Before we jump to marketing strategy examples, we should first define what we mean by marketing strategy.
What is a marketing strategy?
A marketing strategy is a specific plan and its initiatives designed to own a position in the mind of your customers and achieve your organization’s objectives.
What are the 7 elements of a marketing strategy?
- Identifying your business objectives and desired outcomes
- Identifying and quantifying the perceptions that motivate buying behavior
- Evaluating and quantifying the perceptions your competitors are creating in the mind of your customers
- Assessing how your customers use search engines to find your products and services
- Synthesizing your findings into a distinguished brand message
- Launching initiatives designed to improve perceptions and generate awareness and demand
- Measuring the effectiveness of your initiatives and calibrating to enhance results
Learn more about the elements of a marketing strategy.
What are some examples of marketing strategies to successfully achieve your goals?
Consumer: New Product Marketing – Push and Pull Strategies
Thursday Pools, a fiberglass pool manufacturer, has a reputation for helping make pool installation easier to ensure a high-quality finish for its customers. Market research identified that pool builders were having some difficulties getting the best fit using traditional skimmers, which did not account for the 7-degree angle of a fiberglass pool wall.
Sometimes the best marketing strategies used by companies are through collaboration with product development. For example, Thursday Pools product team saw an opportunity to make installers’ lives easier by introducing the Lucky 7 Skimmer, which accounted for the 7-degree angle of a fiberglass pool and made installation easier.
Innovation didn’t stop there. After a successful launch of the Lucky 7 Skimmer, the Thursday Pools’ product team identified an opportunity to meet a consumer need and once again improve the installation process for dealers. The Double-07 Skimmer replaces the rectangular face of the skimmer with a rounded look making it easier to match with other circular aspects of the pools, such as lighting making it a winner for homeowners.
In this case, the marketing team used both push and pull marketing strategies to launch the products.
What is a Push Marketing strategy?
A push marketing strategy is designed to get the product as close as possible to a customer making a decision.
What is a Pull Marketing strategy?
A pull marketing strategy is designed to increase demand for a product or service.
Thursday Pools used push marketing to take the products directly to the dealers that were installing the products. The initiatives used in the strategy included tradeshow displays, videos, and hands-on demonstrations. In addition, a pull marketing strategy was deployed via email marketing, social media, direct marketing, and public relations to generate awareness and demand among homeowners.
Consumer: National Brand Strategy: Tom’s – One for One
TOM’s shoes was founded in May of 2006 by Blake Mycoskie. While traveling through Argentina, Blake saw the hardships of young kids who had no shoes. It led him to create a for-profit business based on giving.
The model is now known as a one-for-one model, whereby for every one pair of shoes purchased, the company gives away a pair of shoes to someone in need. Blake created a national brand that aligned with a core value of his customers to give to those in need.
TOM’s shoes infused its brand story into its marketing strategy and created a tribe of people with a purpose driven mission, to help put shoes on the feet of people less fortunate.
Consumer: White-label marketing strategy
Another marketing strategy is for a manufacturer to offer what is typically produced as a name brand product and offer it as a white label produce. For example Great Value peanut butter which is the Wal-Mart store brand is actually made by Peter Pan peanut butter. Trader Joe’s Millville cereals are made by General Mills. Costco’s store brand Kirkland batteries are manufactured by Duracell.
Business-to-Business (B2B) Account-Based Marketing Strategy
B2B marketing strategy is often driven around the relative market. For example one strategy focuses on acquiring key accounts within a given vertical market. Software as a Service (Saas) organizations offer some unique marketing strategy examples in that they are often focused on delivering their software to a specific vertical and then working to penetrate the market more deeply.
The strategy often starts by identifying a few key accounts and then targeting those accounts through what is now commonly known as an account-based marketing. To implement an account-based strategy, marketers will go deep within one particular company to understand the decision makers as well as how the organization operates. Very focused campaigns will be created to reach key decision makers in the organization in a period of 30 days with at least 10 to 16 communication touches to generate interest.
Once a SaaS company has converted it’s prospective key accounts into customers the marketing team will then focus its efforts on opening up opportunities within that vertical segment. This can be done buy industry sectors or geographic regions.
So, we’ve covered a few marketing strategy examples, but you might be wondering, “What is a good marketing strategy? Or better yet what distinguishes a great marketing strategy from the good?”
A good marketing strategy is based on understanding your customers perceptions, media preferences and being what they are already interested in related to the culture.
A great marketing strategy takes it’s cues from your best customer and includes the elements of a good marketing strategy, but dives deeper into the underlying beliefs that you have to change to get your customers to choose your products or services over your competitors.
An experienced digital marketing agency will ensure that your marketing strategy is tailored to get you business results.