STRATEGIC

MARKETING

GROUP ASSIGNEMENT-1

SUBMITTED BY
KAPIL BHELURAL
SHIVANI
ABNINAV
AYUSH

JYOTIRMOY SARMA ----- H20200841P

The coronavirus pandemic has forced companies to look and reinvent into its marketing strategies to
remain afloat in business. It has bought changes in consumer behaviour and companies must
understand and analyse this factors and put it into their marketing strategy if they want a competitive
advantage. Like it said there is opportunity in every problem and this pandemic has proved that and
fast forwarded marketing strategy at all three levels.
For competitive advantage companies have to look into following five dimensions.
1) Purpose Led 2) Fast and agile. 3) Digital-accelerated. 4) Hyperlocal and personalized 5)
Self-funded.
Now coming to the big question how marketing leaders can manage the crisis and plan for the future
at the same time. There are many questions regarding the market volatility and customer spending
habit marketer’s needs to be quick thicker and pragmatic to answer these questions and turn this threat
into opportunity. So for a post covid world some factors and sub factors are mentioned to dive into for
emerging as a marketing leader.
Consumer Sentiment and behaviour: They have changed drastically as consumers are adjusting and
reduced optimism on economy has made them curbed their expenses (40% less household spending).
So spending pattern has changed and currently they are only concentrating on essential goods like
grocery and home entertainment whereas cutting on non-essentials( 16 % drop in a single month).
Also shoppers has shifted online but it necessarily doesn’t means profits for online marketers in fact
google and Facebook has being seeing some negative trends.
But the market will open and marketers will have to adjust to a different environment. Their priority
will have to be revenue generating activities and should focus on cash flow, run the business revenue
targets. They should also have a long term plan and its success will depend upon how fast they can
learn and adapt. Marketing strategy will be different across business but broadly it can be classified
under three categories.
1. Resolve and resilience: manage the now: It will further have four categories
a) Support employees,customers,suppliers : Ways of working must be changed
keeping in view employees heath.
b) Emphasize and understand customers: Due to the crisis customers behaviour
has changed and companies as a whole should look into so that they can
engage with them and gain loyalty by being more thoughtful and authentic.
c) Build up cash reserve: Marketers should manage cost and increase productivity
and revaluate their inefficiencies to decrease spending.
d) Drive revenue responses: Marketers should target products that are on demand
and must use digital marketplace to its advantage. Buy online pick up at store
option can be provided to customers to bring in revenue. They should
communicate that they are trying to make shopping safer and convenient. They
should tap into elements of their brand that are relevant to the current crisis and
communicate them so that customer remember the brand. Many companies
have donated to many programs which have enabled them to gain a brand
value.
Also marketers must be agile and quickly learn and adapt to new situations.

2. Return: Plan for Recovery: Companies and marketers should also think beyond the crisis,
and keep active communication with consumers since the market is bound to bounce back up.
a) Rethinking strategies and media plan: The market is no longer the same
and its destined for change so marketers should rethink their strategies from
scratch and decide what value proposition of their product to the consumers.
b) Winning the battle for brand awareness: With consumers more rapidly
changing their brand and willingness to try other brands marketers must again
 look into what their brand means to consumer and adopt measures to build up
their brand value.
c) Redefining loyalty: Companies not only should look for new consumers but
also must increase its relationship with existing consumers by constantly
looking into their needs and delivering the same.
3. Reimagination: Companies must look into what habits will remain permanent for consumers
in a post covid world. They must look beyond their industries and ready to move into
uncharted territories.

Spend Management: It is the tracking and managing how money is spent. Effective
techniques will enable companies to save cash during the crisis and also use where it matters
most. The four pillars to improve efficiency are

1. Think which services is needed: Companies should use proper advertising channels so
that only target customers are reached. Also create a flexible system of work where
quarterly SOW much be developed instead of annually which will allow to adjust to
shifting needs and keeping in touch with senior accounts team to manage cost.
2. Change the way work is done: Companies must embrace fast decision making by
decentralizing decision making process. Past content for marketing must be discarded and
incentivise employees for using new content. Also close working with finance department
is needed to prepare budgets spending which shouldn’t be based on past data.
3. Optimize where work is done: Companies must stop outsourcing important activities
and start doing in house activities which are critical to business. There should be a clear
client-agency relationship and accountability should be there and people at all levels
should be open to look into works.
4. Pay the right price: Companies should know where and how much they are spending
and should be armed with comparable data.

PERFORMANCE BRANDING:
Companies performance marketing must be data driven which will enable them to target their
customers in precision. Because there are limitation in current marketing ROI approaches it is
imperative to move to performance branding and collect data and use sophisticated data techniques to
understand shoppers preferences. In order to succed in performance branding data needs to be
collected from media consumption, identity graphs, Individual level transaction data, personalised
surveys and companies must be quick in learning them and implementing.
MODERN MARKETING
The ability to harness full capabilities of the business to provide best experience to the customer and
hence promote growth. For this they need updated capabilities and enablers. Also a mind-set shift is
needed to implement them. They must a unifier mind-set and must work collaboratively with various
functional departments, also customer centric mind-set is needed in segmenting various customers
according to their needs and catering to them.. Also consider ROI when spending and thinking the
company’s assets as one’s own.
Four key operational enablers marketers must look on are
1. Organizational desigh and culture
2. Agile marketing at scale
 3. Talent and agency management
4. Data and technology
Since the marketplace has is changing very fast it is imperative to become a modern
marketing organisation.

THE FUTURE OF BRAND STRATEGY