Marketing For Small Businesses

Free
Marketing
Marketing
For
Small Businesses

e‐book

JACQUI MALPASS MBA

Marketing for small businesses

Copyright Notices

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
mechanical or electric, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the authors.

Requests for permission or for more information should be sent to: Jacqui@50five.co.uk

Legal Notices

The purpose of this book is to educate, entertain and provide information on the subject
matter covered. All attempts have been made to verify information at the time of this
publication and the authors do not assume any responsibility for errors, omissions or other
interpretations of the subject matter. The purchaser or reader of this book assumes
responsibility for the use of these materials and information. The author assumes no
responsibility or liability on the behalf of any purchaser or reader of this book.

Why is this book free?
This was originally written in 2005 and is in need of updating, so in this current format it is free.
The next e‐book is due for release in Spring 2010.

Page 2 of 73 pages © 50five

Table of Contents

Marketing your services and products ....................................................................................... 5
What is this marketing stuff? ..................................................................................................... 6
Lets find out about your business .............................................................................................. 7
Purpose, vision, values .............................................................................................................. 7
Where are you? ....................................................................................................................... 14
Quick situational analysis ......................................................................................................... 15
Quick SWOT ............................................................................................................................. 17
Quick Tips ............................................................................................................................... 18
Where am I going? ................................................................................................................... 21
Market Research ......................................................................................................................27
Who are your customers? ......................................................................................................... 31
Competitors ............................................................................................................................ 34
SWOT Analysis ........................................................................................................................ 36
Products .................................................................................................................................. 39
Prices ....................................................................................................................................... 40
Distribution ............................................................................................................................. 41
What makes you different? ...................................................................................................... 43
Promotion ............................................................................................................................... 47
Technology .............................................................................................................................. 53
Action Planning ....................................................................................................................... 56
Marketing Controls .................................................................................................................. 61
Stuck for ideas ......................................................................................................................... 64
And finally ............................................................................................................................... 68
Appendix ................................................................................................................................. 69

Page 3 of 73 pages © 50five ‐ 2005

Chapter one
Chapter one
MARKETING YOUR SERVICES AND PRODUCTS
For ALL businesses, a highly effective marketing strategy is a necessity.

To be successful you need good marketing and sales techniques.

You need to know who your customers are, what they value and you've got to let people know
about all the wonderful things your business can provide to them.

This book is intended to introduce you to some of the concepts and strategies that professional
marketing experts in large companies use and show you how they can be adapted to help your
small business grow and be profitable.


WHAT IS THIS MARKETING STUFF?
"One of the reasons most people aren't good at marketing is that they don't understand it."

Marketing is not just about business cards, pretty brochures and advertising.

Marketing is everything you do to try to attract customers to your business.

Simple equation
Marketing = customers – profit = business

But first you need a marketing plan.

Often when you ask a business owner what he or she is going to do for a marketing plan, they
respond with "I'm planning to make up flyers and mail them out."

Spending money on advertising without doing your marketing homework is a complete waste
of time.

You need to do your marketing research and compile it into a marketing plan. Then you need
to implement it.

"Marketing is not an event, but a process . . . It has a beginning, a middle, but never an end, for
it is a process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even pause it. But you never stop it
completely." Jay Conrad Levinson

And it is necessary to the success of every business. Your business.

Chapter one
LETS FIND OUT ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS

Leadership Situation Identity Identity
Verbal Visual
Vision, purpose, Industry Name Logo

values Markets Strap lines Colours
Culture Products Words Fonts
Positioning Competitors Capability Images
Management Collateral
History Web, presentation,
proposal, flyers,
brochure
How do we want to What else tells the What do we want to What will people see
express who we are story say about ourselves that tells them who
we are
Creating & delivering value, demonstrating what we can do

PURPOSE, VISION, VALUES


What is the purpose of organisation?
What is unique about the organisation?
What are its principal products and markets?
What are its values?
Where is it hoping to be in one, five or ten years' time?

Values
Values are the principles that underpin our decisions and actions. They are a belief, a mission,
or a philosophy that is really meaningful to the company.

IMPORTANT: Values are only as good as they are implemented into the company AT ALL
LEVELS. If you don’t believe and live by them why should the organisation?

E.g.
• Placing integrity and honesty above all else
• People come first
• Creating value and delivering quality for customers
• Bringing innovation into all aspects of the business
• Providing career opportunities and growth for our people
• Making this a great place to work, one where people enjoy working
• Growing a profitable business
• Creating and enhancing shareholder value, year after year
• Being accountable and taking responsibility for what we do
• Treating each other fairly and with mutual respect, including our business partners,
staff, customers, suppliers, shareholders
• Maintaining an excellent reputation for our business and its people

Steps to get to the vision start with understanding values.

Form a small team of motivated people, who take pride in their work and genuinely enjoy it ,
they do not have to be outgoing or popular, but they are respected and valued by their
colleagues.

Step 1
Each person to write down their values and how these contribute to their work. These are
personal and do not have to be shared, they must be honest.

Start by writing down as many qualities as possible.
Then eliminate those that are situational (subject to change according to time or
circumstances) or specific to a person or task.

Questions that could help in this process:
What do you care about the most?
What are you working on that makes a difference?
What talents do you have that you are currently using?
Chapter one
What talents do you have that you are not using?

Step 2
Everyone to write down what they think the organisations core values are (not what they think
they ought to be)

Step 3
Write a comprehensive list of all the responses.
Highlight any duplication – the same (or very similar) values occurring on more than one list.
Identify any which can be truly identified as shared values ‐ these ( are not necessarily
duplicates but you can start with any that are on every list!).

Step 4
Everyone writes a list of what they think the core and lasting corporate values should be.
Again, combine the lists and agree wordings for true, shared values.

Step 5
Eliminate any that are not truly core qualities of the organization.
Anything that may change over time, or is even up for discussion, probably isn’t.

A key test is to ask whether the value system would change if the circumstances of the
company were to change. What would happen if a central value impeded the business, would
you change it? If the answer is yes, then it probably isn’t central and should be dropped from
the list.

Step 6
Pick 5 that everyone agrees truly reflects who are and what you stand for

Describe your business values:

How are you going to adopt these values throughout the company?


Purpose
Purpose gives meaning to why we are here doing what we do.

Current status
Describe your business purpose:
A S YOU SEE IT :

A S YOU THINK OTHERS SEE IT ::

Steps to finding out the purpose.

Form a small team of motivated people (same team as before), who take pride in their work
and genuinely enjoy it, they do not have to be outgoing or popular, but they are respected and
valued by their colleagues.

Step 1
Everyone makes a list about what it is that makes them feel good about their job.
When something goes right, exactly what is it that makes them happy? What makes them
proud?
What would they say to someone considering a career in their industry or company?
They should consider ways that the business makes a difference in the wider world and how it
improves the lives it touches – staff, customers, the community.

