Every marketing strategy, regardless of whether it is traditional or digital, has a number of phases in common. Of course, each one of them will have its own adjustments adapted to the nature of the project to be promoted.

In principle, a marketing strategy is responsible for working on several aspects at once, although some will be given higher priority than others, depending on what the objectives are: public image and reputation, customer relations, management of resources and advertising and increased sales, among others.

For this, it is best to think and develop three points:

• MODELS: Establish which will be the most adequate business model for the brand or company, determine the production model that will be used and which are the resources that will be available in, at least, a first instance.
• ANALYSIS: Study the market of interest and its possible audiences, establish who the buyer will be, detect weaknesses and strengths, review the available resources and measure which media will be used.
• PLANNING: To elaborate the action plan is one of the most complex tasks, because it must contain all the information obtained from the two previous points and, in addition, it incorporates the decision making, since by means of this plan it will be chosen which will be the specific movements that will be made in short, medium and long term to reach the goals. In addition, it includes the design of tactics and contingency plans in case of communication crisis, and the selection of KPIs to measure the results (and correct errors in time).

What marketing strategies are there?

As we said, today there are traditional, digital and combined. There are as many as there are brands in the market, since each professional (and marketing team) must personalize the strategies to such an extent that they can beat the competition. However, several schemes continue to be taken as an essential basis for new strategies. Namely:

Mixed marketing strategy

In this type of strategy, also known as the “4Ps strategy”, the following concepts are involved Price, product, promotion and place. All of them refer to a point that can be emphasized to expand the company.

Following this, if the strategy makes price its strongest side, it is logical to try to outperform the competition by seducing the consumer through savings. For example, Huawei, the well-known telephone brand, seeks to gain a share of the market from Samsung by reducing its profit and leaving a more competitive final price on smartphone models similar in features to those of its main adversary.

Segmentation strategy

This strategy bases its development on the audience to which the advertising messages will be addressed. Consequently, the target audience may be:

• MASSIVE: That is, without distinction. The companies that use this method are multinationals, true giants of the market, since the budget needed to launch such a campaign is very large.
• DIFFERENTIATED: Segmentation begins, which means selecting portions of the public that are of vital interest to the brand. This can be established by region, age, language, etc.
• MICRO: The filter is much more specific, since the whole campaign is oriented towards very reduced market spaces, better known as niches.
• INDIVIDUAL: In this field, the ADSs enter fully, making it possible to track the preferences of each person and, therefore, the ads that these people visualize are exclusively directed to them, coinciding with their latest searches and interests. It is also related to remarketing strategies.

Positioning Strategy

This is where the influence of psychology on marketing begins to play a role, since it is about the place that a brand or product occupies in the minds of consumers or potential customers. The criteria that are applied are very varied.

Growth strategy

There comes a time when every venture touches, only apparently, a ceiling. Faced with this reality, it is imperative to seek new horizons that allow for continued expansion and in the face of this, other paths can be chosen, such as:

• Entering new markets or generating them
• Create new products or get updated versions of them
• Diversify your product lines, even if they are not related
• Withdraw or limit your investment in products or lines that are no longer (so) profitable
• Recover investment before eliminating a product (or product line), limiting production
• Keep investment to a minimum

Digital marketing

Several more can be derived from this type of marketing, depending on the platforms used to develop each step of the action plan. While there are many methods, such as video marketing or affiliate marketing, the most common are:

• SEO or Search Engine Optimization: These are the techniques applied to achieve a result to climb positions in online search engines, mainly in Google.
• E-mail Marketing: One of the most conventional methods, which is based on sending mass emails with the aim of generating leads.
• Social Media: The whole set of actions that take place in social networks, such as Facebook or LinkedIN.
• SEM or Search Engine Marketing: This is the paid advertising that appears in the results of search engines. They can be in the form of banners or links, with all their variants.
• Content Marketing: A technique especially linked to SEO that seeks to obtain visits and better positioning through quality content, thought out in the user’s experience.