Category: Business Planning

Effectively implementing an excellent marketing strategy is the best bet for profitable growth. Such a strategy will be founded on market needs and internal capabilities. It will have at its core, a valuable advantage over your competitors.

The whole company needs to understand what this advantage is. Each person needs to know how they contribute to this advantage.

Bear in mind that the marketing strategy is best if at least each function contributes to developing the plan. Then each department can provide input based on their market contact, as well as the practicalities and impact of the strategy on their department.

That being said, the marketing plan drives the strategy of each functional department.

The marketing strategy drives sales. It determines the customers to focus on – and the prospects to leave alone. It delineates the strengths to sell on, including the overarching advantage of buying from the company. Of course, sales will in turn provide essential feedback on how the plan is working in the field. So, this interaction is critical.

The marketing strategy drives operations. If the strategy is low cost, then ops needs to drive costs out of the product. If it is offering a continuous stream of new products, then ops needs to have the flexibility and expertise to do this cost-effectively.

The marketing strategy drives research and development. It determines whether new products need to be developed much, and the parameters of these products. It also determines the required timing of the product launches.

The marketing strategy also drives finance. It dictates the parameters that need to be monitored and measured. Again, if cost is king, finance needs to ensure the right metrics are being tracked, and to provide the analysis on the success of the strategy.

So, marketing strategy will drive the strategy in the other departments in a company that is geared to grow profitably. Promotional strategy is a piece of the marketing strategy, owned by the marketing department. But marketing strategy is much bigger than that, holding the keys to competitive advantage and therefore profitable growth.

Photo credit: Mr. Mystery Pat Guiney

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

The basis of marketing is understanding what your target market wants or needs. So, how do you do this? How do you go about understanding your target market?

Understanding your market is really a blend of science and art. The key is to collect the data. I believe it is important to do this through market research techniques, and through customer visits. Ensure you maintain personal contact with your market. To me, there is so much more power from what a customer says directly to me, than through sales or even market research. The personal contact gives me a feel for the market.

However, my personal contact with the market needs to be balanced with data from market research. This information provides more scope of information, and more details than it possible in customer visits. Market research has the leeway to ask more questions, while sales calls exist to build the relationship with the customer. In addition, there is some bias when customer talks directly to people at a company. When talking to a third part, it is easier for the customer to be honest – there is less pressure to sugarcoat the message.

So, it is key to join and be active in the key associations in your industry. Get to know the industry players, your customers, your prospects. Understand what is important to them, how they view your competition, how they view your company. This is all critical context.

However, market research, if done properly will give you a less biased view of the world. It will help replace the company’s view of itself with the market view of the company. Include both customers and non-customers in your research. This will provide a truer picture.

Screen your research participants to ensure they either make the buying decision or are part of making the decision. Key questions to ask the decision-makers in the market research are:
– whose opinion do you pay attention to when buying product A
– where do you look or who do you talk to, to find companies to buy product A (on the web, magazines, people)
– what do you wish suppliers of product A would provide
– who makes the buying decision
– what criteria is your buying decision based on (you may want to have them force rank the criteria)
– where do the decision-makers hang out (associations, websites, magazines, etc.)

Generally, when performing market research, you will start with qualitative market research. This is a few, indepth interviews. The qualitative research sometimes leads to a need for more qualitative market research, or provides the basis for doing the quantitative research.

Quantitative research consists of polling a lot of participants in your target market in order to have statistically significant data. Through this, you can understand which percent want x and which percent want y. Of course, there is always a margin of error, dictated largely by the sample size and number of segments within the sample.

Combining the information from your interaction in the industry, research on the web, reading, and market research is the art. Your conclusions will drive your marketing strategy. As always, it is critical to keep a finger on the pulse of the market as change is the constant in this world.

Good luck! I’d love to hear how it goes.

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

Understanding your target market will give you the information needed for an effective promotional plan.

Your target market needs and buyer behavior are the basis for the plan. The market needs dictate your positioning and possible competitive advantage while buyer behavior will determine who you need to sell to and where you need to have a presence.

Who is your target market?
So, it is important, first, to know who your target market is. The target market needs to be narrow enough that they generally behave similarly. However, it cannot be so narrow that you do not have enough potential customers. Marketing, as always, begins with the target market.

