Why it Matters
Overview
Teacher resources for Unit 4 can be found on the next page.
Why It Matters: Marketing Strategy
Resources for Unit 4 Marketing Strategy
Slide Deck - Unit 4: Marketing Strategy
Unit 4 Assignment: Marketing Plan, Part I
Marketing Plan Resources
SWOT Analysis with Interactive Template
Market Analysis with SWOT Template
15 New Products You Need to Know About
Pacing
The Principles of Marketing textbook contains sixteen units—roughly one unit per week for a 16-week semester. If you need to modify the pace and cover the material more quickly, the following units work well together:
- Unit 1: What Is Marketing? and Unit 2: Marketing Function. Both are lighter, introductory units.
- Unit 15: Global Marketing and Unit 16: Marketing Plan. Unit 16 has more course review and synthesis information than new material per se.
- Unit 5: Ethics can be combined with any unit. You can also move it around without losing anything.
- Unit 8: Positioning and Unit 9: Branding. Companion modules that can be covered in a single week.
- Unit 6: Marketing Information & Research and Unit 7: Consumer Behavior. Companion units that can be covered in a single week.
We recommend NOT doubling up the following units, because they are long and especially challenging. Students will need more time for mastery and completion of assignments.
- Unit 4: Marketing Strategy
- Unit 10: Product Marketing
- Unit 13: Promotion: Integrated Marketing Communication
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Why explain how a marketing strategy supports an organization’s corporate strategy?
Learning Outcomes
- Evaluate how marketing strategies align with corporate strategies
- Explain the inputs and components of a marketing strategy
- Show how common analytic tools are used to inform the organization’s strategy
- Give examples of corporate strategies
- Explain how the development and maintenance of customer relationships are an essential part of an organization’s marketing strategy
In this module you’ll learn about the important role that marketing strategy plays in supporting corporate strategy. When a company has a mission and a set of corporate-level objectives, the marketing strategy must support those goals, which is perhaps the most important lesson that the following companies—and many others like them—failed to learn:
10 Lessons I Learned From Burning Through $50,000 on a Hardware Project That Bombed
With Kolos, we did a lot of things right, but it was useless because we ignored the single most important aspect every startup should focus on first: the right product.
We didn’t spend enough time talking with customers and were rolling out features that I thought were great, but we didn’t gather enough input from clients. We didn’t realize it until it was too late. It’s easy to get tricked into thinking your thing is cool. You have to pay attention to your customers and adapt to their needs.
My Startup’s Dead! 5 Things I Learned
What I didn’t understand was, you charge not for how much work it is for you. You charge how much the service is worth.
As these companies attest, a lot of things can go wrong in the startup world, and learning the hard way can mean going out of business. Take a look at the following list, which reveals the major reasons startups fail:
TOP 20 REASONS STARTUPS FAIL1
Note: You may notice that the percentages in this equal far greater than 100%. This is because there are often multiple reasons a startup failed.
- No Market Need (42%)
- Ran Out of Cash (29%)
- Not the Right Team (23%)
- Get Outcompeted (19%)
- Pricing/Cost Issues (18%)
- Poor Product (17%)
- Need/Lack Business Model (17%)
- Poor Marketing (14%)
- Ignore Customers (14%)
- Product Mis-Timed (13%)
- Lose Focus (13%)
- Disharmony on Team/Investors (13%)
- Pivot gone bad (10%)
- Lack Passion (9%)
- Bad Location (9%)
- No Financing/Investor Interest (8%)
- Legal Challenges (8%)
- Don’t Use Network/Advisors (8%)
- Burn Out (8%)
- Failure to Pivot (7%)
Many businesses go under because their products are inferior or don’t match a need, because of poor pricing strategy, poor marketing, or because of other issues related to product, price, promotion, or distribution. In essence, they fail to have a good plan that supports the goals of the company.
It is exceptionally difficult to get marketing strategy right. It is easy to get busy doing the work of the company, rather than planning the work that will ensure the company’s survival and success. Successful companies have a good corporate strategy that is supported by an effective marketing strategy. In this module you’ll begin to understand why that’s so important.
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