Be specific – if you simply feel satisfaction at a job well done, ask yourself exactly how your
success might be the source of happiness for others.
If you feel a sense of achievement at attaining an objective, ask why that objective might be
important both inside and outside the company.
Try to move away from your particular concerns.
Look carefully at the positive contribution your company makes and why that is important to
you.

Step 2
Once everybody has a few statements, share them all within the group.

Identify those that are duplicates and/or complementary and decide whether they can be held
to represent the companies purpose.
Gain agreement.
Chapter one

Step 3
Discuss the list until you have at least one statement about a positive contribution that you can
all agree is true.

Do you believe that most people in the company think it is important and worth working for?
If not, why not? What have you missed that might motivate them?

Try this question.

If you won the lottery what would make you want to keep coming back to work.

Step 4
Describe your business purpose:

Vision
This statement should define WHAT your business will be. It should be brief (20‐30 words).

Vision is a short, succinct, and inspiring statement of what the organisation intends to become
and to achieve at some point in the future. Vision refers to the category of intentions that are
broad, all‐intrusive and forward‐thinking. It is the image that a business must have of its goals
before it sets out to reach them. It describes aspirations for the future, without specifying the
means that will be used to achieve those desired ends.

Vision must connect with and ignite peoples’ emotions if your people are to be aligned and
motivated.

Once people buy into the vision emotionally then short term targets can be set which need to
be communicated enthusiastically and inspirationally which will lead to long term effective
execution of its strategies.

Describe your business vision:
A S YOU SEE IT :
What does the business want to become?

A S YOU THINK OTHERS SEE IT :


Expressing your inspirational vision
Step 1
Brainstorm words that describe where you want to be, that have meaning and embody your
purpose and values.

Gain agreement.

Step 2
Give the list of words and phrases to 1 person who understands your values and purpose to
write the vision statement.


Chapter two

WHERE ARE YOU?
If you are already in business it would be a good idea to take a review of where you are. If you
are just starting out you may have some of these things done already.

When you get to each of the stages where you need this information you will have it to hand.
You do not need at this stage to do anything with it, simply collect what you have.

General Collateral
• Marketing and advertising budget. • Corporate folder
• Strategic plans • Brochures
• Research reports • Catalogues
• Trade information • Flyers
• Trade associations • Exhibition Stand (picture of)
• Staff experience • Website
• Corporate philosophy and mission • Direct mailers / eshots
statement • Letterheads, compliment slips,
• Advertising and promotions used in business cards
the past • Letter and fax templates
• Use of colours • Sales proposals and tenders
• Branding • Annual report
Promotions Marketing expenditures:
• Samples of all past promotions and • By total category for the last three to
advertising (last two years minimum). five years.
• Amount, quantities and timing of co‐ • By month January to December for
op programs/funds. each year.
• By yearly total to date.

Category sales: Average sales:
• By total category for the last three to • By month, for as many months as
five years. possible.
• By month January to December for
each year.
• By weekly total for each year.
Competition Other
• List your top competitors. • Other political, legal, economic,
• List your second and third‐ranked environmental or trend issues that
competitors. may affect your business.
• Samples of past competitors' • Which promotional mediums have
promotions. given you the best returns?
• Samples of competitors collateral • Reasonable and probable growth for
• Samples of competitors website this year and the next four years (i.e.
as a percentage increase/decrease
from the previous year).
• Future plans and goals for expansion,
revenue growth, and timing for these
goals.
QUICK SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS

1) What does my business do?
a) What makes you different?
b) Why should companies work with you?
2) What products and services do we sell and why?
a) What are the features, benefits and USP’s of each service or product
b) Are there elements of your offering which can be removed or added? What are these
c) Should any products/services be phased out?
d) Should any products/services be added to the line? Have you included in your range
those products or services which are more likely to be in demand in future?
e) How does the profitability or the future potential of each product line compare?
f) What after sales / warranty / guarantee do you offer?
3) What products and services could we sell and why?
4) What sort of customers are we most attracted to?
a) What do they have in common? What common problems, goals, needs, wants or
desires do they share?
b) Are we giving our customers what they want?
c) Who needs what we have to offer?
d) What pay off do people get from our expertise?
e) What do our customers value?
f) Who have we already helped?
g) How have we helped them?
5) Who would we like to add to our customer list?
6) What is your pricing strategy?
a) What would be the likely response of demand to higher or lower prices?
b) To what extent are prices set on cost, demand, and/or competitive criteria?
c) Are you getting as much (£) for your products/services as your competitor?
d) Are your customers paying more for the extra value they receive?
e) What will your competition do if you change your prices?
f) How do customers perceive the link between price, quality and value in your products /
services?
7) Who are your competitors
a) Organisations offering the same product or service now.
b) Organisations offering similar products or services now.
c) Organisations that could offer the same or similar products or services in the future.
d) Organisations that could remove the need for a product or service.
8) How do you distribute your products

a) How efficient are these channels?
b) What other ways could you do this more effectively?
9) How do you sell your products
a) Is your sales force large enough? Don’t just think in terms of your team, what about all
of your networks?
b) Is it organised along the best lines of specialisation (territory, market, product)?
c) Are they split for customer retention and new business?
d) Do the sales force show high morale, ability, and effectiveness?
e) Are they sufficiently trained?
f) Do they have enough incentives?
g) Do the procedures help or hinder?
h) Do you have a telemarketing team or use an external source to help with generating
leads?
10) How do you go to market?
a) Does your organisation develop an annual marketing plan? Is it effective?
b) What activities do you employ?
c) Why do you use them?
d) How consistent are your marketing activities?
e) How are your marketing activities integrated?
f) How do you measure your activities?
11) Your website
a) What is the purpose of the site? (Direct sales, marketing, informational, intranet, etc.)
b) What do you want the visitor to think and feel when they're on your site?
c) Is this image consistent with your company's current or future desired image?
d) What features do you think your site will need?
e) What services do you think you'll need for the web site? (Logo design ‐ redesign, web
site promotion and marketing, web site hosting, traffic statistics and analysis,
maintenance once the site is launched, other)
f) Content. Do you need someone to copy write the text or will it be done in house?
g) Do you have a domain name or do you need to purchase one?
h) How do you plan to recover the costs of the web site? (Direct sales, advertising
revenue, membership fees, reduced costs ‐ site makes business processes more
efficient, do not plan to recover costs, other)
12) How effective is your use of technology?
a) How do you maximise the use of
i) Databases
ii) Customer relationship management software
iii) Email
iv) Website
v) Blog
vi) Social networking
vii) Ebooks
viii) Graphics / design packages
b) How do will you ensure that everyone is properly trained and use it all effectively?
13) What else do you think we need to discuss?

