Marketing… this is one area of business that has the appearance of being simple, but is actually quite complex. For instance, what is strategy? Creating marketing strategy can be a very fascinating journey into the mind of the human creature. Unlike ‘Sales’, where you meet sales targets and figures, marketing is far more complex.

Let us take military strategy, for instance. An outside observer may see a bunch of soldiers crawling around on their bellies, guns in hand. However, in order for these soldiers to be present here, at this given spot at this given time, a strategy has been created. A lot of thought has gone into which platoon goes where, and why.

According to tutor2u:

Marketing has a key role to play in strategic planning, because it is the job of marketing management to understand and manage the links between the business and the “environment”.

When there is only one geographical market and a limited number of products (or only one product), then the role of the marketing strategist is fairly simple. Now think of a multinational business, with several business units all over the world, and having a huge range of products. Challenging? You bet!

This is where marketing planning and strategy come into the picture. Now you are not thinking about how to maximize sales of a given product. Rather, you are taking decisions about what products are worth continuing with, what products should be discontinued; what georgaphic locations deserve greater attention, what areas are best left alone…

This is the tutor2u list of key issues to be addressed in strategic and marketing planning:

• Where are we now?
• How did we get there?
• Where are we heading?
• Where would we like to be?
• How do we get there?
• Are we on course?

Marketing also involves branding and positioning. As a shop states:

Target marketing is one of corporate America’s most effective business strategies. The idea is to increase sales by first identifying, and then targeting smaller, yet more profitable customer groups within the total market.

So when creating marketing strategy, you first need to "identify" and then "target" your customers in order to market effectively.

These are some links to online marketing degrees:
elearners online marketing degrees
World Wide Learn Online Marketing Degree Programs
Universities Online Marketing Degrees
Degrees Online: Online Marketing Degrees
Ooen.net online marketing degrees