FREE ESSAY ON MARKETING STRATEGIES

MARKETING STRATEGIES

The Marketing Strategies
This section of the marketing plan provides the marketing objective, the selected target
market, the selected services, our marketing statement and our promotional
recommendations.
Goals tell were a business wants to go; strategy answers how to get there. Every business
must tailor a strategy for achieving its goals. The strategy must then be refined into
specific programs that are implemented efficiently and corrected if they are failing to
achieve the objectives.
Michael E. Porter, author of the book "competitive strategy: techniques for analyzing
industries and competitors" has categorized strategies into 3 generic types, which are:
Overall cost leadership
Here the business works hard to achieve the lowest costs of production and distribution
so it can price lower than its competitors and win a large market share.
Differentiation
Here the business concentrates on achieving superior performance in some important
customer benefit area valued by the market as a whole. It can strive to be the service
leader, the quality leader, the style leader, the technology leader, etc.
Focus
Here the business focuses on one or more narrow market segment rather than going after
the whole market. The firm gets to know the needs of these segments and pursues either
cost leadership or some form of differentiation within the target segment.
As said before, Cumeco n.v. is in the business of steel construction, pipefitting and
welding. We think that Cumeco n.v. must adopt a strategy that is based on a combination
of the differentiation and focus strategy. Our recommendation is that Cumeco n.v. must
start focusing on becoming a niche-player. As explained in the opportunity and issue
analysis a market nicher is a smaller firm that chooses to operate in some part of the
market that is specialized and is unlikely to attract larger firms.
Now we can start developing a marketing strategy statement. The different clients we
visited for our research had one thing to say: Cumeco n.v. delivers quality. The one word
that kept coming back was QUALITY. The marketing statement should therefore be "to become
known in the industry as the symbol of quality in the business of metal construction,
pipe fitting and welding which can be accomplished by always meeting the deadline and
delivering quality works". With this marketing statement in mind we will start developing
the marketing plan.
In our opinion, our main objective is to increase the awareness of the company's name and
the services it provides and to position Cumeco n.v. in such a way that when you hear the
words Cumeco n.v you immediately think of quality. By introdusing such concepts as Total
Quality Management it will be able to create a sustainable competitive advantage. 
We believe that with our recommendations this can be accomplished. To evaluate the
effectiveness of our plan, we recommend a survey to be done 6 months after the execution
of the plan has started.
The image of a company is very important, because it's what your target market perceives
of your company. 
The selected target market is
8 The general contractors as they are in charge of big construction projects and take on
smaller contractors like Cumeco to do a specific construction job
8 The architect bureaus as they make the drawings and in most cases make the
calculations
8 The construction bureaus as they are specialized in making construction calculations
8 Various companies e.g. manufacturers, factories (Amstel, Coca-Cola)
8 Utilities companies e.g. Kodela, Setel, KAE
The perception of the customer is very important even in the steel construction business.
If the general contractors have a good impression of your company, it will be easier to
get a job order. Cumeco n.v. is being associated with quality, which is a good sign, but
it is also being associated with high prices. So we'll have to work on their price
strategy. Cumeco n.v. has to start lowering its cost in order to have a better
competitive advantage.
Although it is nice to be innovative and come up with a new product, we feel at this time
Cumeco n.v. must not come up with a new service but work on the existing ones. We feel
they should:
? Increase their steel construction job orders
? Increase their pipe fitting (steel and PVC) job orders
? Increase their aluminum welding job orders
? Heavily promote their new sandblasting and coating facilities
Recommendations
Since the first visit to Cumeco, we unanimously decided that a major problem at Cumeco
was the absence of an employee in charge with all the marketing & public relations
activities and mostly sales. Mr. Chirino is a person who wants to be and is on top of
each project. He makes sure the contract is negotiated and signed, the project planning
is done, the project calculations are correct, the job is started, finished and delivered
on time. As you can see, he does not have the time to keep himself busy with the
marketing and PR activities and perform as a salesperson. We know it's costly to take
someone extra on the payroll. If Cumeco wants to make marketing the key to increase the
awareness of its company and products or even their sales, a marketing officer with
additional duties such as sales is a must. This person would be working closely with Mr.
Chirino so he/she must be trustworthy.
With the marketing officer in place we can make as much suggestions as we like, because
we know there is someone in charge of the execution.
Job description marketing officer
In this type of business personal selling is the key to success. You have to know your
clients, visit them regularly and build a long lasting relation with them. The Marketing
officer must function as a sales person. It is the job of the sales person to give
customer service. He/she will go to the general contractors, the utility companies, the
architect bureaus and the construction bureaus and try to establish contacts and build
relationship with these clients. The sales person is in charge of making these companies
aware of the existence of Cumeco, it's products and services and that Cumeco stands for
quality in business of metal construction, pipe fitting and welding. Once they are
interested in offering Cumeco a job, Mr. Chirino steps in. He is the one negotiating the
contract as he has more knowledge of the company's capabilities, the work and the
calculations. After the job has been taken and delivered, the sales person goes back
after say 6 months to check up on the customer to see if everything is still satisfactory
and maybe even if they have another job.
The marketing officer is in charge of coordinating the marketing efforts. Our main
objective is to increase the awareness of the company's name and the services it provides
and to position Cumeco n.v. in such a way that when you hear the words Cumeco n.v you
immediately think of. We tried to incorporate all the marketing tools we believe will
give results.
Advertising
We are aware that Cumeco does not have the funds to do much advertising. If we want to
achieve our goal one point in the future we will have to start paying for some
advertisements. Our suggestions are:
8 Newspaper adds in "De Makelaar"
8 Adds in the yellow pages of the telephone book
8 Direct mailing of informative folders to the target market
We do not recommend any event or sponsorship marketing as we perceive it not to be
effective. It will not reach the target market specifically.
One of the main promotional activity Cumeco must start working on is PUBLICITY. We can
start working immediately on publicity. Our suggestions are:
8 For the inauguration of the new sandblasting and coating facilities, give an
inauguration party and invite the press. Give out press releases together with a folder
containing all the work you have accomplished. Invite your target market (head of the
departments in charge of maintenance of the various utilities companies and the project
leaders of the architect bureaus, contractors companies etc).
In marketing we also have promotional items to put at what we call the Point-of-purchase.
We can make posters to put at the hardware stores. These posters must make frequent
visitors of the hardware stores (who may be in the business of construction) aware of the
name Cumeco.
Actually it's difficult to come up with sales promotion items for a construction company.
We do recommend free merchandise in the form of calendars, mugs, pens and key chains to
be distributed to the target market. These items must have Cumeco's logo very clearly
printed on it to increase awareness with its target market.
Budget
Marketing calendar