Choosing whether your business should follow a flexible or a rigid marketing strategy is always a major concern when trying to decide the best marketing plan example that will work for a business. While a rigid marketing strategy retains confidence from stakeholders, a flexible marketing strategy allows a business to quickly respond to spontaneous shifts in the market and new opportunities.
The problem here is adopting a strategy which will strike a balance between your business goals and sustained growth in a dynamic market. This is especially important because it provides the structure and guidance for marketing mix tools.
Flexible Marketing Strategy
A flexible marketing strategy allows for constant changes in marketing campaigns so that what works is retained and what doesn’t is ditched. This marketing strategy sets out ideas of how and where products and services can and will be promoted with rough dates and timelines for the campaigns.
A flexible strategy also gives a business the opportunity to respond to changing markets, changing trends in the market, new opportunities as well as newly discovered gaps caused by lapses by competitors. What is marketing meant to address if not the changing market and new opportunities? In fact, this is one of the crucial functions of marketing. Even Andrew Klausner, a member of advisor intelligence at Forbes, agrees that a marketing strategy should be flexible enough to allow adjustments.
Pros
- Especially for new products, flexibility is vital to reaching target markets
- Marketing spend can easily be tweaked according to the sales performance and results
- It is easier to replace poorly performing marketing plans and channels with better alternatives
- Tweaking strategies based on feedback is easier and can be done quickly
Cons
- Setting up a flexible marketing strategy requires diverse marketing skills
- Maintaining a flexible marketing strategy requires intensive monitoring and deployment of more resources
Rigid Marketing Strategy
A rigid marketing strategy is based on solid predictions of the marketing campaigns’ performance as well as the corporate’s internal and external marketing activities. It sets plans for sales, pricing, media placements and budgets. This strategy allows for bulk purchases that in theory is more cost-efficient, as it usually garners discounts and allowances from the various stakeholders involved.
Pros
- Guaranteed consistency and cohesion
- Fewer updates and changes happening to marketing plans and materials throughout the year
- The consistency strengthens brand management efforts
- It allows for solid measurement of effectiveness and viability
Cons
- Tweaking strategies based on feedback is a time-consuming process
- Marketing strategies cannot be changed quickly enough to take advantage of new opportunities
- Some models like the marketing funnel may not be effectively monitored using rigid marketing strategy
Knowing the Best Marketing Strategy for Your Business
Know your Target Customers
Who are your customers? What do they care about? How does your product help them? Having a deep understanding of your target customers is vital to your business. Joe Stych from Zapier says that it is important for a company to figure out who they built a product’s features for, what the benefits are, and why they should care for a successful marketing campaign
Know your Target Market
What market does your product fit into? You need to get your product to have a strong market fit because it ascertains your credibility, authority, and expertise in the industry. Therefore, you need to extensively research your market and your product, define your products characteristics and target markets that demonstrate these characteristics
Know the Product’s Values
Remain aware of your product’s value and what it can do for your customers. Don’t focus on its features, focus on how it helps your customers and try to sell that value to customers
Know your Marketing Campaign Goals
What do you want the marketing campaigns to achieve? What types of marketing options are open to you? Do you want more sales, signups or to establish a brand presence? The business goals should determine the marketing strategy for every product marketing campaign
Know your Competitors
What are your competitors doing? What are they getting wrong or right? How can you take advantage of their lapses? It is important for you to have a good knowledge of your competitors’ marketing activities so you can easily counter the plans in your marketing strategy