Strategic marketing seeks to establish a clear direction and unified purpose for all marketing and communication efforts. It is a systematic process of identifying opportunities and resources, setting marketing objectives and the development of an implementation plan. It will identify sources of competitive advantage, inform and gain support, provide for consistency and specificity, and force an organized approach.
Marketing planning is an organized approach for achieving the objectives of creating value for customers and competitive advantage, growth and profitability for an organization. It assists your organization in achieving the full potential of market opportunities both for short-term and longer-term objectives. Your marketing plan is the formulation of your marketing strategy and actionable activities to create the greatest reach and impact as one marketing element builds upon and reinforces another.
All organizations face the challenge of truly understanding their customers – what they want, when they want it and how. Individual customers interact with your brand in different ways, and across all channels. Data is often siloed and insights from multi-channels overwhelming. Customer insights starts with customer intelligence and can result in customer service action items that make customers brand champions, improve referral rates, increase revenue and lower the cost of customer acquisition.
Alignment means all employees are pulling in the same direction. Employee goals line up with team goals, department goals and organization goals resulting in an engaged workforce with higher productivity, higher profitability, lower absenteeism and turnover rates. Open dialogue regarding business goals and objectives lead employees to become more invested in the workplace culture and appreciate how their responsibilities foster the organization's growth.