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Strategic Marketing
A marketing strategy is the critical document that creates the link between your corporate strategy and your organisation's operational plans. Whilst there may be many marketing plans (for different divisions or marketing segments) there should be just one marketing strategy. A core service and competence of The Knowledge Partnership is strategy development for all forms of knowledge organisations - schools, polytechnics, colleges, universities and charities.
The Knowledge Partnership can project manage your strategy development or work with you on parts of it. We also provide training and we have given many conference papers on the subject, led workshops and published in this field.
Analysing existing strategies:
Within our core team and wider network we have leading professionals that can support your strategy work from a number of valuable perspectives.
- The CEO perspective - does it address the key issues and support the vision
- The experienced marketing/communications director - is it realistic
- The market analyst - is it based on firm market analysis
- The organisational consultant - is it culturally sensitive so as to win hearts and minds of colleagues who will implement it
- The communications specialists who can translate it and disseminate it
Creating a new marketing strategy
A robust marketing strategy translates the aims and objectives in the corporate plan/strategy into a framework that summaries, as a minimum:
- The target markets
- The objectives for each market (share, growth, improved margins, better quality students or staff, increased donation value, etc)
- The basis upon which you will compete (positioning) in each broadly market (fees, convenience, reputation, relevance, innovation, etc)
- The range of core and support services to be offered
- How growth (in terms of volume or financial margins, for example) is to be achieved - penetrating core markets or developing new ones.
- Critical success factors or potential barriers
Such a strategy will have implications across your organisation, typically well beyond the marketing or communications department but into finance (costing and pricing), premises (to support service delivery), HR (do you have the right people), IT (to support communications and e-delivery) and service delivery units - the parts that are central to the user experience.
Marketing Strategy is built on:
- Your mission, vision and values - what is the purpose of the organisation and where does it want to be in X years time?
- Financial analysis - what services and markets make money and which consume it
- Portfolio analysis
- Reputation and image assessment
- A relative SWOT analysis
- Competitor evaluation
- An appreciation of the regulatory and policy framework
- Market needs/demand analysis and forecasting
- Understanding "consumer behaviour" - how choices are made
- Marketing evaluation (resources, competencies, integration etc)
- Feedback from current and recent users, members, students, clients, parents
Marketing plans and campaigns
Once a strategy is in place the next level is Marketing plans which typically focus on a market or a cluster of products (China or a business school, for example). They take their steer from the marketing strategy, which ensures all plans are broadly compatible.
Marketing can also be a planned activity as expressed through marketing operational plans or campaign planning. Operational plans are typically functionally based - the plan for the marketing or communications department is a classic example. They tend to be annual or linked to the budget period.
Campaigns are typically planned to be executed within a short or defined timeframe and with a very specific purpose in mind - fund-raising for a new building, advertising to recruit in students for a new course or a PR campaign to win support for a new initiative or support a major funding bid, for example.
It should be possible to relate even tactical plans back through the marketing strategy to show how it supports a priority objective for the organisation as a whole.
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Further Education