What is the role of digital marketing in strategic marketing?

There is a lot of talk about strategy when it comes to marketing, management and business. In this sense, a methodology that draws attention is strategic marketing, that is, the process of planning and executing actions with longer-term objectives.

In this article you will find out in greater depth what strategic marketing is, and the current role of digital marketing in this process.

What is strategic marketing?

Strategic marketing is the marketing planning and execution process whose main premise is to achieve a company's medium and long-term objectives. In general, it can be seen as an arm of the strategic planning, generally being developed by the marketing and/or communications sector, not restricted only to managers or “C level” employees of the company.

Therefore, the strategic marketing plays a fundamental role in the longevity of organizations. After all, it is such planning that actually defines how the company will perform. position before the main stakeholders (customers, end consumers, suppliers, etc.), establishing the actions that can enable constant and lasting development.

In this way, some of the main elements that are analyzed in strategic marketing are:

- Target audience, ideal customer and persona;

- What will the company’s identity and personality be like?

- Market and competition analysis;

- Among others.

All of this must be thought about very carefully. After all, although any planning admits changes and adjustments along its path, some fundamentals of strategic marketing must remain so that the company, in all its essence, speeches and values, is stable and sustainable. Furthermore, strategic marketing planning is the basis for building all other secondary strategies.  

Is there “non-strategic” marketing?

Above, I explained in general that we consider marketing as strategic when its planning and actions envision company performance in the long and medium term. In this way, we could consider “non-strategic” marketing to be the group of actions, campaigns and/or marketing planning that aims to an immediate return.

In other words, they would be those reactive and volatile marketing strategies, involving actions with a quick return. Sometimes, they can even be high-impact, but on the other hand, they end up becoming insignificant when considering the company's long-term objectives and performance.

For example…

We can exemplify this process as follows: imagine that a company aims to establish itself as a reference in its market in the next 5 years, that is, it wants to be the top of mind of the sector. This would be your general objective, which does not necessarily involve reaching a certain number of sales. Strategic marketing will guide the macro actions that will lead the company to achieve it.

On the other hand, some specific actions, such as promotions, may be necessary to obtain good performance in marketing and sales. They are sometimes essential for the company to monitor market movements and seasonality, such as what happens with Black Friday, for example. However, these actions are not necessarily aligned with the company's strategic planning.

Of course, everything depends on the profile of each organization, its objects, sector and other variables. After all, a company's long-term objective may be to sell more and have its products as “best sellers”. In this case, specific promotions can indeed be aligned with strategic planning.

Digital marketing vs. Strategic marketing

As you can see throughout this article, when we talk about strategic marketing, we are referring especially to those more extensive and lasting actions. In other words, marketing is responsible for stabilizing the company in its market. In other words, simply put, the objective is not simply to sell in a given cycle, but to ensure that the company achieves financial development and constant growth throughout its existence. In short, it is what makes a company prevail and become relevant.

Digital in marketing strategies

One may wonder how digital marketing could be involved in this entire process. After all, digital stocks have a shorter cycle, usually a few years. However, anyone who thinks that digital marketing only has an immediate impact, exclusively with short-term results, is mistaken. In fact, it is known that the online presence of companies is one of the main elements in building their reputation.

This is because digital strategies combine two types of actions. High-impact and fast result like the ads, and those that may take a while to take effect, but when they appear they can last a long time, such as content marketing. In this way, we can confirm that digital marketing must be considered and valued in the strategic marketing planning of each and every company.

In fact, one of Beatz's specialties is precisely this: helping companies establish themselves in the digital environment, expanding their businesses in a constant and lasting way. Visit our cases page and see the results we have already achieved with