Quoting the marketing management master, Philip Kotler – “Good companies will meet needs, great companies will create markets”; Indeed, the ultimate objective of marketing is to provide value to the customers who have willingness and ability to buy.
To build brand loyalty and prosperous market shares, strategic marketing techniques are essential. Strategic Marketing Techniques assist in clearly defining goals and marketing objectives. Some of the common objectives of marketing are:
· Market Development
· Product Development
· Enhance digital positioning of the brand and/or firm
· Increasing Sales Revenue
· Growth and Global expansion etc.
These goals should be time bound as well as measurable and achievable.
Below mentioned are some major strategic management techniques, that assist in realizing marketing objectives:
· Augmented Marketing:
As per the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, to augment means to increase the amount, value, size etc. of something. Thus, augmented marketing can be interpreted as addition of value through innovative ideas or offers, to increase profits and/or revenue.
These days one of the latest advancements is that of ‘augmented reality’, commonly called as AR. Augment reality increases the reach to prospective customers and creates awareness about the brand.
Basically, augmented reality gives life to virtual world through the use of technologies to give three-dimensional output. The amazing part is ability of such marketing strategies to bring revolutionary changes in the marketing world. It has tremendous influence on productivity, by bridging the gap between man and machine with the help of images and animation.
Many forerunner corporate giants such as Amazon and Facebook have largely invested in strategic marketing techniques involving augmented reality. Augmented Marketing enables the customer to visualize the product on a virtual platform.
However, this marketing technique requires huge capital budgets for its research, development and implementation.
· Relationship Marketing
Being an important aspect of customer relationship management (CRM), the main aim of this strategic marketing technique is to build long lasting relationships with its consumers. It involves customer acquisition and engagement. Relationship marketing works by attaching an emotional value to the brand, that leads to brand loyalty. It ensures that the customer returns to the brand, or prefers only a particular brand, sometimes even when it is priced highly. The well-built connections also then provide marketing services by the word-of-mouth phenomena. Another benefit of relationship marketing is that it helps in gathering consumer data and feedback including their likes and preferences, change in tastes, improvements required in products etc.
Customers with whom strong relationship is maintained also get additional offers and preferential treatment.
For instance, relationship marketing is often observed in bank branches, where loyal customers need not wait in lines to withdraw/deposit along with getting privileges while applying for loans etc.
With the increasing use of internet, these days relationship marketing is implemented through e-mails to give access to two-way communication with customers in any part of the globe.
· Social Marketing
Social marketing (also called as cause marketing) not only focuses on the personal goals of organisations to increase profits and sales, but has wider scope and considers welfare of the people and environment. It has an approach to build awareness for well being of the social, economic and natural environment. In long term, this marketing technique aims at bringing about drastic, affirmative changes in human behaviour to build a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. It is essentially used in public health domain. It propagates the idea of designing and implementing community well-being as a whole.
A very good example of social marketing is the ‘Dark is Beautiful Campaign in India’ launched by Women of Worth. It breaks the stereo type of only associating beauty with light-skinned individuals.
Another popular social marketing advertisement is Tata Tea’s ‘Jago Re’. Commenced in 2009, the ‘Jago Re’ series highlights citizen awareness in regards to their responsibility in electing a right leader. Its tagline- ‘Alarm bajne se pehle, Jaago re’, has become quite famous.
· Differential Marketing
To incorporate customers from different income stratus, age groups and other basis of segmentation, differential marketing. It is initiated by formation multiple target group of customers based on the pricing preferences, likes and dislikes etc. Such type of concentrated marketing helps formulation of target group specific marketing strategies to increase customer reach. This type of strategy fulfils the needs and wants of a variety of customers, there by creating and even cumulating brand recognition.
Let us consider the case of two leading automobile manufactures- Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai- the primary consumer target is middle to upper income class, who need comfortable rides and realize the value for money. The secondary target group is lower income class that value mobility more than style and comfort. Thus these companies used differentiated marketing.
In fact, Hyundai Motors also launched the ‘Ghar ghar ki phechan’ campaign to integrate the Indian rural population. It also let gram panchayat leaders, and government employees avail the profit of special schemes. Its well-liked models for the middle class comprise i10, i20, Accent, Elantra etc, while the model specifically preferred by upper middle class is Honda City series.
· Services Marketing
This strategic marketing takes in B2C as well as B2B customer chains. It is used in all types of industries ranging from telecommunications, hospitality to health care sectors.
Service Marketing aims at usage of various tactics to antedate the need for intangible goods in the market. As such industries engaged in provision of services are more complex than those dealing with physical (tangible) goods. This strategy has a lot do with mental stimulus processing, that is, persuading consumer’s mental abilities and attitudes. The major characteristic is that of no inventory management.
Its application includes the following:
o Services provided by dentist
o Marketing campaigns of e-commerce organisations
o Food delivery companies like Swiggy and Zomato
o Services provided by banks, etc.
· Digital (or as it is popularly called- Internet) Marketing
This strategic marketing technique can be best understood by Bill Gates’ saying- “The internet is becoming the town square for global village of tomorrow”.
This strategic marketing technique is perhaps the most contemporary, affordable and accessible. It has huge scope for reaching a wide range of potential clients and customers through social media, Google advertisements etc.
Digital Marketing provides a diversity of marketing mediums like videos clips, audio, photos, GIFs etc. These mediums provide a forum for interaction and also provides numerical data in regards to lead engagement.
To end with, as Michael Hammer and James ChampyBruce Henderson, well-known personalities in the business arena said, “Winning companies know how to do their work better.”
