The marketing and sales strategy shows a roadmap for a business to develop products, price, promote, distribute, compete and sell in target markets. It involves making critical decisions about the allocation of resources, including financial, human, and technological resources, to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and long-term success. It encompasses information on the business concept (as explained in the previous process), mission and vision, strategic direction (e.g., differentiation, low cost, intensive technology, and targeting niche market), market positioning (e.g., the position of the project in terms of price, quality, market share, and brand relevant to competitors), strategic objectives, strategies or initiatives (e.g., approaches to reach objectives), action plan (e.g., including day-to-day actions and targets to achieve), key performance indicators (KPIs), and metrics for at least three years (incl. target sales, market mix, annual growth, market share, served customers, promotion and distribution budget, etc.). A business strategy is important for a business to reach objectives over a specific time and within given resources. It is a useful tool for the business because it provides clear direction to meet objectives, helps anticipate and respond to changes in the business environment, and prioritizes and focuses on the most important activities.
Step-By-Step Process
- Clarify the marketing analysis information on the target market, including, for instance, customer segmentation, competition, market mix, supply and demand, trends, challenges, and the business concept.
- Conduct an internal analysis (e.g., SWOT) to identify strengths and opportunities for the project.
- Conduct an external analysis (e.g., PESTEL) to identify threats and opportunities where the business operates.
- List strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that form the bases for the project business strategy.
- Identify the unique selling propositions (USPs) of the business that differentiates it from competitors and develops strategies to sustain these competitive advantages.
- Develop your business concept, including details like the problem, solution, product description, value proposition, target customers and markets, risks, and justifications.
- Craft your business mission, vision, and goals. A business mission shows what, how, when, where and why a business exists, and the vision statement visualises the long-term dream business battles to reach.
- Explore and choose the best strategic direction for the project, which can be differentiation, low cost, intensive technology, or targeting a niche market.
- Evaluate competition and plan a market positioning of the project. It shows, for instance, the position of the project in terms of price, quality, market share, and brand relevance to competitors. Market positioning involves how a business competes and what image or reputation a business perceived in the eyes of customers.
- Set your SMART strategic objectives that a business determines to achieve by the end of the strategic term.
- Show initiatives or ways on how you can achieve these strategic objectives.
- Transform these objectives and initiatives into shorter-term actions and targets. By doing this, you list the actions and targets for a period, like one year.
- Set your key performance indicators against the strategic objectives to measure and evaluate the performances and success of the strategy.
- Identify your business metrics during the strategic terms, including target sales, market mix, annual growth, market share, served customers, and marketing and sales budget.
- Prepare a strategic document highlighting the above outcomes, and share it with your team and experts.
Example
Here is the SWOT and a PESTEL analysis for a pharmaceutical manufacturing project:
SWOT Analysis
Strengths:
- Local capacity.
- The first of its kind in Bahrain and the GCC.
- Capital and technology-intensive.
- Strongly supported by the Bahrain government and medical authorities.
- Tackle a diversified and needed list of drugs.
- Local and GCC local production advantages.
- Aligned with the government strategy about encouraging local production capacities.
Weaknesses:
- Highly dependent on imported raw materials, other supplies and technology.
- Limited local market.
- New industry in Bahrain.
- Lack of local technical workforces.
- Require huge investments/funds and reveal a higher period of payback.
Opportunities:
- Imports substitution.
- Steadily growing market of 5%.
- Stronger chances to penetrate the GCC markets.
- High chance to obtain direct purchase orders or off-take agreements from the public medical purchasing authorities.
- Dominating the supply to the local market.
- Can play a local stabilizer of the pharma supply in Bahrain.
- Support the local content and pharma ecosystem in Bahrain.
- Securing funds from the sovereignty funds in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.
- The limited number of local pharma producers in the GCC.
Threats:
- The time-consuming procedure to register new drugs.
- The high competition resulted from branded and generic supplies.
- Direct competition from local/GCC existing and potential producers.
- Fail to secure needed support from the local government.
- Fail to commence operation on time.
- Fail to secure significant funds.
- Stronger control of prices by health regulators in Bahrain and GCC.
- Huge overheads resulted from expensive fixed assets.
- Unable to meet the sales and marketing strategy.
- The outcomes and assumptions of the feasibility study are inaccurate.
PESTEL Analysis
Political: The stable political system in Bahrain and GCC brings stability to the business environment.
Economy:
- Hydrocarbon: higher prices and demand contributed to the strong recovery of GCC economies.
- Inflation: 2.1% in 2021.
- GDP and growth: projected to be US$ 2 trillion in 2022, and $ 6 trillion in 2050, growing at about 3% in 2023/2024.
- Employment: strongly controlled by the government, and unemployment ranges between 5-10%.
- Exchange rate: the exchange of the local currencies are stable against US $ and other major currencies.
- Free economy: GCC market is a free economy with no restriction in the flow of resources from and to the GCC.
- Corporate taxes: recently, GCC has applied a corporate tax system of 10-20% on foreign investments, in addition to VAT reaching 20%.
Social:
- Urban migration: almost all the GCC people live in urban cities.
- Living lifestyle: hardly influenced by the Western living lifestyle.
- Values and norms: GCC is an Islamic and conservative society ruled by strong social norms and values.
Technology:
- Technology base: business and service sectors have been heavily investing in technology, incl. e.g., products, services, machinery, AI, data analytics, and SMART solutions.
- Technology ecosystem: GCC technology literacy levels are high; advanced IT and production technologies are widely used in the GCC, supported by a strong welfare economy, universities, technology parks, the manufacturing sector, etc.
- Trends: moving toward high-tech technologies and SMART societies.
Environment:
- Awareness: social awareness of protecting the environment is improving due to the spreading of the internet and social media, increasing awareness, and the influence of international mobilization toward environmental protection.
- Protection: GCC has been imposing stringent laws to protect the environment.
- Environment issues: GCC has made notable progress on issues like environmental awareness, legislation, clean energy, encouraging renewable energy, waste recycling, promoting local supplies, using green materials and technologies in production, replacing plastic bags with recycled or paper ones, etc.
Legislation:
- Latest legislation progress: GCC counties have issued stringent acts to regulate the pharma industry, protecting the public interest and safeguarding patients. Recently, GCC has established the GCC Central Drug Registration system to unify drug registration procedures, improve patient safety and access, and unify prices.
- Pharma regulations: pharma industry is tightly controlled by the drug regulatory authorities in the GCC, which approve medical factories, doctors and supporting staff, medicines for production and trading, and set selling prices.
Useful Tips
- Conduct market research to understand customers and competition and to identify opportunities.
- Be innovative in articulating the business strategy by bringing new and unique ideas about the strategy components discussed above.
- Seek advice from experts and involve the team and other stakeholders to develop a strategy.
- Set realistic and measurable goals that are aligned with the mission and vision of the company. Break down larger goals into smaller, achievable milestones to help track progress.
Things To Avoid
- Avoid developing a business strategy without conducting thorough market research.
- Avoid developing a business strategy that is too complicated to understand.
- Avoid developing a business strategy that is not unique and bring new values to the business.
- Avoid inaccurate data, guessing works, and assumptions without evidence.
- Avoid setting objectives that are not SMART.
Final Note
This article is sourced from my new book- Your Guide For Preparing An Industrial Feasibility Study.
For more information about the book: https://growenterprise.co.uk/book-your-guide-for-preparing-an-industrial-feasibility-study/
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Or email us at: maldawood@growenterprise.co.uk
The author: Munther Al Dawood- Industrial Enterprise Expert
Grow Enterprise 