QUICK SWOT

Strengths: Weaknesses:
What advantages do you have? What could you improve?
What do you do well? What do you do badly?
What relevant resources do you have access What should you avoid?
to?
What do other people see as your strengths?
Opportunities: Threats:
Where are the good opportunities facing you? What obstacles do you face?
What are the interesting trends you are aware What is your competition doing?
of? Are the required specifications for your
Useful opportunities can come from such products or services changing?
things as: Is changing technology threatening your
Changes in technology and markets on both a position?
broad and narrow scale Do you have bad debt or cash‐flow problems?
Changes in government policy related to your Could any of your weaknesses seriously
field threaten your business?


QUICK TIPS
Mind mapping
Another way to get your ideas down is to use mind mapping software like Buzan iMindmap.
This is a really useful way to get thoughts and ideas down electronically.

Create a business and marketing plan.
Have you done this? This is critical. If you want to be successful‐‐ you have to know not only
where you are going, but how you are going to get there in very practical and real terms. There
are many templates available, which will guide you through.

Spend time daily and weekly improving your sales and marketing skills.
After all, you spend time learning how to improve other parts of your life. No matter how good
you are at what you do, if other people don't know about you and how you sell anything to
them?

Tell others about your business
Tell other people what you do and how you can help them. If you don’t tell anyone, it’s unlikely
that anyone else will.

Remain positive.
When all else seems hopeless, smile, take a deep breath and then get back onto it. Do
something small and achievable which will make you feel good.

Manage your time.
How much time each week do you spend planning your marketing strategy? A couple of hours?
An hour? Thirty minutes? The five minutes before your latest flyer for your next event is due at
the printer?

Plan plan plan.
Chances are you don't spend any time at all each week planning your marketing efforts. This is
a mistake. If you want to be more successful in marketing your business, you must spend some
time each week planning what you are going to do to promote your business and how you are
going to do it.

Become a collector
Collect things that you both like and dislike, in this way you can review other peoples ideas and
see what you might like to try for yourself.


Chapter three

WHERE AM I GOING?

Goals and objectives
The difference between where we are (current status) and where we want to be (vision
and goals) is what we do (target objectives and action plans).

Goals
Goals are the large statements of what you hope to accomplish but usually aren't very
measurable. Goals are vaguer and focus on the longer term. They create the setting for what
you are proposing.

The overall goal should define the long‐term communications aspirations:‐

E.g. Increase turnover to £500,000 in 3 years

Objectives
Under the goal, you set specific objectives. Objectives differ from goals in their specificity and
ability to be evaluated and measured

Marketing objectives develop out of your business goals and objectives. And they should be
driving your marketing strategy. Meeting marketing objectives should lead to sales ‐ if they
don't, then you probably have established the wrong objectives, or you aren't executing them
effectively.

Objectives should seek to answer the question 'where do we want to go?’ And ‘how do we get
there?’

What are your marketing / financial objectives?

The purposes of objectives include:
• to enable a company to control its marketing plan.
• to help to motivate individuals and teams to reach a common goal.
• to provide an agreed, consistent focus for all functions of an organisation.

Goals are broad Objectives are narrow
Goals are general intentions Objectives are precise
Goals are intangible Objectives are tangible
Goals are abstract Objectives are concrete
Goals can't be validated as is Objectives can be validated

Your goals/objectives should include financial elements, such as revenue, gross profit, sales per
salesperson, and so on.

However, they should also include non‐financial elements such as units sold, contracts signed,
clients acquired, and articles published.
• Sales levels
• Number of Customers
• Market share
• Target market
• Products and services

Examine the objectives
SMART Objectives
There are a number of business objectives, which an organisation can set:

Market share objectives: Obtain 30% market share of the [your industry in your location] by
2011.

Profit objectives: To increase sales by 10% from 2010 – 2012.

Growth objectives: To grow by 15% year on year for the next five years.

Brand awareness objectives: To increase brand awareness over a specified period of time

However, whenever your set your objectives you need to remember SMART

SMART
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Timely

Example

Let’s work with an imaginary company. Best Services

Best Services provides a range of products and services to business people and on average they
sell a £5000 worth of services to each of their customers. So far they have 40 customers. The
numbers are small and simple and are just an example

What are your objectives for your marketing?

Goal: I want a turnover of £500,000 (at a profit margin of 40%) this year.

Objectives: I want to attract 10 new customers each month who will spend an average of £5000
each on my services over the next 12 months. Below is a really simple model.

Turnover Goal £500,000.00

Average sale per customer per annum £5,500.00

Number of existing customers 40

TOTAL FROM EXISTING CUSTOMERS £220,000

Total to find from new prospects £280,000.00

Need new customers 56

Total customers per annum 96

Total per month 8

From theory to reality

Write down 3 objectives for your marketing.

How will you meet your goals and objectives?
First you will have undertaken some analysis of your business and perform some market
research to ensure that these are realistic and relevant.

Objectives: I want to attract
Target market 10 new or existing customers each month
Price who will spend an average of £5000 each
Products on my services
Time period over the next 12 months

Break it down into small chunks, and start asking some relevant questions

New customers
What do you mean by new People that I haven’t sold to before
customer?
Which existing customers Ones I have sold to over the last 2 years
Location South Wales & South West
Type of customer Businesses with at least 5 people who value training and
coaching for leadership development
What kind of problems do they Staff retention, leadership skills, competition
have?
Where will I find them? Networking events
Asking for referrals
Email marketing
Web site
Partnerships

Services
What are the Executive coaching, training and marketing services
products you aim
to sell
Benefits Develop a core sales generation plan with motivated and trained people
Lifecycle Business coaching is on the up, so it is at the introductory stage.
What is the With coaching and training you can:‐
product • Change the way you communicate with your customers, suppliers,
message? colleagues....
• Change the way you think about how you do things and get better
results
• Create compelling goals with positive outcomes
• Develop and implement action plans that move you forward
How does it Need to do some more research, but we have some basic research data.
compare to the
competitors

£5000
How did you We conducted some market research with our competitors and looked at
arrive at the similar products and services
price?
What about We have calculated all our costs and arrived at a margin of 40%
overheads
What would We haven’t done any research, but we could test a slightly higher price.
happen if the Indeed many coaches charge a lot more.
price went up

Within the next 6 months
What actions do you Buy in a new list of names
think need to take? Qualify names
Implement a CRM system
Create Website
Create an email template
Design a postcards
Design a brochure
Case studies of existing customers
Join networking clubs
Who do you need? Marketing support for the copy for the brochure, website and
database.
Customers & friends to get referrals from
List of companies to partner with
What skills do you Marketing & Sales
need? Design
How will you promote Online, at events, e‐mail, telemarketing, customers, friends,
it seminars

When will I get things done by?
Date Action
5 January Join a networking club
30 January Create Website

From theory to reality
Now take your objectives and break them down into bite sized chunks

What are your bite sized chunks? What questions do you need to ask yourself?


