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Add You - Marketing Planning Made Simple - Another Small Business Power Tool
Workflow, as the Workflow Management Coalition defines it, is: The automation of a business process, in whole or part, during which documents, information or tasks are passed from one participant to another for action, according to a set of procedural rules. We want to automate activities. If we can. And there are seemingly endless opportunities to do so. Yet, through the years our organization has done a few things in this area. Already.It would be easy if you could start from scratch. (Information) Technology continues to develop in a ever more professional pace.<
4. Tactics. If “strategy” is what you intend to do, “tactics” is what you need to do to accomplish it. In the case of the strategy example above, the tactics might be:
- Begin sales efforts against distr
There are few things in life we choose to do while blindfolded – the act of covering our eyes while performing a task, even a routine one, instills emotions such as fear, anxiety and confusion. With our eyes covered, any acts we attempt are done with uncertainty, taking a longer path toward our goal, if we reach the goal at all. A perfect example is the adolescent game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, which invokes instinctive and reactive behaviors, often ending with a misplaced tail.Metaphorically speaking, the billion-dollar industry of online marketing grinds forward in a similar
Well, I’m just enough of a skeptic to believe that many of these books were designed more to make money for their publishers and authors than to make marketing planning simple and understandable.
I spent more than 30 years working with very successful small business people who never wrote a single marketing plan. Why didn’t they need complex, 100-page marketing plans chock full of statistics, charts and graphs like the experts recommend? It’s because they knew exactly where they wanted to take their companies and how to get them there and they were universally successful.
The fact is they basically carried their product “marketing plans” around in their heads. That’s how simple marketing planning can be. In fact, if you strip marketing planning down to its most basic elements, you could just about write your plan on the back of a napkin.
Okay, that might be a bit of an oversimplification, but let’s look at the six basic things you need to know for successful marketing planning.
1. The situation. Is this a new or existing product or service? If it has competition, how is it better than the competition? Bigger? Lasts longer? Easier to use? Offers more features? Priced better? You should be able to sum up your situation in a couple of sentences. If not, maybe you don’t really understand the situation.
2. The market. How big is the market for your product or service? This can be defined in terms of total dollars, number of units sold or any other quantifiable number. The important thing is to know the size of your market because only by knowing this can you define a marketing objective. You also need to define what the market looks like -- Males, age 25-45? Soccer Moms? Working mothers? Seniors? Childless couples? A market isn’t just numbers, it’s people. And it’s important to understand where they are economically, what’s important to them, and what problems you can help them solve.
3. Strategy. Now that you have defined your situation and your market, it should be easy to develop a marketing strategy. For example, if your product is footless, control top panty hose, your strategy might be to “focus sales efforts on figure-conscience women age 34-45 during the spring and summer months.”
4. Tactics. If “strategy” is what you intend to do, “tactics” is what you need to do to accomplish it. In the case of the strategy example above, the tactics might be:
- Begin sales efforts against distr
Capital budgeting is very important in small business venture capital. It is the process of making investment in capital expenditure. Capital expenditure refers to expenditure and the benefits that are expected over a period of time, especially exceeding one year. The chief characteristic of capital expenditure is that expenses are incurred aggressively at one point in time. The benefits are realized at different points in time in the future. Capital expenditure decisions are also called long-term investment decisions.Capital budgeting is very important in small business venture ca
The fact is they basically carried their product “marketing plans” around in their heads. That’s how simple marketing planning can be. In fact, if you strip marketing planning down to its most basic elements, you could just about write your plan on the back of a napkin.
Okay, that might be a bit of an oversimplification, but let’s look at the six basic things you need to know for successful marketing planning.
1. The situation. Is this a new or existing product or service? If it has competition, how is it better than the competition? Bigger? Lasts longer? Easier to use? Offers more features? Priced better? You should be able to sum up your situation in a couple of sentences. If not, maybe you don’t really understand the situation.
2. The market. How big is the market for your product or service? This can be defined in terms of total dollars, number of units sold or any other quantifiable number. The important thing is to know the size of your market because only by knowing this can you define a marketing objective. You also need to define what the market looks like -- Males, age 25-45? Soccer Moms? Working mothers? Seniors? Childless couples? A market isn’t just numbers, it’s people. And it’s important to understand where they are economically, what’s important to them, and what problems you can help them solve.
3. Strategy. Now that you have defined your situation and your market, it should be easy to develop a marketing strategy. For example, if your product is footless, control top panty hose, your strategy might be to “focus sales efforts on figure-conscience women age 34-45 during the spring and summer months.”
