The Influence Of Marketing Strategies

Some words in business and marketing seem to have been borrowed from the military or the armed forces. Even the word strategy has more to do with warfare than daily living. Not to forget guerilla, ambush, frontline, strategic, tactics….

Many people use the word strategy very commonly, politicians talk about it, religious leaders talk about the strategy to outclass the communal elements in society, Police needs to have a strategy to curb theft, goondaism or burglary in an area. Another term related to strategy that most people use is tactics. They say politicians use the religious card to get votes of the minorities and so on.

In simple terms, strategy is a plan to achieve a target or a goal-it could be achieving more sales volume in rural

To gain women votes, politicians may distribute sarees for free in an area, to emerge the leader in cosmetics industry, a company may spend heavily on mass media campaigns and sponsoring beauty pageants.

When strategy and tactics combine, the net result could be an upward shift in demand for the product, more brand awareness, more sales volumes achieved. Or a company may adopt competitive pricing to stay ahead of the others in industry or to achieve maximum sales volume.

The question arises which should come first, tactics or strategy? Obviously, it is strategy or the marketing plan that has to come first, followed the tactics. However, it is not to belittle the tactics part of marketing. According to Jim Joseph, marketing expert and author, tactics are important in the sense that it connects with the customers and motivates them to buy.
Strategy comes first
Most countries have a Planning Commission just as in India which identify the long term goals of developing infrastructure, resources, housing, raising employment, raising educational levels of poor and rural people. In a federal system, the states also play a role in identifying projects to be executed and the means to raise resources for it either through union government grants and

A comprehensive SWOT analysis (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats ) are required to do a situation analysis. Market strength refers to number of your brands in top five selling category, weakness could be a saturated market or a lack of experienced people in marketing and sales. Opportunities could include legislative changes, new markets opening up or the disintegration of a market leader. The product needs to be positioned in the market- entry, mid or premium. It depends on your competition, which all buyers are likely to buy the product and at what