What are your target market needs?
The target market needs will determine the strengths you need, and the competitive advantage you select. Try to understand which needs are more important, and whether there are any needs that have not been met – that will be a good source of competitive advantage.

The target market buyer behavior will dictate your promotional plan.

What qualities does your market look for in a supplier?
You need to understand the qualities your market is looking for in a supplier. Some of these might be confidence, knowledge, skills, quality (which would need to be defined), and more. Do they want a hard sell or a soft sell? This will determine your positioning in the marketplace. For example, if your market is looking for a soft sell, and you give them a hard sell on your website, it won’t work.

Who makes the buying decision?
The key person to sell to is the person who makes the buying decision. So, understanding who makes the decision is key. However, sometimes it is a group decision. There can be many stakeholders in the product or service that is used, and they generally have a say, and an opionin.

Even if there is a sole decision-maker, ofter there are influencers ie someone the decision-maker will ask for input prior to making a decision.

You will want to scope out who the decision-maker is, who the stakeholders are, as well as the influencers. When selling, then, you will want pay attention to the interests of each of these people.

Where does your target market hang out?
You will want to know what your target market reads, the websites they look at, the associations they belong to. This gives you the information on where to place your ads, your articles and the associations to join. It also gives you the information on how much to pay for the ads or associations. If the decision-makers don’t read the publication or get involved in the association, just how much do you want to pay?

Of course, sometimes you find out whether your market is there through trial and error. However, market research can go a long way towards finding out, as well as the questions you ask on sales calls, or in any interaction with your customers.

Stay tuned: the next blog will expand on getting the information you need on your target market.

As always, feel free to let me know any topics you would like me to cover.

Have a great week-end!

Photo credit: weegeebored

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

Implementing a marketing strategy is a multi-faceted activity. A good marketing stratetgy is driven by a clear, simple positioning statement. This makes it clear to your employees and market, where the company is superior to the competition. The marketing strategy encompasses the product or service offering, pricing, promotion and distribution – or delivery of the product or service to your customers.

So, the marketing strategy is all-encompassing. It drives product features, time from order to delivery, logistics, research and development, customer services — in short, it drives what is key for all facets of the business.

Consequently, implementing a marketing strategy involves so much more than marketing. It involves the whole company.

How you implement the marketing strategy depends who you are in the organization. Are you the president or the marketing director? If the organization has developed a marketing strategy, both need to be aligned with the strategy, on-board and enthusiastic.

The implementation of the marketing strategy can begin with the development of the marketing strategy. The organization can be involved or informed of the status of the development of the strategy. The input of operations, regulatory and sales can be part of the information that is used to develop the strategy.

Or the strategy can be developed by the management team, and rolled out to the company once it is completed. The extent to which each approach works, depends a lot on the issues involved with the strategy development, the culture of the company, and the buy-in to the plan by the company as a whole.

If, for example, operations was asked for an opinion, it is very important to close the loop, and let operations know what happened to the input. How it was used in developing the plan and, if possible, how the input affected the final strategy that was developed.

If the plan is being rolled out with no input, then it is critical for the department heads to consider the expected response from their teams, and to ensure the potential issues will be addressed. If unexpected issues are raised, it is critical to research these issues and respond to them. However, the key is to effectively demonstrate how the plan is in the interest of each department, in particular, the growth of the company. Information that provides confidence in this result is essential to provide, and an inclusive, enthusiastic, confident tenor of the meeting is important.

However, it is much more than one roll out meeting, or several roll out meetings. Implementation includes the informal discussions in the hall, during chance encounters, in regular meetings. People will absorb the information, and come up with excellent questions that need to be taken into account.

There is, of course, the formal implementation of the strategy as well. It will translate into objectives for performance evaluations, possibly organization shifts and changes.

As the company moves through the changes, focus on gaining some small wins first. This increases confidence in the new strategy and increases momentum. Keep it forefront in the company, stay positive and flexible.

Photo credit: Avinashkunnath

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

The key to successfully growing your business is effectively implementing an effective marketing strategy. Of course, there are a lot of other pieces – the financing, developing the product or service, producing the product, internal accounting controls, legal HR policies, for example.

