Strategic marketing is based on defining competitive advantages for your products and services in order to define a marketing strategy. It’s an important factor for your company’s success because from your marketing strategy depend your allocation of resources and your final sales volume and leadership in your market.

Here are a few ideas you should remember before you start with your spin-off or scientific company:

1. Segmentation consists in dividing the market into sub-markets with a differentiated commercial behavior, meaning those that react differently to a commercial offer or marketing plan.




2. Segmentation is important to (1) optimize promotion and marketing resources and (2) resist and defeat the strongest competitors, especially in the first stages of the company.




3. To reach effective segmentation, each market segment should have (1) a really differentiated response and (2) a sufficient size.




4. Segmentation is done in three steps: (1) division of the market in segments (2) selection of one or more target segments and (3) positioning of a product in selected segments.




5. A market niche is a “gap” in the market that is not targeted by other companies and which thus offers an attractive and clear unsatisfied demand.




6. Adequately positioning a product ensures a mental image of the product itself consistent with target clients’ expectations. A good way to ensure good positioning is to establish ways in which competitors’ key attributes can be improved.




7. Being consistent in the market is important. It is necessary to maintain a consistent commercial discourse and approach over time. Incoherence is costly, in terms of confused clients who leave the company. A consistent performance over time requires compromise, commitment and a lot of patience. Good marketing managers rarely rush, knowing that it’s necessary to wait in order to start seeing results.




8. Differentiated and simple ideas work better. All too often, companies try to impress potential customers with a dazzling array of complexity, instead of selling them a few small, simple ideas that make them want to buy the products.




9. A significant job that you have as an entrepreneur, for successful marketing, is to identify one or two great advantages of your product, also called killer applications and to formulate a convincing message for your clients.




10. You need to identify which attribute of your product you’re going to highlight above others when promoting it to the differentiated market segments and draw up unique selling proposals.