Difference between strategic marketing and operational marketing: definition and explanation

Definition of strategic marketing

Strategic marketing is the analysis-oriented process focused on identifying needs of individuals and organizations.

What are the components of strategic marketing?

  • Orientation to analysis
  • New opportunities
  • Product-market variables
  • Dynamic environment
  • Proactive behavior
  • Long-term management
  • Inter-functional responsibility.

Definition of operational marketing

Operational marketing is the set of action-oriented processes that extend over a short to medium-term time plan and that address the markets or segments that already exist.

What are the components of operational marketing?

Operational marketing is the final part of the entire marketing process, upstream of which are the analytical marketing and strategic marketing phases.

The operational (or tactical) component of marketing has the task of concretely implementing the strategies defined in the previous phases.

  1. Action orientation
  2. Existing opportunities
  3. Variables other than the product
  4. Stable environment
  5. Restrictive behavior
  6. Ordinary management
  7. Responsibility for the marketing function

The goal of strategic marketing

Strategic marketing tries to understand if there are new market sectors to follow in the market, a decision must come after a strategic marketing process.

New opportunities in strategic marketing are often the result of technological evolution: one key is to be able to combine technological innovation with market demands.

As for the product-market variables, we study market needs; the great challenge of companies today is to combine electronic channels with physical channels.

Strategic marketing tries to think about the evolution of the market, therefore a dynamic environment, while the environment on which operational marketing works is more stable because it photographs on demand.

In strategic marketing, it is important to be able to go beyond the present, both in terms of products and types of consumption (example: car rental and car-sharing).

Proactive behavior in strategic marketing

The company must also be able to imagine a “different world” to change the rules of the game, be able to upset the sector and its rules, if the company is purely reactive and has strong competitors, the products always remain the same.

To be able to take a few leaps from time to time, it is necessary to check whether it is possible to make some incremental innovations, that is, those that support the improvement of the competitive position of companies day by day.

Asking consumers for a possible type of innovation is, however, limiting at times, think for example of asking 300 years ago how to improve the speed of transport: they would probably have all proposed a system of changing and resting horses rather than building cars.

The complementarity of strategic marketing and operational marketing

The roles of strategic marketing and operational marketing are complementary, it is not possible to have a good marketing strategy without them relating.

It is easy to be trapped in a mechanism where it is difficult to get out, for example, how can a company that makes clothing grow? In the beginning, a small company will be seen by suppliers not as a very large customer, so the contracts are often heavy.

When the company grows it tries to have better contractual conditions, or it often internalizes some phases of the production process. Initially, the company will probably look for agents and not salesmen, often multi-firm agents. So it grows, and at a certain point, the company may realize that it has “lost” contact with the brand, leaving a great heterogeneity in the distribution channel.

The company needs to find work keys in operational marketing and a strategy over time but at the risk of losing tune with its coherence.

The slowly growing company has problems but also the fast-growing company, as we have just seen, can have new ones.