Marketing strategy is the foundation for business success:

Without developing a strong marketing strategy before jumping into the market you are most likely to fall flat on your face (and that hurts).

So to avoid costly reconstructive surgeries, and the very costly launch of a product or business that ultimately fails, you want have to develop a strong marketing strategy.

How do you start? Where do you start? First, you're probably going to need more than just you (if you are headed to a fast face plant, you're going to want at least a few people there to catch you). In reality, a team of minds, researching, planning, organizing, and implementing, is always better than one mind alone. So pull your team of co-workers, or look for people who specialize in marketing outside of your group, and pull them in, and get thinking.

The first thing you want to think about is research. Research is extremely important when your entering the market. You don't want to start a clothing line selling panty-loons and corsets, when the consumers are looking for t-shirts and jeans. Find out what the current need, or even want, is in the market that you are entering (if the need is t-shirts and jeans you're going to want the coolest, most fun, most affordable, and best looking t-shirt and jeans out there - but how can you create that if you don't know what your customers currently think is the coolest and most fun?).

Research will also give you insight into your competitors. What are their successes and what areas have they fallen flat on their face in (try to avoid their failures or you may be asking for a surgeon referral and it's always hard to trust a competitor). You can take their successes and you can improve on them to make your product superior - which will give you a much needed advantage when just entering the market.

Knowing the successes and failures of your competitors will also give you an advantage in advertising. For instance if your competitor's brought straight leg jeans to the market, when bell bottoms are what the customers are wanting, you can emphasize the fact that you are aware of how silly straight leg jeans (in theory) are, and how cool bell bottoms are, thus earning credit off of your competitors (sounds mean I know, but that's the sad part we all get used to in competition).

Once you have completed your market research, and you know what the market is demanding, what your competitors are currently doing, and where the successes and failures have been, then you can continue on with your market strategy.

You will need to know the quality of the products currently on the market in order to judge what quality you will produce, this will affect price so they must be carefully planned together (your customers just might start liking straight leg jeans if their minimum wage jobs won't allow them to afford your bell bottomed jeans - again that depends on your customer base). Once you have decided the quality of the product, how it will be produced - you can then put a pretty face to it.

A pretty face is the face that you're hoping won't fall flat. This is your advertising campaign, how you are going to introduce your product into the market. You may choose to go through an advertising agency who will put you up in billboards and ads, or maybe through direct marketing, sending out emails, and mailings, or maybe you will hire a public relations firm and get someone with a big name to wear your new jeans in an interview or out in public. Your market research should have told you by now which will be the best way to introduce your pretty face, or product, into the market.

Once you have chosen how to enter the market then you need to prepare for set backs, failures (yes there will be some that even your competitors haven't found), and competition from your competitors. You will want to brain storm all the possibilities of a possible negative outcome and have a solution you can quickly put into action if needs be (ordering more size 10's when you originally had assumed you would need more size 6's).Planning for failures ahead of time is going to allow you to quickly turn them into successes and pull ahead in the market.

Having an appropriate, creative, organized marketing strategy will prove to be the success of your business.