What Is Marketing Strategy Formulation?

by Alex Saez

To run a successful business, you must first get the word about about your products and services. Successful marketing requires a winning strategy. Understanding marketing strategy formulation lets you properly evaluate your organization's marketing needs. You can then gear your marketing strategies to achieve maximum effectiveness.


Marketing strategy formulation is the process of defining an organization's marketing goals and objectives. This allows formulators to create a guide. They examine the market and in doing so, use that information to determine what marketing approaches will be best at reaching clients and enticing them to seek out the business' services.


As a general rule, a good first step in a marketing strategy formulation is determining what you want to accomplish in terms of marketing. It could be as simple as letting potential customers know what you sell, and how your product can benefit them. The next step is to examine internal and external trends. These could include spreading the word about a next-generation version of one of your products (internal), and how it improves upon other products in the industry (external). After that, assign a value to the strategy's outcome. This can be a dollar value, such as how much revenue you expect your marketing strategy to generate over a specified period of time. Or it could be an opportunity value, such as getting face-to-face meetings with a certain number of potential clients. Once the targets are set, marketers assign certain tasks to each department to identify the role each will play in reaching the strategy's goals. The idea is to get a firm idea of where you business is now and where it will be after the strategy is implemented. Finally, take all the information you gathered throughout the process and choose which strategy best fits your goals and needs.

Online Marketing

There are dozens of marketing strategies to choose from. However, these can be split into two basic categories. The first is online marketing. For example, your business might choose to place video or text advertisements online with the help of search engines like Google, a process known as "search marketing". Another type of online marketing strategy is social media marketing, which uses tools like Facebook or Twitter to gain exposure. A third example of online marketing is through the use of mobile devices, specifically smartphones containing the iPhone or Android system. Companies place banners or small ads in games or websites frequented by mobile users.

Offline Marketing

The second major category, offline marketing, involves any marketing that does not take place on the Internet. There are many options in this area. A common one is buying ad space in newspapers, trade journals or on television. Another common one is setting up booths at trade shows. Word of mouth, or "referral marketing," is also effective, although you have less control over it. With referral marketing, companies rely on good services and products to motivate customers to recommend your business to their friends, family members and colleagues. In some cases, businesses resort use telemarketing to spread the word. In telemarketing, salespeople place calls to either random or targeted numbers, informing recipients of deals or services.

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