However, a successful marketing strategy brings in customers and profitable sales. Without sales, you don’t have a business. Growing sales make a growing business.

So, what is the core of a successful marketing strategy? One that will grow your sales and your profits. Simply put, it is competitive advantage.

Competitive advantage (assuming good customer service exists) is the surest safeguard to ensuring your customer list will continue to grow, and your revenues will continue to grow. It will also give you more freedom in your price point.

To be clear, competitive advantage is offering a service or a product feature that your competitors don’t offer or don’t equal. This service or feature needs to be something that your market really cares about. It needs to be important to them.

So, how do you do this? First, you need to know what your target market is and what your product or service is. If your target market is too general, you will not be able to find a service or feature that matters to all of them.

Second, you need to really understand your target market. You need to really know what matters to them. Perhaps there are some market needs that are not being met right now. Keep your ear close to the ground to find these out. . Talk to customers often. Perform regular market research – there is a free SurveyMonkey tool that you can use for this. And, you can put a survey on your website to get critical information. The bottom line is: Know what is important to your target market when it comes to your service or product.

Once you find an unmet need, then consider how easily competitors can replicate the service or feature. The more difficult it is to create the service or product offering, the more difficult it is for a competitor to emulate it. Consider a strong branding initiative. Consider a patent, if applicable. You want to get a return on your advantage, before your competitors can copy it.

Or, it is possible to develop a strategy of being the fastest to create new service or product features. Then, you need to have a constant source of unmet needs to fill, and a streamlined process for delivering them to the market. This is an equally viable, if challenging, strategy.

This has been synopsis of the keys to developing an effective marketing strategy. Next, I’ll discuss implementing an effective marketing strategy. In the meantime, please feel free to ask questions, so I know the topics you would like me to cover on the Building a Business blog.

Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson

For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

You’ve gone through the steps. Your business plan is reasonably thorough. So there’s not much to worry about, right? Wrong. If it’s good, it will get you started. But it’s only a plan. The rest you’ll have to figure out as you go. Reality has an annoying way of interfering with plans.

Continue reading “Implementation: Turning Your Business Plan Into A Business”

I’m Tove Rasmussen and I’m the host of this blog. You can read more about me next to my picture in the sidebar. This blog will be about various aspects of starting and developing a business, and will focus especially on practical tips and tools in posts published at least once a week, including posts from guest writers. You can learn more about this blog by clicking on the About link just under the header.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Business Development.

When planning, it’s extremely important to match the nature of the planning process to the nature of the planners. For example, not all cultures prefer a linear, sequential approach to planning, that is, to decide mission, vision and values then subordinate goals and associated objectives.

One of the most challenging aspects of any strategic planning process is the strategizing — deciding how to address strategic issues and goals. This aspect is particularly important to match to the nature of the planners. For example, it might be useful to use a more organic approach to problem solving.

People in some cultures might believe that it can be quite illusory to believe that problems are identified and solved. These people might believe that the:

• Dynamics of organizations and people are not nearly so linear and mechanistic as to be improved by solving one problem after another.
• Quality of one’s life comes from how one handles being “on the road,” rather than from “arriving at the destination.”
• Quality comes from the process of fixing problems, rather than from having fixed the problems.
• Organic approach to strategic planning is probably more effective than other major approaches, such as goals-based or issues-based.

If this perception is broadly held in the organization, then try to accommodate it through selection of an appropriate planning process (such as organic strategic planning) or other techniques, such as story telling. If the planning group includes some people with any of these views, then consider mixing the techniques in order to satisfy some of the people some of the time.

Perhaps the following quote best describes the organic perspective:

“All the greatest and most important problems in life are fundamentally insoluble …
They can never be solved, but only outgrown. This “outgrowing” proves
on further investigation to require a new level of consciousness.
Some higher or wider interest appeared on the horizon and
through this broadening of outlook, the insoluble lost its urgency.
It was not solved logically in its own terms,
but faded when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.”

Carl Jung, Psychological Types, Pantheon Books: London, 1923.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

Business plans appear in many different formats, depending on the audience for the plan and complexity of the business. However, most business plans address the following five topic areas in one form or another.

Continue reading “Structure Your Business Plan”