Chapter four

MARKET RESEARCH
Before you can build a plan you must do some market research.
In order to obtain information about the wants, needs, preferences, beliefs and likely behaviour
of potential consumers of your products and services you need to conduct some market
research.

There are two ways to do market research:
Secondary Research involves analyzing information that already has been gathered for
another purpose.
Primary Research involves collecting new information to meet your specific needs.
Primary research can be:
Qualitative: Gathering descriptive information, usually representing verbal or narrative
data through open‐ended interviews or focus groups.
o Open‐ended interviews are composed of questions that can not be answered
with a simple yes or no. This type of interview gives you a lot of information,
but is time consuming for both you and the person you are interviewing. The
greatest benefit to you is that you will learn a lot about the group you are
studying including common trends, emotional motivators, and general likes
and dislikes of your primary market.
o Focus groups should be lead by professionals skilled in leading small groups of
6 to 12 people through a series of questions ranging from specific to general in
nature. Usually, focus group sessions last for at least an hour. Since focus
groups must be lead by trained professionals to be most effective, they are the
most expensive form of market research.
Quantitative: Gathering numerical information that can be analyzed statistically
through surveys.
o Surveys take longer to develop, but are generally easier to administer than
other types of market research. Since they take less time to complete, people
are usually more willing to answer them. Also, surveys provide excellent
information if they are well‐constructed with thoughtful questions. The easiest
and most cost effective way to conduct surveys is either by telephone or where
the product is sold.

List the methods of research you intend to use?
Consumer Market Commercial Market
Census Yellow pages – www.yell.com
Mintel reports Kompass & Kelly’s directories
Key Note reports Databases
Socio‐economic audits Trade Associations
Household expenditure survey Companies House – Limited Companies
Internet Dunn & Bradstreet

Planning your research
• What information is required
• Identify search methods
• Set a timeframe for the research
• Establish the research budget
• Compile and analyse the results
• Present the results in a plan

Market Trends
• Seasonal
• Fashion
• Increase/decrease in demand
• Change in attitudes
• Environmental concerns
• What are your peak seasons?
• What the unique reasons throughout the year that someone should use your products
or services?

You have to be different and stand out to get more business.

Think about your business... What are the natural things that happen throughout the year or
other ways that you could tie into that could generate business for you while at the same time
helping other people?

Market Environment
A PEST analysis is an investigation of the important factors that are changing which influence a
business from the outside.

PEST stands for: Political changes ‐ e.g. a change in government, or a change in government
policy. Economic changes ‐ relate to changes in the wider economy such as rises in living
standards or the general level of demand rises or falls in interest rates, etc. Social changes ‐
relate to changes in wider society such as changes in lifestyles e.g. more women going out to
work, changes in tastes and buying patterns. Technological changes ‐ relate to the application
of new inventions and ideas such as the development of the Internet and websites as business
tools.

What are the main developments with respect to demographics, economy, technology,
government and culture that will affect your organisation's situation?

Political‐Legal
What laws are being proposed that may affect International pressure groups
marketing strategy? Government policies
Current legislation home market Government term and change
Future legislation Are there any insurances that need to be in
European/international legislation place?
Regulatory bodies and processes Trading policies
What national or local agency actions should Funding, grants and initiatives
be watched?
Home market lobbying/pressure groups
Economic ‐ Demographic
What effect will forecasted trends in the size, Market and trade cycles
age distribution, and regional distribution of Specific industry factors
population have on your business? Market routes and distribution trends
Home economy situation / trends Customer/end‐user drivers
Overseas economies and trends Interest and exchange rates
General taxation issues What does your company expect in the way of
Taxation specific to product/services inflation, material shortages, unemployment
Seasonality/weather issues and credit availability in the short and long
run?
Social‐Cultural
Business issues Consumer buying patterns
Lifestyle trends Fashion and role models
Demographics Major events and influences
Consumer attitudes and opinions Buying access and trends
Media views Ethnic/religious factors
Law changes affecting social factors Advertising and publicity
Brand, company, technology image
Technology
Competing technology development Information and communications
Research funding Consumer buying mechanisms/technology
Associated/dependent technologies Technology legislation
Replacement technology/solutions Innovation potential
Maturity of technology Technology access, licensing, patents
Manufacturing maturity and capacity Intellectual property issues
Environmental
Climate Emissions
Waste reduction Recycling
Ecological/environmental issues


Chapter Five
WHO ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS?
Objectives
• Know your customers better and use that knowledge to enhance profitability
• Grow the number of customers, the amount of sales per customer, and the lifetime
value of the customer
• Highly profitable customers: What can we do to keep these customers and keep them
spending? How can we attract more like them?
• Profitable customers: How do we get more of these customers to adapt the habits
(spend) like our highly profitable ones?
• Unprofitable customers: How can we phase out these customers and, in the meantime,
serve them economically?
• Serve each segment more effectively and at a lower cost

Why is it so important to know who your ideal customer is?
So you can maximise your marketing spend. You can’t be everything to everybody so you really
need to get clear on who is most likely to buy from you, what they want to hear about your
product or service and how they want to hear it. This helps you focus your resources on the
most effective marketing tactics! By knowing your ideal customer and delivering what they
want, they are more likely to refer you to other potential customers. They are also more likely
to continue buying from you in the future.

How to Profile your customers
Demographics Behavioural Geographic Psychological
Consumer
Age When do they buy Where are they? Social class
Gender How often do they Lifestyle
Occupation buy? Attitudes
Income How much do they Interests
spend Needs & wants
Why do they buy?
(Quality, service,
guarantees, price,
choice)
Commercial
No. employees When do they buy Where are they? Innovative
Turnover How often do they Socially responsible
Services & Products buy? Environmentally
offered How much do they aware
Sector spend Expect Credit
Why do they buy? Needs & wants
(Quality, service,
warranty, price,
choice)

List your top 20 customers
• Segment
• Value
• Profitability
• Number of sales
• Products/Services
• Frequency of Purchase
• Date Last Sale
• Date Last Contact (phone, face to face)

Who are your top 20%?
• Does the 80/20 rule apply to you ‐ 80% of your business from 20% of your customers?
• Do you spend the majority of your time supporting your best customers? Which ones?
• Are there any customers you should sack? Which ones?
• Have you got the right mix of products or services for those customers with the
greatest buying power?
• What do you like most about your customers?
• What do your customers like most about you?
• What do you each dislike about each other?
• Referrals. Do you ask for referrals?

