The Importance Of Marketing Strategy

When developing a marketing strategy, firms must take into account market segmentation, market targeting, differentiation, and positioning. In this short paper, I’ll take unpack these terms in order to explain their importance in order to make a firm’s marketing strategy effective. In marketing segmentation, the first step of the marketing process, a firm must divide its potential clients into different segments based on their wants and needs (Kotler & Armstrong 2012). Because of their different wants and needs, these market segments may need “separate products or marketing programs.” (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012) These distinct segments vary depending on the product. For example, high-earning clients and low-earning clients would be distinct

(Kotler & Armstrong, 2012) One strategy for this would be to explain how the product is different from other products and explain how a customer’s needs should push them in the direction of one product over another. Another strategy is to separate the customers based on self-identity and direct marketing efforts based on these concepts of self. Most notably, Apple computers have done this in their separation of Mac people and PC people. Though this marketing strategy was very effective, by focusing on the consumer herself rather than the product, the company took a substantial risk, as one researcher points out “If identity marketing comes on too strong, they theorized, it could threaten consumers’ sense of agency in choosing the brand, wiping away the self-expressive meaning of this choice. This may cause consumers to reassert their free will by rebelling against the brand, in spite of it fitting them so well.” (Kardashian, 2015) Differentiation, like any strategy in marketing can be useful, but it must be done in a manner that does not come off as

Like differentiation, positioning depends on a customer’s understanding of a brand or product relative to competing products within the market. The difference between differentiation and positioning is that in differentiation the brand is set apart from competing brands, but in positioning the brand is juxtaposed relative to similar brands and products. Both concepts require a value judgement of the brand within the market. (Kotler & Armstrong, 2012). The key importance of both positioning and differentiation for a marketing strategy is establishing the value of a product in the minds of a consumer relative to other products. When a customer knows how well a product stacks up against the competition, she has more of a reason to choose it over the