Types of marketing strategies - what will work for your company?

On the web you will find various statements - the types of marketing strategies depend on many factors. It can be difficult to match a specific one to the situation in your company. How to choose and what are the differences between these solutions?

What types of marketing strategies can be distinguished? There are literally hundreds of them. Here are some inspiring examples: 

• referral marketing - customers are the carrier of your advertising, 
• native marketing - you advertise subliminal, 
• content-marketing strategy - you provide customers with the content they need, 
• contextual marketing - you target customers by age, gender, passion, 
• agile marketing - you change the concept as the situation develops, 
• narrative marketing - you kidnap customers with a story, 
• relationship marketing – you talk about values and “befriend” the client. 

Marketing activities and their types can be enumerated endlessly. It is important that you choose the right tool for your needs. 

Types of marketing strategies - definition

In order to be able to list different types of marketing strategies, first of all you need to understand what a marketing strategy really is. It is worth referring to scientific definitions that clearly and lucidly explain this term.

Henryk Mruk in "Customer satisfaction and enterprise development" indicates that "strategy can be defined as a set of methods and tools to achieve a set goal. " These goals can be current as well as long-term. Tomasz Domański in "Marketing for managers" extends this definition with: "is a program that defines the ways of achieving selected goals of the activity. It requires a clear answer to the question of what means and in what time can achieve the chosen goals. " The whole concept of marketing strategy revolves around time and purposefulness. The company shapes its own strategy, basing on many possibilities offered by various types of marketing strategies.

A marketing strategy can also be defined as a reaction to tasks that arise in the course of the company's operations. This reaction is a well-thought-out set of actions by which the company aims to achieve its market goals. The company must react in the long term and properly formulate the achievement of market goals based on the principles and guidelines of conduct that define the framework for market activities.

Once you get to know the essence of a marketing strategy, you can distinguish different types of marketing strategies. It is impossible to list all of them - many scientists look at this issue through different prisms. In order to properly choose a strategy for your company, you should explore this subject in particular. Or entrust the creation of its concept and implementation to experts.

Marek Rawski, in the book "An Attempt to Interpret the Concept of Marketing Strategy", divides the types of marketing strategies into levels: a strategy aimed at buyers, competitors, intermediaries and entities. Each of them is divided into subsequent subcategories.

The strategy aimed at buyers is a set of principles and rules for shaping relations with customers. They can be created on the basis of:

• Market stimulation strategy - its main goal is to define what customer needs a given company intends to meet, based on quality and price expectations.
• Market partitioning strategy - analyzes the company's potential in terms of the feasibility of implementing a market stimulation strategy. It states whether the organization can influence all of its buyers, or only for some part of it.

Interpreting the types of marketing strategies, Marek Rawski also indicated a strategy aimed at competitors. Among them, three levels can be noted:

• The strategy of gaining an advantage over competitors - it can be achieved by reducing total costs and diversifying activities.
• Competitive Style Strategy - Completes the above level. It is determined by the adoption of an appropriate attitude towards competition (offensive or defensive) and the selection of tools to achieve the goals.
• Market position strategy - is a strategy that controls the two above, assessing the feasibility of solutions in terms of the potential of the enterprise's potential.

The next types of marketing strategies are the strategy aimed at intermediaries, i.e. relationships with distributors. In this option, two attitudes can be adopted: active and passive. The active attitude of the producer treats the trader as an important factor in the distribution system to ensure an efficient flow of marketing activities towards the final buyer. A passive attitude treats the distributor as the end customer who satisfies his sourcing needs.

The last strategy is the one aimed at supporting entities, i.e. any entities from the company's close environment, e.g. a bank, insurance company or a company providing transport services.

Types of marketing strategies - quotes

Marketing strategy - examples could be multiplied. Marketing strategies should be connected with all areas of the company's activity. When studying the types of marketing strategies, each organization should remember to implement several simultaneously in order to develop in every possible direction. That is why it is so important to know about this topic. It should be remembered that "marketing strategies are the basis for developing marketing plans that are implemented in the course of the company's operations. Marketing strategy begins with the identification of buyers' needs and ends with the assessment of the possibility of satisfying them. – explains Krystyna Kielan in "Choosing a marketing strategy for a commercial enterprise".

Formulating a marketing strategy is "decision-making process, consisting in identifying the most important problems and determining the methods of their solutions. " Writes Hingston Peter in The Big Book of Marketing. As part of this process, specific rules of conduct in the long term in order to achieve profit and development should be defined.

Everyone who runs his business must understand how important types of marketing strategies are and how to properly select them for their company. Therefore, at the beginning, the material scope of the marketing strategies should be clearly defined. It is worth looking at Lechosław Garbarski's proposal in "Marketing": "The subject scope of marketing strategies includes the assessment of the market situation, verification of the target market, researching opportunities and threats, selecting the marketing-mix instruments. " When the above elements are determined, the next stage will be a thorough verification of what types of marketing strategies will be best for our company.

It is worth quoting the most famous and original classification of marketing strategies proposed by the award-winning economist. We will try to explain each of them easily and clearly.

