Strategic marketing planning tools

This requires you to take into account a constantly changing business environment and a continual requirement to deliver customer satisfaction. Competitive advantage is customer-driven and focused on the target audience. This is based on 1 the degree of customer satisfaction achieved by of company, and 2 the extent to which the company exceeds the customer satisfaction levels of the competition.

Marketing strategy contributes to competitive advantage by combining the customer influencing strategies of the business into an integrated array of market-focused actions. Strategic marketing includes the actions of the business for the purpose of providing customer satisfaction. Strategy development considers the business scope, competitive advantage, and organizational effectiveness. Customer targeting and assembling the marketing programs of the company are coordinated among the functions within the business.

Strategic marketing provides the companies linked with the environment and emphasizes marketing as an integrated responsibility of the business rather than a specialized function.

Achieving competitive advantage requires teamwork and functional integration. I will highlight the importance of strategic management processes that function effectively in a rapidly changing business environment.

External forces all through the composition and attractiveness of markets and the competitive structure that it presents in markets. Strategic marketing provides the expertise for environmental monitoring, for deciding what customer groups to serve, for product specifications, and for deciding which competitors to position against.

Marketing executives provide the professional skills and experience needed to meet these responsibilities. In addition, it is important to recognize that the company strategies involved in integrating marketing and other functional strategies.

Successfully integrating multifunctional strategies is critical to providing high levels of customer satisfaction. Customer preferences for product attributes must be transformed into product design and production guidelines. Success in achieving high-quality products and services depends importantly on finding out which dimensions of product and service quality drives customer satisfaction.

Marketing professionals have the experience and skills essential for analyzing customer satisfaction with surveys and net promoter scores NPS. Finally, strategic marketing moves beyond or revenue emphasis on marketing management.

Instead, the objective is to make strategic marketing decisions that contribute to the financial performance of the business. There are plenty of resources that provide a marketing plan template or marketing plan example to help you expedite the process and get a head start. Alexa put together a free marketing plan template to help you get started right now. Once you have a marketing plan outline, do a market analysis to gather data that informs your strategy.

Some of the most important marketing plan tools relate to researching your industry, competitors, and customers — as these are the most important aspects of your business. Your marketing planning must include a stage of market research that helps you gather real data and insights about these topics.

Check out our roundup of sites for market research for even more tools, websites, and resources. Once you research your industry and trends as a whole, you should dive deeper into researching your ideal customer.

Use marketing plan tools that help you understand your audience and craft an informative buyer persona. Unsure what information to include in your buyer persona? Use this buyer persona template to help guide you through the process.

Alexa also has tools to help you find the information needed to complete your buyer persona. Use our Site Overview Tool to break down specific demographic details about website users.

Arrange the sticky note projects that remain after the affinity into a square around your flip chart. When the relationship is not strong, move on. For each cause-effect relationship identified, draw an arrow between the two with the arrowhead pointing toward the project being impacted or effected by the other one.

When you have finished all the comparisons, count up the arrows going out of each project. Those projects with the most arrows out are the projects that would created the biggest positive impact if they were chosen for your plan. Is your organization aligned and moving as one unit toward a clear vision? Learn more about the what a strategic plan should provide here. Would you like some one-on-one help? We would be happy to set you up with a free consultation phone call to get answers to specific questions not covered in this article.

E-mail us or give us a call at to get started. We also encourage you to sign-up below to receive email updates whenever new strategic planning materials are added to our site. For more information on strategic planning, fill in your name and email address below. We will send you updates as new tools and articles are put on the PGS site. Contact us at the Consulting WP office nearest to you or submit a business inquiry online.

The PGS Approach has also allowed us to successfully manage substantial multi-year projects efficiently and effectively. October 23, Posted by: andreag Category: No Comments. Which 5 essential tools are we looking at? Visioning What is it? Why is it important?

An affinity diagram What is it? Sales 10 min read. HubSpot also recommends this free sales plan template. Download Now. What's a plan without a strategy? Strategic Planning Models Strategic planning is used to set up long-term goals and priorities for an organization.

Here are a few strategic planning models you can use to get started. The Balanced Scorecard The Balanced Scorecard is one of the most prominent strategic planning models, tailored to give managers a comprehensive overview of their companies' operations on tight timelines.

The sum of those components amount to four specific reference points for goal-setting and performance measurement: Customer — how customers view your business Internal Process — how you can improve your internal processes Organizational Capacity — how you can grow, adapt, and improve Financial — your potential profitability Those four categories can inform more thoughtful, focused goals and the most appropriate metrics you can use to track them.

Here's an example of what that might look like: Image Source: IntraFocus The Balanced Scorecard is ideal for businesses looking to break up higher-level goals into more specific, measurable objectives.

Objectives and Key Results As its name implies, this model revolves around translating broader organizational goals into objectives and tracking their key results. Example of the Objectives and Key Results Let's consider a hypothetical company that makes educational curriculum and schedule planning for higher-education institutions.

Those could be: Generating qualified leads from 30 institutions Conducting demos at 10 colleges Closing deals at 5 campuses Those results would lead to initiatives like setting standards for lead qualification and training reps at the top of the funnel on how to use them appropriately, revamping sales messaging for discovery calls, and conducting research to better tailor the demo process to the needs of community colleges.

More specifically, you need to take these strides: Identify your long-term goals. Backward map the preconditions necessary to achieve your goal, and explain why they're necessary.

Identify your basic assumptions about the situation. Determine the interventions your initiative will fulfill to achieve your goals. Come up with indicators to evaluate the performance of your initiative. Write an explanation of the logic behind your initiative. Here's another visualization of what that looks like. Image Source: Wageningen University and Research This planning model works best for organizations interested in taking on endeavors like building a team, planning an initiative, or developing an action plan.

Example of the Theory of Change For the sake of this example, imagine a business that makes HR Payroll Software — one that's not doing too well as of late. Hoshin Planning The Hoshin Planning model is a process that aims to reduce friction and inefficiency by promoting active and open communication throughout an organization. Image Source: i-nexus The model is typically partitioned into seven steps: establishing a vision, developing breakthrough objectives, developing annual objectives, deploying annual objectives, implementing annual objectives, conducting monthly and quarterly reviews, and conducting an annual review.

Example of Hoshin Planning For this example, let's imagine a company that manufactures commercial screen printing machines. Strategic Planning Tools There are additional resources you can use to support whatever strategic planning model you put in place. Here are some of those: 1. Image Source: HubSpot 2. Porter's Five Forces Use Porter's Five Forces as a strategic planning tool to identify the economic forces that impact your industry and determine your business' competitive position.

The five forces include: Competition in the industry Potential of new entrants into the industry Power of suppliers Power of customers Threat of substitute products To learn more, check out this comprehensive guide to using Porter's Five Forces.

Image Source: HubSpot 3. It stands for: P: Political E: Economic S: Social T: Technological L: Legal E: Environmental Each of these elements allow an organization to take stock of the business environment they're operating in, which helps them develop a strategy for success.

Visioning Visioning is a goal-setting strategy used in strategic planning. It's composed of four different elements: Value : Does it provide value to customers? Rarity : Do you have control over a rare resource or piece of technology?

Imitability : Can it easily be copied by competitors? Organization : Does your business have the operations and systems in place to capitalize on its resources? Topics: Sales Operations. Don't forget to share this post! What Does a Sales Analyst Do? We Break It Down Sales 6 min read. Expand Offer. Download for Later.