How do you deal with your customers
Action Things to consider
Initial contact How are telephone, fax, e‐mail, mail enquiries dealt
with?
What impression does the customer get of your
organisation?
How fast and efficiently is any enquiry deal with?
Negotiation How do you make sure you understand what the
customer really wants and values?
How do you handle price negotiations?
Are you flexible enough to meet their delivery
requirements?
Supply and delivery Do you supply or deliver when and where you said
you would?
Do your drivers or logistics company maintain the
image of your company?
How do you know if the customer is satisfied?
Complaints Is the complaints process customer‐friendly
Can the people handling the complaint take
immediate action?
Does the customer go away happy ‐ how do you
know?
Relationships What is your customers' view of other people in
your “value chain”?
How do you know?
How are you going to help those on whom you
depend to add value to the customers who depend
on

Why do customers buy from you?
• Quality
• Speed of service
• Guarantee
• 24 hour service
• Price
• Choice

Have you asked them why they buy and what they really value?

Once you have found your ideal customer, how do you identify their exact
needs and wants, and reasons for purchasing your product or service?
Ask them! Many businesses don’t ask because they think customers will feel hassled by
research questionnaires and interviews. On the contrary, we find that customers really
appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback that will ultimately improve the products and
services offered to them.

Asking questions through a third party tends to help as well because customers are more likely
to be honest and open about their experiences. A written questionnaire is seldom adequate
either. You have to speak to at least a proportion of them. The extra comments you are able to
collect in a conversation are often where the real ‘juice’ is.

COMPETITORS
Objectives
By knowing your competitors we may be able to predict their next moves, exploit their
weaknesses and undermine their strengths.
Business competitors are:
• Other organisations offering the same product or service now.
• Other organisations offering similar products or services now.
• Organisations that could offer the same or similar products or services in the future.
• Organisations that could remove the need for a product or service.

Step 1 – What can you find out about your competitors?
Against each item put s for strength or w for weakness. E.g.
Products/Services (main)
Products/Services (secondary)
Product supply source
Pricing Strategy
Delivery costs
Quality
Service
Reliability
Stability
Expertise
Company Reputation
Number of customers
Customer retention levels
Location
Where do they sell?
Sales Method
Credit Policies
Image
Marketing Methods
Do they have a website?
What threats do they pose?
What strategies are your competitors pursuing and how successful are these strategies?
How are your competitors likely to respond to any changes to the way you do business?
Team
Similarity
Differences
How well do they use technology?

Getting other data
Data you can Other opportunities Internet resources
collect
Annual accounts? Meetings with suppliers Dun & Bradstreet ‐
Press releases Trade shows http://dbuk.dnb.com/english/default.htm
Newspaper Meetings with Hoovers Online ‐ http://www.hoovers.com/free/
articles competitors Reuters ‐
Brochures Ex Employees http://www.investor.reuters.com/StockEntry.aspx?targ
Proposals Customers et=/stocks
Presentations Friends Company reports online ‐ http://www.carol.co.uk/
Campaigns Corporate reports ‐ http://www.corpreports.co.uk/
Price lists ICC ‐
Patent http://www.icc.co.uk/Home/Default.aspx?PageID=Hom
applications e&SiteCode=web
Website Kompass ‐ http://www.kompass.com/
Suppliers Business Monitor ‐ http://www.kompass.com/
websites Keynote ‐ http://www.keynote.co.uk/
Search engines Surveynet ‐ http://www.survey.net/
WAG – www.wales.gov.uk
European patent office ‐ http://www.survey.net/

Step 2 – SWOT
Use the information you have collected to carry out a mini SWOT analysis on your competition.
Rate
Name Strengths Weaknesses

You

Competitor 1

Competitor 2

What Next?
Competitive strategies:
• Differentiation: How can you distinguish your product in the marketplace?
• Innovation: Is there opportunity to create a new way of doing business, perhaps one
that changes the nature of the industry?
• Growth: Are there opportunities to expand production, sell into new markets, and
introduce new services or products?
• Alliance: Can current or prospective production, promotion, and distribution be
improved through partnerships with suppliers, distributors, and others?
Other
• Can you lock in customers and suppliers
• Create switching costs for customers and/or suppliers
• Improve business processes
• Raise entry barriers for rivals and substitute products

SWOT ANALYSIS
Understanding Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

Why use the tool?
SWOT Analysis is an effective way of identifying your Strengths and Weaknesses, and of
examining the Opportunities and Threats you face.

SWOT analysis is a framework for analyzing your strengths and weaknesses, and the
opportunities and threats you face.

This will help you to focus on your strengths, minimize weaknesses, and take the greatest
possible advantage of opportunities available.

How to use tool:
To carry out a SWOT Analysis write down the answers to the following questions. Where
appropriate, use similar questions:

Strengths:
• What advantages do you have?
• What do you do well?
• What relevant resources do you have access to?
• What do other people see as your strengths?

Consider this from your own point of view and from the point of view of the people you deal
with. Don't be modest. Be realistic. If you are having any difficulty with this, try writing down a
list of your characteristics. Some of these will hopefully be strengths!

In looking at your strengths, think about them in relation to your competitors ‐ for example, if
all your competitors provide high quality products, then a high quality production process is
not a strength in the market, it is a necessity.

Weaknesses:
• What could you improve?
• What do you do badly?
• What should you avoid?

Again, consider this from an internal and external basis: Do other people seem to perceive
weaknesses that you do not see? Are your competitors doing any better than you? It is best to
be realistic now, and face any unpleasant truths as soon as possible.

Opportunities:
• Where are the good opportunities facing you?
• What are the interesting trends you are aware of?
• Useful opportunities can come from such things as:
• Changes in technology and markets on both a broad and narrow scale
• Changes in government policy related to your field
• Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle changes, etc.
• Local Events

A useful approach to looking at opportunities is to look at your strengths and ask yourself
whether these open up any opportunities. Alternatively, look at your weaknesses and ask
yourself whether you could open up opportunities by eliminating them.
Threats:
• What obstacles do you face?
• What is your competition doing?
• Are the required specifications for your job, products or services changing?
• Is changing technology threatening your position?
• Do you have bad debt or cash‐flow problems?
• Could any of your weaknesses seriously threaten your business?

Carrying out this analysis will often be illuminating ‐ both in terms of pointing out what needs
to be done, and in putting problems into perspective.

You can also apply SWOT analysis to your competitors. This may produce some interesting
insights!

How are you going to:‐
• use your strengths to take maximum advantage of your opportunities
• stop your weaknesses getting in the way of seizing opportunities
• use your strengths to overcome or resist the threats
• prevent the threats taking advantage of your weaknesses
PRODUCTS
Product management is the day‐to‐day management your products/services at all stages of
the product lifecycle.

• What are your main products/services?
• What are the features, benefits and USP’s of each service or product
• Are there elements of your offering which can be removed or added? What are these
• Should any products/services be phased out?
• Should any products/services be added to the line? Have you included in your range
those products or services which are more likely to be in demand in future?
• How does the profitability or the future potential of each product line compare?
• What after sales / warranty / guarantee do you offer?

PRICES
Pricing is one of the keys to your business.
Several objectives need to be addressed in determining correct product pricing:
• Cover the cost of producing the goods or services.
• Cover marketing and overhead expenses.
• Provide profit objectives.
• Afford distribution margin discounts.
• Afford sales commissions.
• Be competitive.

