Target marketing and Positioning - Marketing Mix Strategic Plan

Task:

1. Identify all your possible competitive advantages over your competition (for a product this may be the physical product, the performance of the product, the style and design of the product, even reliability, durability, consistency, repairability. For a service this may be delivery of the service, the training of
the staff.),

2. Select the appropriate advantage to the customer (focus on your unique selling proposition that cannot be bettered by the competition, is considered valuable to the customers and stick to that. This provides your differentiation from your competitors). Often this can be in the form of two primary groupings: Cost and
Quality.

1. Cost based advantage means the focus will be upon saving the consumer money by being the cheapest in the marketplace. Profits from such a strategy this will require a focus on high volume turnover and operational cost minimisation. Managerial focus here is on efficiency.
2. Quality based advantage focusses on the differentiation of your product from your competitors based upon some feature the customer values and is likely to pay for. Managerial focus here is on effectiveness. This can be in form of

1. Employee differentiation: better trained?
2. Channel differentiation: more coverage?
3. Image differentiation: social and psychological needs?
4. Services differentiation: faster and better delivery?

3. Effectively communicate that advantage to the customer via your marketing mix (Effective positioning takes time and must be reflected in all the marketing mix Ps. In other words, the marketing mix is the tactical application of your positioning strategy).