Strategic Marketing - Essay Example

For marketers operating in a business-to-business environment, this means merging product use and industry sector segmentation with other facets that are associated with purchasing decisions. These can include factors such as the criteria for procurement, and decision motivations that will determine the out-sized purchases made by the organization. For example, the trend towards more use of subcontractors generates market for those suppliers. However, the retailers require a strategic marketing vision in order to make out or perceive these new markets before their business rivals also identify them and take the opportunity (Manning and Reece, 2003).

Consumer marketers have to consider the use of demographic and geographic segmentation; along with psychographic segmentation such as attitudes, values, consumer lifestyles, and the motivation for product usage. For example, the aging population segment generates an increased demand for a wide range of goods. It also forms market niches that are big enough to make marketing as well as product development a worthwhile endeavor. These same factors can also contribute to the decrease in demand for other items.

Occasionally, rather than increase sales or advertising efforts, it is more advisable to desert a declining market. Without strategic marketing tactics, an organization can actually waste valuable assets or miss a rare opportunity to take advantage of prevailing favourable conditions. The strategic marketing plan procedure usually has three stages. These are segmenting the market, profiling the market segments, and the creation of a market segment marketing strategy. Creating Value to Customers in Strategic Marketing The value in a manufactured product is usually defined by the reaction of customers to it.

It is essentially a matter of the customer’s perception. If the product is perceived by the consumer as possessing value then that discernment will lead to a procurement. Customer value may also develop from having employed the product over and over again with pleasing results. Customer value in its most fundamental form refers to the difference between the price of a product and the benefit the customer gets from the product. Today's customers are much more informed as a result of the easily available modes of electronic communication that are available (Cravens and Piercy, 2008).

As such, they usually purchase the goods that they sense are worth the cost required to attain them. Customers usually know precisely what they want to buy and will not waste time with low value products. It is important for marketers to have products that can be considered as unique. This is something that can make the product be viewed as being of utmost value, resulting in a higher price being appropriate. In their mission to communicate information to consumers pertaining to products, sales professionals frequently oversell and fail to notice the consumers’ real needs.

Consequently, the product presented is of hardly any value to consumers. The greatest challenge that marketing professionals have to confront today is rising beyond the ordinary noise level, getting access to their targeted market, and eventually buying influence. Qualified leads are just harder to come by in today’s market which is saturated with the pitches of dedicated marketers. The convergence of rich media, digital graphics, direct response tools, email,