||
| It includes all the steps taken by the organisation to make a healthy and beneficial relationship with its customers. In simple words, it’s more like networking. | Strategic marketing means designing programs and making plans to attract customers so that business can easily dominate the market. | |||
| Objectives | ||||
| The objective of a company concerned to its marketing plan is to promote and advertise its products and services among its target audience. In other words, it is called a brand awareness to improve company performance as well as profitability. | The main objective of strategic marketing is to find out the causes behind the past marketing failures and avoid those failures to improve company performance. | |||
| Tools and techniques | ||||
| Important tools and techniques of marketing are known as 4P’s of Marketing or marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion) | Strategic marketing use 3C’s as its tools and techniques (customers, corporation, competitors) | |||
| Importance in business success | ||||
| It promotes the business, it’s brand, and offerings | Strategic marketing helps business growth and success by giving an edge over its competitors. | |||
Conclusion:
Marketing is needed in almost every kind of business whether small medium or large. It may be different in shape, type or process but, its main objective is same, and that is to play an important role in creating a relationship between target audience/customers and business offerings to the market. Without well-planned marketing tools (advertising, public relations, and sales) a company or business would be unable to grow. To reach your target audience or to identify your target audience is as important as your marketing plan and business can only identify its target audience and to set its measurable goals through strategic marketing only.
