29 Sep Strategic marketing by Joseph Ashford
Every business will need strategic marketing to achieve success in its field. Marketing is vital regardless of your industry. Joseph Ashford has many years of experience in business and marketing. He has helped to transform the fortunes of many companies with his astute judgements.
What is strategic marketing?
Strategic marketing refers to a company’s drive to increase sales and attain an advantage over their competitors. A marketing strategy involves short and long-term exercises all of which will have an overall aim to improve the company’s standing.
With many years of experience in business, Joseph Ashford has seen first-hand how strategic marketing can revolutionise the fortunes of companies. Having been a CEO to different companies, Joseph Ashford is a firm believer in marketing. It his belief that firms need effective marketing to gain the competitive edge in a cut-throat market.
Growth strategies
To ensure the success of your marketing plans, it is vital to have strategies in place to propel growth such as horizontal and vertical integration. Find out more about these tactics underneath:
Horizontal integration
Horizontal integration refers to a process by which a company increases its services or the volume of goods it produces. Ways companies can achieve horizontal integration can be through expansion within the business or through mergers and acquisitions. If a firm can capture the majority of its target market for a service or product – this is a monopoly.
There are several benefits to a horizontal integration which could take up several blog posts if we were to go into detail. To save time, we have listed some of the very benefits underneath:
- More market power
- Reduces overall costs
- Less competition
- Access to new markets
- Differentiation is increased
Vertical integration
Vertical integration is when a company bolsters its reach into different areas connected to the production trail. A common example of vertical integration is when manufacturing companies purchase their supplier and distributor – both of which are examples of forward and backwards integration.
Like horizontal integration, there are benefits for vertical integration too such as:
- Decreases costs
- Competitiveness is increased
- Companies have more control on processes
- Market share is amplified
- Supply chain coordination is improved
Ways this can be applied to your business
Joseph Ashford has seen how businesses have been transformed by both vertical and horizontal integration along with marketing plans. Businesses have to employ strategic marketing to achieve their overall goal, to gain that all-important market edge.
All businesses regardless of their field need to be aware of this believes Joseph Ashford. He later went on to describe how even if business owners think that marketing doesn’t apply to them – ALL companies will benefit in some way.
The industry your business operates in does not have a bearing on whether you need marketing or not. Joseph Ashford considers industry to be irrelevant as every product or service has a target audience, and your business has an end goal by providing said goods. The real skill is not to apply any old marketing technique but to tailor and adapt strategic marketing to fit your business.