- Marketing is not the same as PR. PR is only a small part of Marketing. Marketing is about planning your strategy: what will you sell to whom, and how will you achieve this?
- Decide on your core skill, your “unique selling proposition”, which will form the centre of your strategy. Ask your customers what’s important to them (these are your key success factors) and also find out how you are performing on these.
- Assess the structure of your current market: who are the customers, who are the competitors, and what are the current trends? Trends could be analysed in terms of political, economic, social and technological factors.
- Assess yourself within your market: what are your strengths and weaknesses, and what are the opportunities and threats out there? How do your strengths and weaknesses compare with the changes expected in your commercial environment? Do your strategies fit with the expected or possible changes in this environment?
- Assess your portfolio of products: which ones are in growing or declining markets, which ones are strong and weak in terms of market share and technological advancement? Where are the products (or services) in their product life cycle? Make sure you have some products that are early in their life cycle, or which have an advantage in a growing market.
- Draw up a matrix of customers and products: do you sell all your products to all your customers (or types of customer)? Are some combinations of product and customer more profitable, and some combinations not worth the hassle? Maybe focusing would be worth considering? Who are your most profitable customers? And who are the customers, or types of customer, that have the most potential for growth, who are most secure, and the easiest to deal with?
- Think about your strategies for introducing new products (or services). Have you fully exploited your existing market, and sold every product to every potential customer in this market? Then, what new markets could you find for your products? What new products could you develop for your existing markets? Be very careful about planning to launch new products in new markets – lack of knowledge can be a killer!
- Price: how much effect do price increases have on sales volume? Would it be worth putting your prices up? There are many pricing strategies, like charging less for the original product and then more for parts or service.
- Routes to market: should you be using distributors or agents, or setting up your own shops, or working on strategic partnerships?
- Promotion: how much should you spend and what’s the best mix of advertising, exhibitions, direct mailings, sales force, printed literature, partnerships, and the web? How is your brand perceived?
- Finally you’ll need operational plans to put all this into practice – who will do what and when?
