Marketing Strategy, Step by Step for 2027

Decide where your marketing time and money should go, from customer insight and segmentation to positioning, budget, channels and a plan you can measure.

Who it's for

Marketing managers, founders, general managers, consultants and students who want a practical method rather than a theory course. The book stays at the level of strategy; running individual digital channels, building a brand identity and setting prices are covered in other titles in the series.

What you'll learn

• Run focused customer interviews and write sharp insight statements, drawing on the jobs-to-be-done idea popularised by Clayton Christensen
• Summarise your market with a 5C analysis and estimate its size from the top down and the bottom up
• Segment your market, score each segment on attractiveness and your ability to win, and choose primary and secondary targets
• Position against competitors with Urbany and Davis’s three circles, Kevin Lane Keller’s points of parity and difference, a perceptual map and Geoffrey Moore’s positioning statement
• Design a consistent mix with E. Jerome McCarthy’s 4Ps and Booms and Bitner’s 7Ps, and find the funnel stage that holds growth back
• Build the budget from objectives and tasks, choose paid, owned and earned channels with a message house, and write the plan with PR Smith’s SOSTAC
• Plan launches with Everett Rogers’ adopter categories, and measure effectiveness with CAC, ROMI and Les Binet and Peter Field’s work on brand building and activation

What's inside

• 87 pages, 12 chapters
• Each chapter gives you key concepts, a step-by-step method, an illustrative example from a fictional UK organisation, a ready-to-use tool, common mistakes, a recap of the key steps and a short exercise to try this week
• Worked examples from fictional UK organisations, including a group of veterinary clinics, a payroll software firm and an outdoor clothing brand
• A tool in every chapter, including the customer insight statement template, 5C situation summary, segment profile card, positioning statement template, message house and marketing effectiveness scorecard
• A 30-60-90 day plan with checklists, a one-page marketing plan to fill in, and a glossary
• PDF in A4 format — read on screen or print
• Instant download after purchase

Contents

1. Starting with Customer Insight
2. Analysing Your Market Situation
3. Segmenting Your Market
4. Choosing Where to Compete
5. Positioning Against Competitors
6. Designing the Marketing Mix
7. Mapping the Marketing Funnel
8. Setting Objectives and the Marketing Budget
9. Choosing Channels and Messages
10. Writing the Marketing Plan
11. Growing Products Through Their Life Cycle
12. Measuring Marketing Effectiveness

Part of The Business Library

This title is one of the 55 ebooks in The Business Library, available together for £109 (worth £1,437 if bought separately: the total of the individual prices of the included titles in our store). It is also included in The Ultimate Business Bundle, which adds 8 checklists and toolkits and 10 workbooks — all 73 products for £147.