An organization uses the strategic marketing process to allocate its marketing mix resources to reach its target markets. This process is divided into three phases: planning, implementation, and evaluation. The planning phase consists of

(a) a situation

(SWOT) analysis, which involves taking stock of where the firm or product has been recently, where it is now, and where it is headed and focuses on the organization’s internal factors (strengths and weaknesses) and the external forces and trends affecting it (opportunities and threats);

(b) a market-product focus through market segmentation (grouping buyers into segments with common needs and similar responses to marketing programs) and goal setting, which in part requires creating points of difference (those characteristics of a product that make it superior to competitive substitutes); and

(c) a marketing program that specifies the budget and actions (marketing strategies and tactics) for each marketing mix element.