4. Tactics. If “strategy” is what you intend to do, “tactics” is what you need to do to accomplish it. In the case of the strategy example above, the tactics might be:
- Begin sales efforts against distr
Every advertisement revolves round four key points. Knowledgeable copywriters of the past have distilled that four key points into four letters – A-I-D-A or the AIDA formula.A for AttentionAny advertisement has to create that attention. There are different techniques of attention grabbing. Billboards that have half-naked women attract attention, mostly to the skin than to the message of the advertisement.For classified ads, we use one bold headline or title to attract the attention of classified ad readers.Readers of classified ads are interested in your produc
1. The situation. Is this a new or existing product or service? If it has competition, how is it better than the competition? Bigger? Lasts longer? Easier to use? Offers more features? Priced better? You should be able to sum up your situation in a couple of sentences. If not, maybe you don’t really understand the situation.
2. The market. How big is the market for your product or service? This can be defined in terms of total dollars, number of units sold or any other quantifiable number. The important thing is to know the size of your market because only by knowing this can you define a marketing objective. You also need to define what the market looks like -- Males, age 25-45? Soccer Moms? Working mothers? Seniors? Childless couples? A market isn’t just numbers, it’s people. And it’s important to understand where they are economically, what’s important to them, and what problems you can help them solve.
3. Strategy. Now that you have defined your situation and your market, it should be easy to develop a marketing strategy. For example, if your product is footless, control top panty hose, your strategy might be to “focus sales efforts on figure-conscience women age 34-45 during the spring and summer months.”
4. Tactics. If “strategy” is what you intend to do, “tactics” is what you need to do to accomplish it. In the case of the strategy example above, the tactics might be:
- Begin sales efforts against distr
Mystery shopping is an exciting opportunity for hundreds of thousands of consumers to earn some cash and freebies while helping quality customer service improve. Mystery shoppers do not simply go around shopping malls and gas stations to earn cash or get free services. Their job has much deeper long-term consequences, because mystery shopping helps companies enhance their customer service or deliver better products to clients.Mystery shopping provides very diverse opportunities to secret shoppers to perform varying tasks for cash payment or for discounted merchandise and freebies.
3. Strategy. Now that you have defined your situation and your market, it should be easy to develop a marketing strategy. For example, if your product is footless, control top panty hose, your strategy might be to “focus sales efforts on figure-conscience women age 34-45 during the spring and summer months.”
4. Tactics. If “strategy” is what you intend to do, “tactics” is what you need to do to accomplish it. In the case of the strategy example above, the tactics might be:
- Begin sales efforts against distr
Private investigator commonly known for the acronym P.I. is considered to be a rewarding but complicated career one can have. To have the private investigator title in Phoenix, you must acquire the necessary qualification, but in general, educational requirement is not very important to get the opportunity.This career is like a vocation, you must have the heart for it or you will end up joining the parade of other investigators not worth to handle even a single case.In the US, licensing a private investigator varies form state to state. In Phoenix, you can enroll and gradu
4. Tactics. If “strategy” is what you intend to do, “tactics” is what you need to do to accomplish it. In the case of the strategy example above, the tactics might be:
- Begin sales efforts against distributors by Feb. 1
- Have products in distribution pipeline by March 1 for delivery to retailers no later than April 1.
- Begin concentrated radio advertising in 12 key markets by April 15 …and so on
5. Objective(s). You can frame your objectives any way you want but you have to assign a number and a date. It’s no enough to say, “Successfully introduce the new product by year’s end.” In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up somewhere else.” If you don’t include a number and a time, you will never know whether or not you were really successful. Write objectives like “sell 5,000 units by December 31.” Then, on January 1, you can count sales and determine how successful you were. Best case, you will find you sold 5,000 or more units and will know your marketing planning was right on. And if you didn’t meet the objective? You should be able to at least learn a lesson and do better next time.
6. Budgeting. The final thing you need to consider is how much money you can spend to meet your objective. The best way to do this is break down your budgeting by tactics. If you need to reach 100,000 women to sell 10,000 units of your product, do you have the money to do this – in terms or radio, newspaper, TV or direct mail? Do you need collateral materials such as brochures or in-store displays? How much will these things cost? Depending on your product or service, you may also have to hire a PR firm or an advertising agency. Be sure to budget for this expense.
Can you add more elements to your planning? Of course. Just go buy one of these marketing textbooks and you’ll find pages and pages of information that could be incorporated into your plan. The point here is that maybe you don’t have to make your marketing planning a huge and laborious project. Do what many of my clients have done – keep it simple, something you can just carry around in your head if that’s your style. The important things are your situation, your market, your strategy and tactics, your objective and your budget. K
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