Definition: Holistic marketing is a strategy that focuses on enhancing customer value by coordinating the efforts of all the departments of the organization. The research and development, production, finance, marketing and human resource departments function together for leaving a positive and enduring impression of the brand image on the customers.
A highly competent marketing idea is to implement this holistic approach to viral marketing campaigns. Here, the people are so moved by the brand values that they pass on such messages to others.
Content: Entrepreneurial Management
- Approach
- Components
- Strategies
- Framework
- Importance
- Example
- Conclusion
Approach to Holistic Marketing
Holistic marketing is a systematic direction of all the business activities towards the realization of the corporate goal. Thus, a complete change of the business scenario can be attained through this marketing function.
To move ahead strategically, holistic marketing emphasizes on the following three major prospects:
- Integrated Activities: In an organization, all the business activities are synchronized together to fulfil the needs of the customers.
- Common Goal: In holistic marketing, there is a defined and unanimous goal, aimed at consumer satisfaction.
- Aligned Activities: Every business operation is undertaken in the direction of this particular goal achievement.
Components of Holistic Marketing
The present marketing era is no more about the same old selling perspective, it is indeed encircled around relationship building and social integration.
For the prevailing business scenario, the following five elements of holistic marketings can do wonders:
Relationship Marketing
Building relationships with the parties associated in any way with the organization is the key to successful branding.
This strategy emphasizes on growing the brand by strengthing the bond with the business partners. These can be the employees, stakeholders, financiers, suppliers, agents, dealers, distributors, customers, marketing associates or any other allied party.
Performance Marketing
In this element of marketing, the team is accountable for return on investment in the context of money spent over marketing campaigns.
The marketing managers need to ascertain a greater output or higher sales by contributing a minimal sum in the marketing activities.
Integrated Marketing
In the present world of m-commerce, even the companies had to modify their marketing and selling strategies.
The brand should unite its multiple platforms to let the users conveniently move between one medium to another while shopping.
All the marketing mediums of the brand should unanimously deliver the same message, product or service to standardize the corporate activities.
Also, the marketing 4 P’s (product, price, place and promotion) should be aligned with the communication 7 C’s (Clarity, Completeness, Courtesy, Consideration, Correctness, Conciseness and Concreteness).
Internal Marketing
The employees are the ones responsible for representing the brand in front of the customers.
Thus, internal marketing concentrates on recruiting the personnel, training and inspiring them; and finally imparting the business values and product knowledge within them.
Also, the workers are introduced to the corporate vision and mission; along with the significance of their roles in accomplishing the same.
This process of employees enlightenment tends to be successful when they develop a feeling of ‘Our Organization’.
Societal Marketing
The company exist in a social setup towards which it has some responsibility and accountability.
For this purpose, the organizations need to comply with the laws, regulations, environment protection measures and business ethics.
In the present business environment, society values only those organizations which recognize and fulfil their corporate social responsibility.
Many brands today have gained a high reputation for being human and contributing way more towards the society and its people.
Holistic Marketing Strategies
When a company is primarily devoted to brand strengthening, it preferably goes for a holistic marketing approach.
The most common strategies which are collaborated by the organizations include:
Website Intelligence: Creating a virtual information centre for the audience, is another great marketing idea for the companies can popularize the brand and its offerings among the visitors.
Blogs: This is a highly promising marketing tool if well-managed and integrated with the company’s other marketing activities. A blog can keep the people with the same interest zone connected with the brand.
Social Media: Due to the wider audience accessibility of the different social network platforms, companies aim at gaining voluminous attention through this medium.
Email Marketing: An old yet powerful medium of connecting with people and converting them into buyers, is through emails. The company can mail the greetings, offers and brand information to the users.
Trade Shows and Conferences: The companies engaged in B2B sales find trade shows highly effective to introduce themselves and their products or services to the vendors.
The conference is a superior strategy to swap information or knowledge among the company representatives or professionals and the audience.
Paid Media: These are the sponsored advertisement or recommendations made to the searchers or the audience. The company pays for advertising space to pitch the brand over an e-commerce platform or offline media.