Analyse your costs
All prices must, in the long term, cover the costs of generating or marketing your product or
service and produce a reasonable profit.

Compare to your competitors
You need to consider the prices charged by your competitors, to give you a benchmark against
which to position your own price. How is your product better value than the competitor's?
• Are you getting as much (£) for your product as your competitor?
• Are your customers paying more for the extra value they receive?
• What will your competition do if you change your prices
Describe your pricing strategy
• What would be the likely response of demand to higher or lower prices?
• To what extent are prices set on cost, demand, and/or competitive criteria?
• Does your organisation use temporary price promotions and, if so, how effective are
they?
• How do customers perceive the link between price and quality in your product
• To what extent are prices set on cost, demand, and/or competitive criteria?
• What would be the likely response of demand to higher or lower prices?
• Does your organisation use temporary price promotions and, if so, how effective are
they?
• How do customers perceive the link between price and quality in your product
• Why did you introduce the product? If you have already covered your overheads and
are using spare capacity you can use marginal costing and lower prices.
• Could you 'skim the cream'? If your new product is superior to the competition you can
sell it at a higher price than competition. The volume sold may be small, but the profit
margins will be high.
• Could you adopt 'penetration pricing'. Low prices and high volumes.

DISTRIBUTION
Getting the right product to the right customers in the right place at the right time

Distribution decisions have significant implications for:
pricing
• margins and profits
• marketing budgets
• sales techniques

Distribution channels can include one or more of these options:
• retail ‐ selling to final consumer buyers
• wholesale ‐ an intermediary distribution channel
• sales force – employees who sell on your behalf
• brokers/agents – who sell for a commission
• Internet

Identify how your competitors distribute their products
• How does direct competition sell their product? Is it effective enough to follow?
• Identify costs associated with your distribution channels

Which channels will maximise sales and profit?
• Are there alternative methods of distributing your product that would result in more
service or less cost?
• What are the main channels bringing products to customers?
• How convenient is it for them to purchase your product or service
• Who is your target audience
• Does your organisation give adequate service, along with the product, to customers?
• What are the efficiency levels and growth potentials of the different trade channels?


Chapter Six

WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT?

What is a unique selling proposition and why is it important to have one?
A unique selling proposition (USP) is the reason why a customer should buy from you over a
competitor. It tells your potential customer what it is you do and how you do it differently. A
strong positioning is critical to the success of a business – it tells the market exactly what you
promise to deliver.

Having a good USP is vital as it differentiates you from your competitors and means that your
marketing can have more impact. But remember, never over promise. Be sure that what you
promise the market is what you deliver. Thwarted expectations result in very unhappy
customers.

You could provide a niche product that only you do, which could be a grouping together of
some of your services which makes it really easy for your customers to do something. They
may have problems caused by some new regulation.

Then, within that specific niche, set up your USP by offering services that none of your
competitors will offer. Be unique in your overall industry. And, be unique even within your
niche.

Your marketing has to answer one question. ”Why should I buy from you?” The problem most
people have when planning their marketing strategy is that they answer the first part of that
question – “why should I buy?” – without addressing the second part – “from you?”

It is simply what makes you different?

Your 60 seconds
You will often be asked what you do when you are out and about, its important that you make
a good impression.

If someone asks you what you do, don't just say—“I do coaching,” “I am a electrician,” “I am an
author” or “I own a bookshop.” Tell them how what you do benefits others.

Instead of saying‐‐ "I do coaching and marketing", say "I use a series of tools and
methodologies to help you to develop motivated leaders who understand your business goals
and I work with you to develop winning lead generation strategies which removes the waste
from your business and delivers customers that value what you have to sell."

Now, that will get you more appointments than saying, "I do coaching and marketing."

If you're an author of self‐help books, when someone asks you what you do... instead of just
saying, "I am an author" say, "I write books that help people learn to do (blank)."

This will generate more interest in what you are doing than just saying, "I am an author."

As for marketing and promoting ourselves, marketing and promotion re‐framed is nothing
more or less than the process of finding people who need what it is you offer and showing
them how you can help them solve their problems.

Having difficulties?
Many people have difficulties specifying what their UPS’s are and who can blame them its not
easy. Too many people say quality, service or people, so find something different. It could be
continuous improvement. That is you continually review how you do things so that you deliver
better services or products for your customers. It could be people, but describe it as something
different, e.g. that you use cross functional teams to work with each client.

You get the picture.

Still stuck? Ask your teams
Something that I do that works really well, is to have USP sessions, introduce the team that
you are with to the concept of UPS’s and then split them up into two teams, give them a
flipchart each. One team does all the great things that a company like yours does or could do
and the other team does the rubbish things. Stop after 15 minutes and ask each team to
present, comparing each statement to what your company does or to what the competitor
does.

At the end of the session(s) you will have a good idea about what makes you different. And
where you need to do some work.


Chapter Seven

PROMOTION
Promotion is just one part of the marketing mix. It involves communicating information about
your company, brand, products/services.

A number of activities will go to make up the promotional mix, these can include:‐
• Personal selling
• Advertising
• Direct Marketing
• Sales promotion
• Public relations

Likes and dislikes
We all have likes and dislikes, if you collect information sent, given or collected you will soon
start to see what is rubbish, what was the visual impact, do the messages actually mean
anything to you, did you understand them, did it get your attention, did they stimulate any
interest, did it create any desire by offering something you want OR helping you to avoid pain,
did they make you want to take action.

• Go through items that you have collected
• Put them into piles of likes and dislikes.
• Write down what you liked and disliked
• Are there things that you could use in your business?

Personal Selling
The primary function of sales is to generate and close leads, educate prospects, fill needs and
satisfy wants of consumers appropriately, and therefore turn prospects into customers.
• Is your sales force large enough? Don’t just think in terms of yourself, what about all of
your network, customers and friends, have you told them all about what you do?
• Is it organised along the best lines of specialisation (territory, market, product)?
• Are they split for customer retention and new business?
• Do the sales force show high morale, ability, and effectiveness?
• Are they sufficiently trained? Are you sufficiently trained?
• Do they have enough incentives?
• Are the procedures adequate for setting quotas and evaluating performance?
• Do you have a telemarketing team or use an external source?

Often in a small business everyone has to sell. This may not always be the most effective use
of their time and not everyone is a natural sales person, so they could be doing more harm than
good. Consider outsourcing some of your telemarketing to an expert who will get you
appointments which you can follow up.

There are some great books and course on selling and I would advise any small business to a)
read a variety of books b) go on courses and keep your (and your teams) skills up to date.

Sell me that object
Don’t think you can sell? Try this game.

Find an object (e.g. a packet of biscuits or hand wash) and brainstorm.
• What would grab your attention about the product
• Why is it an interesting product
• Is there any research to back you up
• What are the benefits
• How many uses can you think of for this product?
• Now try it for your services and products.

