What is a Strategic Marketing Analysis?

In making any strategic decisions business organizations must first look at where they currently stand in the marketplace.  This involves checking out how well the company stacks up in relation to their competition as well as identifying their customer base. Once an organization looks at all the external aspects of competition and customers they must then take a good look at how competent they are at doing business in a competitive market and how well they are doing in reaching their target customers.

Strategic Market Analysis

Once an organization is done looking at the three aspects of strategic direction, customer, competition and competency, they must then use that information and answer the question where do we want to go from here?   To answer this question the organization must look at the market-product analysis and the business portfolio analysis in order to set up a strategic market analysis.  

The strategic market analysis consists of three parts; the planning phase, the implementation phase and the control phase.

The Planning Phase

In the planning phase the organization must do a situation analysis also called a SWOT analysis.  This analysis is to give the company the answers to three basic questions: where the organization has been, where the organization currently stands and where the organization is headed in the market place.

Once this is done the organization can move on to the second part of the planning phase, the market-product focus and goal setting   In the step the organization is looking to decide which products will be directed towards which customers and as to the goals for the sales of the products or services.  This is essential if any effective marketing program is going to be put into place. 

The next step in the planning phase is to develop a marketing program based on the information accumulated in step one and step two of the planning phase.  Step two is crucial to the planning phase because from the information gathered the marketing manager will know which customers to target with which products based on the customer needs those products will satisfy. 

From the information gathered in step 2 the marketing manager can begin to formulate the marketing program mix and the budget that will be needed to implement those programs.  The final step in the panning phase is the product, the pricing for that product, the promotion of the product and finally the markets to place the product in. 

The next phase in the strategic market analysis is the implementation phase. The marketing manager now has the results of all the hours spent in the planning phase and has completed their marketing program mix, now it is time to start marketing the product. 

The Implementation Phase

The second part of the strategic marketing process is the implementation phase and consists of obtaining the resources needed, design and assembling the marketing organization, setting up schedules and then actually putting into action the marketing program designed in the planning phase. This is where the proverbial rubber meets the road and all the work done in the planning phase will either payoff of have proved a waste of time. 

The results of this phase should be effective execution of a well-designed and well thought out marketing plan that results in the goals that were set as to the sales and units sold are met or exceeded.  If everything goes according to plan the implementation phase will go off without any problems and the marketing manager will have very little to do but sit back and watch as the plan he or she formulated carries itself to fruition.

If everything does not go as planned and the marketing program does not get the desired results as compared to the original marketing program then in the third phase of the strategic marketing process, the control phase adjustments can be made.

The Control Phase

The control phase is designed to take the actual results from the marketing plan and compare the actual results of the marketing program with the projected results to see if there is a positive or negative deviation.  If the results prove to be negative then an adjustment in the program will need to be made, if the results are positive then they can be exploited to generate even more sales.

Who Benefits from A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) Analysis

An organization must spend time comparing itself to the competition in order to effectively analyze where they stand in the market place.   This comparison leads to a marketing strategy, which the organization implements and refines.

His marketing strategy does not only benefit the company it also benefits the consumer When an organization knows where they stands in the marketplace it allows the organization to offer an better product and more of a competitive price so in the end both the company and the consumer benefits.

In the end it is also the consumer who reigns supreme because they dictate which products or services sell and which ones don’t.  So a marketing strategy can be visualized as a circle built on strategy, which then circles to the customer and then back to the company to be refined and retested in the marketplace.