Ansoff classification

Harry Igor Ansoff in "Strategic Management" distinguished 4 marketing strategies:

1. Market penetration - "involves increasing sales and promotion of existing products. The implementation of this strategy can be achieved by: increasing the sale of products to existing recipients, acquiring new buyers, increasing the share in plaster through price cuts, increasing distribution. "
2. Market development - "assumes that the development of an enterprise is possible through the use of the same product, provided that its purpose and market segment are changed." As part of this strategy, your company acquires new markets and changes the structure of the marketing mix.
3. Product development - "means proposing new or improved products on existing markets, but with similar properties and application."
4. Diversification - "is complex, it means reclassifying existing resources of the enterprise and using them in activities completely different than they were previously used." It means activities such as: undertaking a completely new activity unrelated to the current production, slight modification of existing products, e.g. a new version of the product adapted to the needs of the disabled, creating a new product for existing consumers, or launching one's own supply chain. This strategy is very broad, but especially important, because enterprises must be prepared for the constant changes taking place in the environment. In addition, the diversification strategy allows you to act in the event of a crisis or a threat to some part of your business. It is worth expanding your offer, gaining new sources of income instead of sticking to your current activity.

How To Choose The Right Type Of Marketing Strategy For Your Business? 

The first breakdown is where you are in the market. There is talk of a leader's, challenger, or follower's strategy, each of which enforces certain behaviors. Within each of these types, different types of marketing strategies can be distinguished. The leader can defend his position, confront the challenger, be on the defensive. It may also withdraw or seek to expand the market. Similar classifications can be found for the remaining functions - challenger and follower. However, the market reality is not always so simple that it is possible to assign each company to one of these three categories.  

The types of marketing strategy depend on several factors. To choose the right one, you should consider: 

• company size, 
• market saturation, 
• market maturity phase, 
• trends, economic and social environment, 
• the goals you care about 
• the time you have to achieve the goal, 
• budget etc. 

Another important division in online marketing is push and pull strategies. Use push when you have to reach out to the client and find him beforehand - with the help of content, podcast, news. Pull is a term for a customer who is "pulled" to you: he searches for your company name in a search engine, enters a website or writes a message to you. 

As you can see, in order to choose the right type of marketing strategy, it is definitely worth starting with marketing audit and get to know your situation well. It is to this that you need to adapt a specific strategy or marketing communication channels. 

What to consider when choosing the type of marketing strategy? 

Before you decide on a specific marketing strategy, check whether it will fit your overall vision. It should correspond to the goals you expect, but also the image, the PR campaign conducted, content marketing strategy or your general branding. Therefore, it is worth considering introducing five functional strategies at the same time. It is the supporting elements that make up the company's success. It is about the following types of strategies: 

• marketing, 
• financial, 
• HR, 
• development, 
• production. 

As you can see, they will allow you to create marketing in accordance with the financial assumptions, serving development, realistic from the point of view of the staff and stocking up or offered services. When one of these factors is not taken into account, all the rest can do the opposite to your business. An example from a few years ago may be the participation of certain bets in promotions organized by sites such as Groupon. What seemed like a great type of marketing strategy quickly turned out to be a tragic mistake.  

For example, hairdressing or dentists had to provide dozens of services a day at a cost. This made it impossible to find time for customers who paid standard prices. The service must have been a bit worse than the full package, so customers left disappointed. Some had to wait months for an appointment. As a result, this type of marketing strategy resulted in a bad opinion about the plant, a decrease in turnover and overwork of the workforce. Customers didn't come back as soon as the promotion ended. 

Proven or completely new strategy - what to choose?  

Do you need to use existing types of marketing strategies? Of course not - you can create your own. PR activities in the network they are formed and changed before our eyes. Attracting customers to online businesses through webinars and live shows, so popular today, actually has a very short history, and a dozen or so years ago no one heard about it. In this case, it was also determined by the development of new technologies that enable such customer reach today. Digital reality is still changing very dynamically. We keep hearing about new types of media-based marketing strategies that were not there before, such as TikTok, WeChat or Youtube.  

Don't be afraid of innovation. Especially that you can often implement campaigns in such media at a very low cost - as it was on Facebook, when you did not have to pay for reaching the audience. However, when you also run an off-line, choose proven patterns. Hundreds of them were created, including several dozen of the more important ones and a few that must be known. The use of proven patents allows you to obtain sales support in a simple way, following in the footsteps of market giants. This that's why it is worth reading biographies of business people and marketing guides - they are full of ready-made inspirations. 

How to plan a marketing strategy? 

If you've already chosen which types of marketing strategies are worth implementing, it's time to achieve that goal. You can use any of the existing marketing planning models such as SOSTAC, ASP, McDonald's or APIC. They consist of 3 to 6 steps. The simplest of them is the ASP model, which consists of the following stages: Analysis, Strategy, Planning.  

As you can see, no matter what type of marketing strategy you choose, this is the second step to corporate success. The first must be an analysis of the existing situation. It is not only about the reality inside the company, but also about what is happening around: changing market trends, as well as the moves of the competition. Only based on such assumptions, use the strategy and plan the steps that you need to take to achieve the goal. If you need help - contact us.