Advertising
• Advertising includes billboards, bus stops, printed flyers, radio, cinema, TV, web
banners, web popups, magazines, newspapers, sides/backs of buses, taxis, tubes and
trains, product placement, the backs of event tickets, car park and supermarket
receipts.
• Does your organisation clearly state its advertising objectives?
• Does your advertising get its messages across? How do you know?
• Are the themes, graphics and copy consistent?
• Who writes your copy? Is it effective? Too much jargon?
• Are the chosen media adequate?
• What is your budget, and do you get a ROI, how can you measure it?
• Why are you advertising?
• What are you advertising?
• What is the typical response rate?

Advertising can be expensive if not planned properly, and for many small businesses it is simply
not an effective use of your limited marketing budget. This does of course vary from business
to business and market to market. You may need to advertise to gain entry to a market,
however PR may gain you the exposure you need at a lower cost.

Internet
• Do you have banner ads on other sites?
• Do you use pay per click? E.g. Google Adwords.
• Do you have a blog?

This is a huge subject with lots of people offering all kinds of offers to increase your position
within Google or other search engines, look at these with care. Setting up Google Adwords is
easy providing you understand what your keywords are. Of course you will be on the first page
of Google if you use keywords that are only on your website and only you are testing it, but
these wont necessarily be the words that your potential customers are looking for. If you aren’t
sure pay a trusted expert.

Blogs are like diaries but online, Google offers a free service called Blogger www.blogger.com
again another easy to set up tool, but you must keep it up to date. You could get several
people in your company to take turns in writing an article. A blog will demonstrate additional
expertise that your company can offer.

Incentives/Gifts
• What incentives and gifts do you use and where?

Networking
• Which networking events do you regularly attend?
• Are they relevant to your business?
• Have you prepared your 60 seconds speech
• Do you have enough business cards? Are they good quality?

Networking is extremely powerful and gives you the opportunity to build an additional
workforce around you. Try a few out, and see which work best for you, when you choose the
ones that suit you stick at it. If you are not an early bird something like BNI may not be the best
event for you.

Website
• Do you have a website?
• How well can you navigate the website?
• Does it have a search facility?
• Do you have separate sections for each product or solution?
• Do you have downloadable collateral?
• Can you buy online
• Have you optimised your site?
• Do you swap links with other organisations?
• Can you easily update it?

This is one of those areas that you really should put in the hands of the experts. Your son or
daughter may have some Dreamweaver skills learnt in college but can they really create the
right impression for your business.

A good web development company will take the time to understand your business and brand
and work to ensure that your site sells you well.

Events/Exhibitions/Seminars
• Do you attend any regular exhibitions or events?
• Do your competitors attend?
• Could you go and ‘work the exhibitors’ to get leads?
• Do you run any in‐house seminars?
• Could you run any seminars with other like minded companies?


Direct Marketing
Direct marketing is a way of sending your messages directly to your prospects and customers,
using things such as mail (direct mailers, postcards, mail order catalogues, newsletters), email
and SMS.
• What direct mailers do you have
• Do you send them regularly?
• Are the messages clear?
• Are they addressed to the right person?
• Have you regularly unsubscribe emails users who request it?
• Do you have an anti spamming policy?
• Do you use pre‐paid envelopes?
• How often do you send newsletters?
• How often do you follow up? Do you have a telemarketing team?

Database
• Do you have a sales and marketing database or CRM (customer relationship
management) system?
• Is it used by the sales force?
• What kind of data does it contain? Can you segment customers for campaigns?
• Do you buy mailing lists? From where?
• Have you cross checked your data with the telephone preference service?
• Do you clean the data and get the right contact names?

Sales Promotion
Sales promotion is marketing communications employed for a pre‐determined, limited time to
increase demand of your products and services.
Have you considered any of these:‐
• Money off offers
• Price reductions ‐ A temporary reduction in the price, such as buy before October 12th
and get £x off
• Repackaging price ‐ Get 25% extra
• Coupons, or a coupon booklet is inserted into the local newspaper or delivery by the
postman, on checkout the customer is given a coupon based on products purchased,
on‐line coupons
• Rebates offered if the receipt or label is mailed to back to you

Competitions
• Point‐of‐sale displays
• Incentives for customers and sales

Other
• Training, can you offer this alongside your normal services?
• Can you get marketing development funds from a supplier?
• Do you offer any package (bundled) deals?
• Can you make an offer with a partner? (Cross promotion)

Publicity
Publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a product, service or
organisation.
• Does your organisation have a carefully formulated program of publicity?
• Do you have a PR company? These are worth their weight in gold.
• Who will do this for you internally?
• Do you have publicity photos?
• Do you send press releases, letters to editors, write whitepapers or expert pieces?
• Do you have a policy for crisis management?
• Do you speak at events?

Sponsorship
• Who and why do you sponsor?
• How effective is your sponsorship?

Collateral
Do you have the following?
Logo Business Cards Company Folder Brochures
Catalogue Flyers Compliments Slip Letterhead
Exhibition Stand Presentations Sales Proposals Proposal Cover
CD/DVD Covers
• Are the themes, colour, graphics and copy effective?
• How effective is your packaging?


Chapter Eight

TECHNOLOGY
Marketing needs to make use of a vast amount of technology, for example:‐
• Databases
• Customer relationship management (CRM) software
• Email
• Website
• Blog
• Social networks
• Autoresponders
• Ebooks
• Graphics / design packages

• Make a list of all of the technology you employ which impacts your marketing.
• Are you properly trained, and use it all effectively? If not book some training.
• Do you put sales messages on your statements or invoices?

Once you have compiled the list of what you want and put a budget against it, what do you
really need now? What can wait a while?

For example if part of your strategy is to deliver some email marketing, is this a skill that you
have? What products will help you to create the templates, send out emails and monitor the
responses? It may be that you need a mix and match approach. You could use WORD to
design the template and an eternal email marketing solution for the rest. Great so now all you
have to do is find the right one and add it to your budget.

Technology for technologies sake is not the key. Work out what you can actually do yourself
given the time that you have and what you can subcontract out.

Customer relationship management (CRM)
In most businesses, customers are contacted and dealt with through a variety of different
means. E‐mails, faxes, phone calls and letters all play a part, and these days, several software
packages too ‐ word processor, spreadsheet and databases all play their role in the modern
business. These varied means of communication may make it easier to keep in touch with
customers but it also can make managing customer relationships complicated if there is no
way of keeping track of who said what to whom and when.

It is here that CRM (customer relationship management) software can help by amalgamating
all customer contact in a single piece of software. So for example, you can view all of the
interaction you've had with a given company or contact over six months, examining details
such as credit worthiness, the last time they were contacted etc. This can be used to work out
customer reliability and hot business prospects, as information can be sorted in a variety of
ways, this can also be used to quickly generate reports and produce marketing feedback.

