| Marketing |
| What
we are talking about here… |
| Marketing is about understanding customer
needs, developing products and services to meet those needs
and then making them easily available for people to buy.
The whole process is about analysis, planning and control. |
| Why
it is important… |
| "Failing to plan is planning
to fail" – that is why it is important. Marketing
is a central management task that makes sure that whatever
it is the organisation is going to try to do, it has been
properly thought through, costed out and implemented. |
| What
you need to know… |
There are basically three phases in
the marketing process:
Phase 1: Analysis (of the market, industry,
customer needs, competition and the organisation's
strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities and
threats)
Phase 2: Drawing conclusions, setting objectives and deciding strategies
(pricing, promotion, advertising, selling, PR, packaging etc.).
Phase 3: Financial assessments of the likely sales, the costs and the
profitability.
Here is the basic marketing plan:
- THE PRODUCT/SERVICE – describe it!
- UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION – what is so different about it?
- THE MARKET – who are the customers?
- COMPETITION – the bad guys!
- S.W.O.T – Internal strengths, weaknesses, external opportunities,
threats
- MARKETING CONCLUSIONS – So what does it all mean?
- OBJECTIVES – What are we going to do? (measurable, to a time scale)
- POSITIONING – How you fit in amongst the other competitors?
- STRATEGIES – How are we going to get there?
- FINANCIAL PLAN – What is it going to cost us and make us?
- ACTION PLAN – Who does what, when?
|
| The
next steps... |
| Start researching and writing your plan! |
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