Strategy…The Basis for Your Marketing “War Map”

What It Is

Your Marketing Plan defines specific marketing objectives that you want to accomplish at the end of your journey… your endgame. Strategy is the means to get you there. The task of forming a strategy starts with looking at the company’s internal and external situation. There are five principal tasks associated with strategic management and are outlined in the book, Strategy Formulation and Implementation (ISBN 0-256-09718-6). They are:

Forming a vision of where the organization needs to be headed
Converting the mission into specific performance objectives
Crafting a strategy to achieve the pre-established performance objectives
Implementing and executing the strategy effectively
Evaluating the performance

Please note that strategy is very complex and that many internal and external events can and do impact it. We have attempted to explain some of the basics. One of the first considerations in developing your strategy is to keep it flexible, thus making it easier to react to ever-changing conditions.

How to Use It

It is easier to establish objectives for your company than it is to create a plan of action to support them. A good place to start is with a competitive analysis. To know the state of your target markets, whether they are dynamic or static, and what your competitors have done, and are planning to do, can greatly affect your future actions. Once the strategy is in place, the next major task is implementing it.

Some of the factors that can affect the implementation of your strategy might be-

how well management leads the process
the financial situation of your company and its ability to fund such an undertaking
whether your company has enough key personnel to lead various strategic groups
the culture of your company and whether there is a positive employee attitude
the level of enthusiasm that you must generate to keep your base “fired up to pursue your objectives effectively and efficiently.