Marketing strategies vary tremendously from industry to industry and small business to small business. Marketing strategies help bring organization to the task of marketing your products or services to the public. They create targeted campaigns that get your message out to the consumers who matter most to your success. Unfortunately, they also have the potential to cause problems of limitations in certain situations.

Targeted Approach

Marketing strategies can give your marketing efforts and campaigns a focus. Instead of hoping that customers find their way to your small business or marketing to everyone all the time, marketing strategies help to divide what is an ocean of consumers into navigable segments. These segments can then be addressed individually so that your marketing message is attractive to each. The result is often a more effective campaign and the development of a consistent level of brand recognition amongst the target segment.

Better Information

Marketing strategies provide you with information that you would not have access to otherwise. Marketing strategies often require market research and that research can help you to gain a better understanding of the market, how it works and who your customers really are. A strategy can also help you to form goals based on a combination of past performance and future projections. The nature of marketing strategies and marketing plans are such that they provide a breakdown of the schedule and the specific initiatives that are to be carried out. Such attention to performance and returns helps create accurate and realistic annual goals and projections.

Getting Stuck

A major downside of marketing strategies is the dependency they cause for small businesses. When a small business selects its marketing strategy for the year, it must follow through to the end no matter the consequences. If the market changes or the strategy fails, the amount of resources and effort put into its development and distribution are often too great to allow for alterations and repositioning. A one-dimensional approach to marketing is never a good idea, but in some cases even multifaceted campaigns fall victim to too much similarity between initiatives and too much focus on a single target market.


The costs involved with some marketing strategies places them out of reach for many small businesses. Small businesses are not able to accumulate data, purchase information and produce specified marketing campaigns to address each segment of the market in the same way that large corporations can. Those that do have the means to develop and launch a comprehensive marketing strategy may find it difficult to rebound with new material should changes occur or the return on investment not be as expected. The catch is that without a marketing strategy your small business is not likely to grow as quickly, so while expenses stay down, so does revenue.


An undifferentiated marketing strategy is preferred by many small businesses. It combines the benefits of a cohesive marketing strategy with the freedom of operating without one. Undifferentiated or mass marketing strategies are based on widespread, non-targeted marketing campaigns that are concerned only with getting the word out to as many consumers as possible. There is no research involved and no specific message to any one market segment. Instead, the small business creates a one-size-fits-all initiative and carries it out in whatever way it sees fit. The cost is low, the return on investment is typically high and it can be used either as a first step toward devising more targeted strategies in the future or it can remain your strategy for the long term.

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