Why Is Marketing Strategy Important?

A marketing strategy helps a company effectively use its resources to deliver a sales message to a target audience. A marketing strategy takes time and market research information to create. Understanding why a marketing strategy is important will help you to justify the time and financial resources required to create one.

One of the functions of a marketing strategy is to identify a target audience and determine the most efficient ways of reaching that audience. Market research is done to determine how marketing funds can best be spent to deliver the advertising message. Research also is done to determine which message is most effective. In the end, the marketing strategy refines how company financial and personnel resources will be best used to get the highest revenue return for the marketing dollars invested.

A marketing strategy has a starting point, a predetermined duration and a budget. Without the marketing strategy, your company would be placing advertisements at random times, in random mediums and not understanding what results to expect. A marketing strategy helps to set the budget for the advertising program, and it also creates the criteria that will be used to determine how much revenue the plan generated. A marketing strategy prevents advertising spending from being an open-ended proposition, and it works to identify successful marketing approaches that can be used to generate more revenue in future marketing campaigns.

The marketplace that your company sells to changes on a regular basis. Technology alters the look and functionality of products, and changes in client needs affect how you and the competition structure your businesses. A marketing strategy identifies those changes and recommends potential courses of action that will help make your company competitive. The marketing strategy identifies customer buying trends and combines that with a competitive analysis to help you dictate what future course your company will take.

As your company evolves, it also should grow in revenue and size. A marketing strategy helps to identify those areas affected by growth, and helps to create a plan to address customer needs. For example, your marketing strategy may identify new markets where your newest product would be very successful. Since you do not have distribution or sales resources in those markets, you must go out and secure those resources to meet the goals of the marketing strategy. By identifying changes or shifts in client needs and geographic distribution requirements, the marketing strategy becomes part of the blueprint for your company's growth.