Corporate (Business) Strategy Examples

by Fred Victor

In general, every organization will establish its own set of business strategies in order to support the missions and vision, and ultimately achieve goals. In other words, leaders who take the initiative to analyze and understand their market, industry and other external factors can actually develop strategies that are most likely successful.

As a matter of business strategies, there are various types in order to outplay the competition and ultimately generate business “growth”. To achieve both, your business must find, evaluate and select a strategy to capture a potential market.

Two classical examples are illustrated here. More importantly, there are attractive strategies available to small and medium businesses to compete against the scale economies that larger competitors are able to achieve.

Luxury Brand-focused: LEXUS

Some companies choose to position their products (or services) at the high end of the overall competitive pricing scale. Brand like LEXUS is best to illustrate this!

Luxury brands appeal to a distinct group of consumers with ample disposable income and the desire to purchase exclusive products. Companies that choose this strategy are able to increase their ROI (Return on Investment) through product cost versus volume. The customers may be fewer, but they will buy more expensively.

Back in 1957, when TOYOTA entered the American market, they were not considered a threat at all to the American auto industry. It was believed that TOYOTA cars had no appeal to American consumers. But, in the 1970s, there were problems such as the 1973 Oil Embargo, environmental regulations, and quality control issues with some American cars. In response to these “opportunities” (when most people considered it as “crises”), TOYOTA aggressively marketed their cars to Americans as being fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly, and having better build quality than the American cars.

What’s more, TOYOTA marketed their cars as being hip and fun with memorable and fun-filled slogans like, “you asked for it, you got it, Toyota,” and with commercials involving young TOYOTA drivers jumping in the air. As a result, TOYOTA’s marketing campaign along with continuing problems from the Big Three auto manufacturers, allowed import cars to make up about 20%of the American car market by 1980.

After successfully gaining a sizable market share in the American market, TOYOTA decided to create the LEXUS brand in 1989. LEXUS is crafted to target the luxury car market segment which was dominated by Mercedes-Benz and BMW … at that time.

They decided to create a new brand because of their brand image portrayed as only offered fun and fuel-efficient compact cars. As a matter of brand differentiation strategy, the introduction of luxury models into TOYOTA existing lineup would dilute the TOYOTA brand.

Hence, TOYOTA marketing strategy was to position LEXUS as a separate company with almost no references to TOYOTA. Heavy emphases towards quality customer service and a separate dealership network from TOYOTA were implemented. Such business/marketing strategy has allowed LEXUS to outplay its competitors like BUICK, MERCURY and LINCOLN, and become one of the best-selling luxury cars in the US by 2000!

Niche Market-focused: PEPSI

Most often, when a market, business or other external factors forces a business to make important decisions about future direction of their operation vis-à-vis the rest of business initiatives and directions, niche markets are particularly interesting for business looking to grow and/or to change, perhaps.

Niche markets consist of groups of consumers (often considered as market segments) within a larger marketplace who have similar demographic, buying behavior and/or lifestyle characteristics.

Therefore, a niche-focused business strategy targets a narrow group of consumers with a product and/or service designed specifically to meet their needs and wants.

The cola wars between PEPSI and COKE began in the late 1930s when PEPSI started making gains in the market. PEPSI realized that African Americans were an untapped niche market at the time, and that PEPSI stood to gain market share by targeting its advertising directly towards them.

In 1940, PEPSI CEO Walter Mack had the unprecedented idea of putting together a "negro-markets" department. Edward Boyd led the team of 12 black professionals, making Boyd one of the first black executives in corporate America. He and his group developed a marketing strategy seeking brand loyalty among African Americans.

The strategy was one of the first attempts at niche marketing, and it worked!

PEPSI sales in targeted communities shot up over one concerted two-week campaign by 13%.

What’s more, PEPSI was a sponsor of the exhibition, its early efforts at workforce integration and racial harmony are clearly good public relations almost six decades later.

Keywords as Marketable Branding Tools

by Fred Victor

It’s really a question when this is brought to the table, many of us could have possibly ignored it, perhaps. In brief, when writing Website content, blog post or product/service description on a leaflet, by including powerful keywords that your target market uses to find you is undeniably important when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO).

Wonder if you have ever thought of any unique keywords to best describe your business, vis-à-vis the rest of your products and services? Needless to say, one of your business goals is to stand out, and to have your customers and new customers find you with those relevant keywords before they have the chance to think of alternatives, right?

Probably it’s time for you to start considering of any unique keywords to best describe your business, your brands, and your products/services.

To begin, here’s some tips to conduct keyword research which in a way to ensure your business becomes synonymous with those keywords.

