Strategic Business Marketing Reflection Paper

By (Name)

24707 Strategic Business Marketing

Tutor

University of Technology Sydney

Sydney and New South Wales

2nd June, 2020

Introduction

Strategic business marketing today has shifted its focus from profit orientation to customer orientation. Digital marketing has made it possible for customers to receive personalized products with digital means of giving feedback. This essay details the position customers occupy today in firms’ priorities in their striving to attain competitive advantage while delivering value to suppliers and customers.

Key Learnings from Guest Speakers

Strategic business marketing today is driven more towards the needs of customers being met as opposed to being driven towards profit realization first. Products are then designed in light of the identified needs (Stern and Sturdivant, 1987). The former allows for customer needs to be met followed by effective relationships, after which profits stabilize. With such great experiences, current customers will conduct marketing apart from the firm (Jaffe, 2010). The company need not take on in depth marketing efforts in such cases. With available customer data, customer relationship management has become more digitized, so much so that marketing can be done in real-time as well as providing effective communication channels that help firms identify issue through customer feedback (Deloitte Digital 2015). Companies ought to take on a prepared approach to pandemics or unexpected occurrences. This ought to be with regard to business continuity plans, suppliers, and emergency plans (Rice, 2020).

With digital technologies, B2B has been able to adopt a global channel marketing view and strategies. This way, products, services, and logistics are planned for a larger market. Strategic business marketing has further taken an authentic and purposeful product branding. Customers are the focus of these branding efforts. The marketing efforts today are pegged on technology. On this note, companies have been forced to adapt to the changes and look for ways of converting leads into revenue generating sources (Pino, 2010). The various social media platforms come in handy as a result, with a number of them enabling this conversion.

Key Learnings from Course

The management of business marketing is based on guiding principles which are value, business networks, market processes, and business across borders. The purchasing process considers the weightiness of value (Session 1, Lesson 1& Session 2, Lesson 2). On this note, the understanding, creation, and delivery of value are important aspects in B2B marketing, for both consumers and suppliers. Good seller-customer relationships result in established networks that bear fruit in form of value for parties involved (Session 3, Lesson 3& Session 4, Lesson 4). Strategic business marketing can be further seen in looking at what the competitors are doing, customer value assessment, market definition, and segmentation (Session 5, Lesson 5). Strategies developed for the business and market alike ought to be value-based.

In B2B selling, the most important aspects are products, services, and logistics. Differentiation at any one point of this chain helps create competitive advantage for the seller (Session 6, Lesson 6). Competitive advantage can be in product or service differentiation, or present in the logistical process in the way the product is delivered (Session 7, Lesson 7). For sales to be made within a company during the digital age, digital communication is an effective addition, on top of collaborative selling which helps the seller understand their market to enable customer needs to be met (Session 8, Lesson 8). As for matters distribution, the partnerships formed ought to be dependable and effective in value creation.

Customer relationship management ensures constant profit realization through value creation for the suppler and customer, while ensuring that competitive advantage is attained. CRM thrives when the organization has a personalized relationship with individual customers for marketing success and customer retention (Session 9, Lesson 9; Session 10, Lesson 10; & Session 11, Lesson 11). Digital marketing has made it possible for customer retention to be successful; especially since need personalization is possible, which is already a marketing strategy.

Summary

To conclude, strategic business marketing has effectively and efficiently shifted to customer-centric efforts from the traditional profit-centric efforts. This way, firms are able to create long-term relationships with their customers while managing to realize profits in their continued efforts.

References

24707 Session 1, Lecture 1

24707 Session 10, Lecture 10

24707 Session 11, Lecture 11

24707 Session 2, Lecture 2

24707 Session 3, Lecture 3

24707 Session 4, Lecture 4

24707 Session 5, Lecture 5

24707 Session 6, Lecture 6

24707 Session 7, Lecture 7

24707 Session 8, Lecture 8

24707 Session 9, Lecture 9

Deloitte Digital, 2015. Digital CRM. [Online] (updated June 2015) Available at: <https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/de/Documents/technology/DELO_Digital%20CRM%20Studie_v21_ks3.pdf> [Accessed 2 June 2020].

Jaffe, J., 2010. Flip the funnel. How to use existing customers to gain new ones, Hoboken, NJ.

Pino, A., 2010. Lead-To-Revenue Management Transforms Tech Marketing. Forrester, 2010: 0-15.

Rice, J.B., Jr., 2020. Prepare Your Supply Chain for Coronavirus. Harvard Business Review, Crisis Management 2020: 1-5.

Stern, L.W. and Sturdivant, F.D., 1987. Customer-driven distribution systems. Harvard Business Review, July-August 1987: 34-40.