Integrated Analytics: It is indispensable to monitor and compare the performance of the companies various marketing initiatives. Therefore, to consolidate all these marketing activities the organizations are equipped with multiple analytical tools.
Online Events: This is a great approach when it comes to lead generation. Webinars are the most inexpensive and engaging way of marketing the brand. It focuses on broadcasting useful information or idea with the audience to indirectly incline them towards the brand.
Holistic Marketing Framework
Holistic marketing is a complete mechanism which aims at strengthening the customer value.
Hence, there is three major value related functions that the company needs to focus on:
Value Exploration
In this step, the company analyzes the new possibilities and markets for generating value to the customers. For this purpose, it evaluates the combination of the following three capacities:
- Cognitive Space: It depicts the scope of fulfilling the customer’s present and future necessities.
- Competency Space: This element determines the organization’s efficiency to meet those requirements.
- Resource Space: It emphasizes the company’s ability to collaborate with business partners and associates.
Value Creation
Under this function, the customers’ mindset is deeply studied to figure out their buying behaviour and expectations. At this stage the following three sections are integrated:
- Customer Benefits: It is to ascertain the consumer’s expectations from the brand or its competitors.
- Business Domain: This part takes care of all that the business is capable of providing to meet these expectations.
- Business Partner: The competencies lacked by the organization can be fulfilled by entering strategic partnerships.
Value Delivery
This is an action step where the organization have to finally generate customer value. This phase requires heavy investment to develop competencies and the complete setup.
It focuses on the collaboration of the following managerial functions:
- Customer Relationship Management: It simply concentrates on studying the customer requirements and behaviour.
- Internal Resource Management: This section constantly works on improving the functionality of the organizational resources including manpower and business process.
- Business Partner Management: It manages and maintains any collaboration or strategic alliance of the business to ensure optimum value delivery to the customers.
Importance of Holistic Marketing
Holistic marketing is an absolute marketing solution for any organization. It not only drives audience attention towards the brand but also brings in customer retention.
Given below are the significant reasons for adopting holistic marketing strategies:
Focuses on Core Values: Holistic marketing pitches the core values which builds the foundation of any company. This kind of marketing communication has a chronicle impact on customers.
Positive Result: With consistent pitching of the products or services, the brand can gain high customer attention. This comprehensive marketing solution usually appears to be fruitful for the companies.
Improve Effectiveness: This marketing strategy is highly effective since it is a visionary concept. The company’s efforts are always directed towards long-term motives and success in holistic marketing.
Enhance Efficiency: The coordination and communication among the departments improve organizational efficiency. Also, it enhances the mutual understanding and interpersonal bond between the employees.
Develops Cohesiveness: It is not a function solely performed function by the marketing team, rather it unites all the organizational departments to successfully meet the corporate aim.
Builds Brand Image: When the consumers are constantly informed about the brand values and the company’s offerings, they can relate and conceptualize the brand’s superiority.
Brings Consistency: The holistic marketing ensures that regular promotions and pitching of the brand take place. This is an essential practice in this approach since it helps the organization to target nothing less than success.
Example
‘Starbucks‘ is one of the finest coffee house chains in the world. It has gained this name not just because of its taste; instead, the credit goes to the high customer value and experience it provides.
The company adopted a holistic marketing approach to attain this level. It has always prioritized on creating an unforgettable consumer experience and a soothing ambience.
The brand soon established itself as of high reputation in the market and majorly focused on business class coffee lovers.
Some of the marketing strategies adopted by the organization are stated below:
- One of the highest priorities at Starbucks was to ensure superior customer experience, as adopted under the relationship marketing strategy.
- As an internal marketing approach, the company valued its waiters by calling them baristas on one hand. On the other hand, the employees were acknowledged as partners.
- It ensured a competent integrated marketing approach. Thus, ascertaining premium quality product at a substantial price in easily accessible public places.
- A revolutionary societal marketing move taken by Starbucks was to replace its disposable cups with the biodegradable ones.
Conclusion
In the prevalent competitive business scenario, the only thing which can take the organization to the peak is smart marketing of the brand.
Hence, the phenomena of holistic marketing are rapidly popularizing in the corporate world.