Ready, Set, GO!
Successful marketing of your product or service is critical for old and new businesses alike. Failure to disseminate a product or service into the market may lead to financial loss or even destroy a business’s chances of survival.
A detailed marketing strategy, which forms part of a business plan, can shrink the risks of failure and increase the chances of success, regardless of whether the product is new or already exists in the market.
In the competitive world of marketing that is played out on every shelf and in every sector, you simply cannot afford not to have a targeted and detailed marketing strategy that asks the right questions and responds with the best solutions.
GONOGO presents 6 questions that you should ask and the answers that may make the difference between success and failure.
1. Is your market overview inclusive? Have you accurately defined the market you are targeting, is it recognized and unambiguous?
Before you can begin planning your marketing strategy and setting yourself targets, you must first collect information about, and investigate, the market you intended to operate in. Market analysis should include a general overview of the market as well as an assessment of its more specific trends and trajectory. You should also include a customer profile and a consideration of consumer preferences, identify existing or potential competitors, direct or indirect, and provide an introduction to their products and services, as well as their quality and price points.
Your market analysis can follow the Porters Five Forces methodology, which involves examining competitors and substitute products, as well as customer and supplier bargaining leverage and possible barriers to entry into the market. An additional methodology that can be used to help you assess your business venture within its context is a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis. This involves examining the internal (strengths and weaknesses) and external (opportunities and threats) factors related to the product or service.
2. Have you accurately defined your long and short term goals?
Defining business goals can be conducted on a quarterly, half-yearly, annual or multiyear basis. In addition, you should define the type of goals you are aiming for. Goals can be “rigid”, such as sales goals and market segments to target, or they can be “soft”, such as building brand reputation, public awareness or differentiation in the market.
3. Have you determined a marketing strategy?
In order to build an action plan that will help you meet your predefined targets, you must first define the way in which you intend to make your product or service attractive to your target audience. To do this, you must chose differentiation and branding strategies that are most relevant to your product or service.
Differentiation – define the unique advantages your product or service has, so that you can emphasize them via various media channels.
Positioning – what “place” will your product or service take in your target audience’s psyche? This means thinking about the features of your product or service as they are perceived by the customer, what they find interesting or how to create an emotional connection to your product/service.
4. Have you thought in depth about your marketing mix?
Once you have decided on the differentiation and positioning strategy best suited to promoting your product or service, you must identify the channels that will ensure your target audience receives your message. In order to do so you will need to choose the right marketing mix. This includes 4 main elements:
The product- defining product or service features, including design and packaging.
Price – it is obvious that the price of the product or service plays an important role in your potential customers’ considerations. Nonetheless, you must also determine a price with consideration of the demand for your product or service, competitor’s prices, profit margins, and also the brand image you are trying to create.
Place – you must chose the marketing channels through which you want your product or service to reach the target audience. Direct or indirect marketing? Should you choose indirect marketing; you will also need to define the terms and conditions of your engagement with distributors (profit margins or commissions etc). Similarly, you will need to think about their geographical location and your ability to cover the market etc.
Promotion – the activity that is intended to communicate your message to your market and should include the following elements:
Advertising and marketing – communicative activities intended to convey your advertising message to various target audience. There are a broad range of channels and media at your disposal.
Sales Promotion – includes methods intended to entice existing or potential new customers, such as attractive discounts etc, with the intention of increasing sales during certain periods.
Public Relations – using traditional PR methods to promote the image of your business/product or service
5. Have you prepared a budget that will enable you to realize your chosen marketing strategy?
This means assessing the cost of your marketing strategy and the forecast income from its realization. At this stage you must set quantitative targets and various measurements that will support future and ongoing decision making.
6. How will I supervise this activity?
The final stage in preparing a marketing strategy involves forming a team or setting up a system whose function will be to oversee the progress of your marketing plan. This team/system will be responsible for updating and modifying your marketing strategy and budget as necessary.
How to begin?
Don’t forget: a good product or service, as innovative and groundbreaking as it may be, does not guarantee success in the market. It is important to make good use of the period before the product’s or service’s launch to examine whether you have complete solutions for the many questions that will arise along the way. We exact the greatest damage to a business when we feel we are above being questioned, when we make assumptions without investigating our conclusions, when we say “all will be well” and hope things will simply fall into place. True, luck and circumstance play an important part in the success of a business, but long term success relies on strong foundations formulated in a professional business plan. Writing a plan in retrospect and assuming things will sort themselves out is one of the main factors that lead to painful failure. The surest route to success is to thoroughly think about the possibilities and reach well examined conclusions, at every stage. The answers are not written in the starts – they are written in your business plan.
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