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Although marketing is best left to the experts, there is some basic groundwork you can do before hiring a marketing consultant. Once you've understood your unique point of difference, position, target audience and goals, you'll be better prepared to put together a full-fledged marketing plan.
Step 1: Find out where you stand
Begin by evaluating your company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Strengths are defined as any competitive advantage, competency, expertise, proficiency, talent, or factor that strengthens your company's position in the marketplace. In a marketing context, the most relevant strengths are those that are enduring and can not be easily copied. Examples are a well-trained sales team, low staff turnover, high consumer retention, and low production costs due to technology.
Weaknesses are the factors that affect your company's ability to independently attain short-term and long-term objectives. Examples are unreliable delivery of inventories, outdated production tools, insufficient marketing efforts, and lack of planning.
Opportunities are ways for your business to be more profitable, such as reaching new markets, managing changes in technology and addressing new consumer trends. You need to look at how your company's key skills can be used to take advantage of these opportunities.
Threats are barriers to entry in your primary markets, such as competitor's actions, labour shortage, legislative hurdles, or detrimental economic/political developments.
Step 2: Conduct an audit
An audit basically involves defining your business, customers and competitors, and looking at your current marketing efforts. Your goal is to determine where to focus your new marketing efforts, both internally and externally.
Business profile
Define who you are: what is your company's mission? What are your company's core skills and expertise and how do they support your mission?
Determine your clients' perception of your business.
Take your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats into consideration.
Customer profile
Look at your client profile and evaluate demographics (age, income, geographic location), estimated demand, expected growth rate, purchase motivation, cross-selling potential, and other critical factors.
Imagine your ideal customer: where can you best deliver value and keep promises, while meeting financial objectives? Does this customer have long-term potential?
Keep track of how business and consumer markets are constantly evolving. If you wait for your sales to tell you, it's too late.
Stay close to your market. This will enable you to forecast demand and perceptions with greater accuracy, identify new trends, detect market changes and see opportunities before your competitors do.
Competitor profile
Find out about your competitors' marketing efforts, pricing, market share, public perception and competitive advantage.
Current marketing efforts
Know exactly how and where you're advertising. Identify your expenditures, performance measurement, and get sales and customer feedback.
Step 3: Design your plan
There's no one recipe, but you can expect the following in a basic plan:
Executive summary
Make it easy for others - your banker, marketing consultant, investors - to understand your plan. Include a brief description of your company (mission, core product/service industry overview, key success factors, market analysis, financial statements and forecasts) and a summary of the marketing objectives and strategy outlined in the rest of your plan.
Current situation / Market analysis
Describe your marketing efforts up to now, the markets you've targeted and why, and your opportunities and threats, such as competition, regulations, or technological changes.
Marketing objective
Describe the desired outcome of your market plan. Make your objectives specific, realistic, time-limited, and measurable.
Marketing strategy
Outline how you will achieve these objectives, covering the 4 Ps (Product, Price, Promotion, and Place).
A few rules of thumb
- Ensure that the product concept, design, packaging and use meet consumers' actual needs and expectations.
- Ensure that the market (and not production costs) determines pricing (estimate perceived value).
- Avoid pushing your customers. Short-term gains in sales may be quickly eroded if consumers are dissatisfied with what you offer.
- Communicate value to selected consumers, not just features.
- Clearly define the message to your consumer before advertising or promoting your offering.
- Design an optimal mix of promotional activities (advertising, direct marketing, events, online cross-marketing) and tools that can best meet your marketing and sales objectives without exceeding your budget.
- Interview consumers prior to implementation in order to ensure your message is clear and meaningful, and your marketing mix is effective in communicating your message.
Once you've done this important homework, the next step is to find an expert to help you put together a fully developed strategic marketing plan. BDC Consulting can help you design a plan customized to your company's needs.
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