Define Your Keywords

Always be remembered that to avoid using hyper-competitive keywords that will easily pull up millions of hits e.g. fashion. Having said that, you should narrow down the list of possible keywords by adding 2 to 3 words e.g. Fashion Online Malaysia.

Conduct Keyword Search

There are several online tools available that you can easily use to conduct keywords search.  Let’s start with some popular platforms like Wordtracker, Market Samurai, or Google Webmaster Tools.  Once determined, you should inform your marketing team to consistently use them, online and offline.

Linking Keywords Consistently

Once every keyword is defined, you should not ignore including relevant keyword into your each online post or printed material such as brochure. Just include those relevant keywords into your brand’s slogan, Facebook, Twitter, catalogue and so on. Last but not least, make sure your colleagues are using those keywords in ALL their communications with customers!

Again, it’s all about consistency ;-)

Three Common Social Media Marketing Strategy Mistakes Should Avoid

By Fred Victor

The social media marketing, often shortened as SMM, is definitely a modern marketing strategy nowadays which helps companies (especially the small businesses) building a network of customers, allowing customers to stay in touch with their preferred brands and/or products and/or services, and eventually building the customer loyalty and the bottom line in the form of sales through effective brand exposure, communication and values.

Discount-driven is no longer appropriate in today’s business context, but market-oriented will outperform in the competition.

Unfortunately, there are many businesses simply have no idea to build a sound social media strategy, and plenty of mistakes are made. Here’s some common mistakes should avoid.

1. Avoid “People have, I have” Mentality

Creating a social media network on e.g. Facebook is relatively easy; however, building such network isn’t as easy as it sounds. Too often, there are significant number of businesses are of the mind that “people have, I have”, and “once account created, people will join”.

Quality content in your social media updates and/or posts (on an ideal frequency) plays an important role that will be able to influence customers to like you, stay with you, remember you (if you’re unique enough), and ultimately purchase.

2. Avoid Too Many “Updates” and “Discounts”

Needless to say when you were bombarded with too many updates and/or posts relating to product photos and discounts. Accordingly, more than three posts a day considered too many (provided if you’re running a press agency). It’s also annoying when there are too many updates on a single product (with non-stop discounts offering). I’d certainly doubt over the quality of such product especially when it comes to high discount, wouldn’t you?

3. Avoid “No Interaction”

One of the reasons why fast-growing usage of social media around the world is simply because people like interacting with friends and others in real time. That’s what makes online games to become so widely played among friends and neighbours, around the world!

So, don’t ever fail to lure conversations with your fans or followers by posting quality contents on an ideal frequency. Don’t overdo!

The social media marketing “pie” (industry) is evolving rapidly. It’s definitely an opportunity for small businesses to further enhance their brands’ positions (e.g. niche) in order to compete with big brands.  

It’s definitely a place where “small knife cuts big tree” (小刀鋸大樹，a well-known Chinese wisdom of life) scene could occur.

Nothing is impossible, it can be a miracle ;-)

How to Tackle Cannibalization - Marketing Channel

by Fred Victor

Not surprisingly, I was asked recently on the issue of cannibalization, where a company faces the dilemma of promoting a similar product range (under different branding strategy, perhaps) within the same retail environment.

Accordingly, one brand outclasses another. How?

I wrote this to reply:

Dear Madam,

I’m just pragmatic enough to share more ideas on the issue discussed via our tele-con last Saturday. Further to my very-short explanation on cannibalize as “cut-throat” (“yoi” in Cantonese), here’s a slightly long story to begin with.

It’s in fact a marketing strategy, cannibalization occurs when decreased demand on an existing product due to the “same” vendor releases another new “similar” product.

It sounds negative but can be extremely effective if it’s planned accordingly (to target customer) and stealing (expanding) market share quietly.

Let’s think outside the box, it’s all about our brand/product portfolio strategy!

Allow me to recap – cannibalization is an important issue in marketing strategy when a company aims to carry out brand/product extension (for itself and others).

Let’s take a real life example, when Philip Morris introduced Marlboro Light, a sub-category and similar product (to Marlboro Classic); such extended brand/product portfolio strategy is to “capture” a “broader” market segment (for those who love light smoking, for ladies, for new smoker etc.) although losing “some” sales in an existing segment (from Marlboro Classic). Marlboro stole market shares from Salem … quietly.

Accordingly, in effect, Marlboro Classic and Marlboro Light aren’t really competing for the same customer segment. Price is same, but taste lighter and smoother, packaging differs, marketing elements vary etc.

As per your case, is your “brand A” direct competing with your “brand B”? Should re-consider?

In my 2-cent opinion, to tackle cannibalization, brand/product differentiation strategy should exist – you should really differentiate both brand A and brand B. In short, the brand A should maintain its “major” entity, brand B should re-define its niche … quickly.

Have fun ;-)

Cheers,
Fred