Look for one that integrates with Outlook so that all of your dealings are recorded.
Website
These days a website is critical to all businesses, and I would recommend that you shop around
for the best proposition and undertaking lots of research before going ahead.

• What is the purpose of the site? (Direct sales, marketing, informational, intranet, etc.)
• What do you want the visitor to think and feel when they're on your site?
• Is this image consistent with your company's current image?
• What features do you think your site will need? (shopping cart, Secure online trading,
Audio/Video, message boards, etc.)
• What services do you think you'll need for the web site? (Logo design ‐ redesign, web
site promotion and marketing, web site hosting, traffic statistics and analysis,
maintenance once the site is launched, other)
• Content. Do you need someone to copy write the text or will it be done in house?
• Do you have a domain name or do you need to purchase one?
• How do you plan to recover the costs of the web site? (Direct sales, advertising
revenue, membership fees, reduced costs ‐ site makes business processes more
efficient, do not plan to recover costs, other)

Typical main content for a web site are: Topics often included:
. Home Page . Mission Statement
. Company Information . Careers ‐ Jobs
. Products ‐ Services . Facts & Questions
. Samples or specifications . Testimonials
. Contact Information . Team ‐ Company Personnel

Website statistics
Other technology items would definitely include website statistics. Your website management
company should provide this for you. Google Analytics code can also be added to your web
pages and this will track web information for you very simply.

Understanding your Web site’s traffic patterns is a crucial component of your marketing mix.
The information in these logs is collected as visitors find and move around your site at their
own volition. So, it’s “market research that cannot lie” ‐ and therefore provides unprecedented
insights that can help you to strategise not only for the future development of the site itself,
but also for your overall business and marketing plan.

You will find out amongst other things:‐
• Entry and exit pages
• Most popular
• Least popular
• Referring sites


Chapter nine

ACTION PLANNING
So far
So far you should have done a lot of research which will tell you a lot about your business and
its markets now is the time to put it all into action.

Push and Pull
There are two main kinds of strategy ‐ "push" and "pull".
1. A push strategy tries to create demand for a product.
2. A pull strategy tries to build up demand for a product.

Campaign Management
Before you start any campaigning you need to look at how you currently do it.
• Describe the process you go through when planning a campaign.
• Do you have any kind of plan which ties in with your objectives?

Creating an effective marketing strategy
1. Get clear – know who your ideal customer is and identify what attributes they have and
how they would seek out your type of product or service. Ask current and past clients,
friends, relatives – whomever you can! You should have all of this information from
your audit.
2. Evaluate your brand – make sure that your brand reflects not only what you and your
business are about, but also what your customer wants to hear. Does it speak into their
needs? Does your promise to the market match the demands of your target customer?
3. Develop your strategy – your strategy should be developed around generating leads.
Look at all the ways a customer might find you and then look at how to effectively
target them – the internet, direct marketing, telemarketing, advertising, networking,
referrals. What will drive them to enquire and how can you best capture that enquiry?
The trick is to not rely on just one medium but to look at several and how they might
work together. For example, you might develop a direct mail pack that refers people to
your website. Does your site make it easy for people to respond to you? Do you have an
enticing offer that encourages them to give you their contact details? Can they find the
information they want easily and are they driven to act?
4. Revise the strategy – remember to track and revise the effectiveness of your strategy.
Just because a tactical approach works well once, it won’t necessarily always work.
Customers’ needs are always changing, so the important thing is to stay aware of what
those changing needs are.

Formalising a marketing strategy in a document
We find that small businesses need a document that is brief and practical.

It needs to be simple with lots of clear objectives, specific tactics, a marketing budget and an
implementation plan.

Next list your objectives and how you will measure them.

Create an action plan for your objectives
Marketing Activity: Email mailer

What is the purpose of this marketing activity?
What are the expected results?
Who is your Target Market?
What are your tactics?
What is your marketing message?
What marketing materials do you need
(website, flyers, brochure, proposal etc)
Key to the plan
What is the offer
What is the call to action?
Follow‐up ‐ How and when will you follow up?
What is the cost?
What is the timeline?

Specific Tactics
Now that the objectives are set you can list the tactics.

Below is a brief example.

Review the current website with a view to communicating the benefits of your business in a
simpler and more succinct way. The website review would also involve implementing both
copy and structural changes to generate better quality leads via the website and support a
more professional and corporate approach. Leads generated via the website should be added
to the prospect database for ongoing communication.

Develop and implement a email campaign to warm prospects into leads. The campaign would
consist of a short enews letter which links to more content on the website distributed to new
prospects on a monthly basis. All recipients would be followed up with telemarketing activity.

Develop and implement a telemarketing campaign to support email activity. Using an
outsourced telemarketing partner, develop and implement an ongoing telemarketing
campaign with the specific objective of qualifying and warming leads for conversion.

90‐day business development process
Develop and implement a 90‐day business development process to warm prospects into sales
and prevent the burning of leads. This will require:
• developing new business opportunity profile
• segmenting the current contact database and developing a process to consistently
gain contacts from other sources, i.e. BNI lists and magazine articles, event lists,
internet, press, associations
• clean up the data and get the right contact names and emails
• designing a series of emails to precede and follow cold‐calling activity targeted at
specific markets
• producing a corporate brochure for distribution (could be in PDF format on the website
to keep costs down and be environmentally friendly), to support telemarketing activity
• developing a contact calendar to ensure all prospects are contacted every 90 days and
categorised according to responses.
• Create a free event for them to come and hear about what you can do.

Implementation plan
Implementation plan – be specific about what needs to happen each month and make sure you
stick to it. A marketing activity calendar is a great way to keep your focus.

This is something that can be created in a spreadsheet or in your outlook calendar. The
following is an example:
Marketing Action Plan
2010 April May
A B Monthly Project A B Monthly Project

Sunday 1
Monday 2
Tuesday 3 1
Wednesday 4 2
Thursday 5 3
Friday 6 4
Saturday 7 5
Sunday 8 6
Monday 9 7
Tuesday 10 8
Wednesday 11 9
Thursday 12 10
Friday 13 11

Don’t forget to keep reviewing it.

Budgets
And finally set your budget.

If you don’t know what it will all cost you cannot measure the effectiveness properly.

Start reviewing budgets before the year end, look at what you spent the year before, what was
effective, will you do it again. In fact review each quarter.

Ask marketing companies to come to visit you, tell them what your objectives are, ask for ideas
and prices which you can put into your budget.

The Planning Process
Here’s a quick reminder…
1. Define your goals
2. Determine the major components or objectives of the plan
3. Make sure that your objectives support the overall purpose (goal)
4. Break the objectives down into bite sized chunks.
5. Put dates next to all objectives
6. Determine who can help you.
7. Collect and evaluate the data you will need to determine what it will take to complete
each component of the plan
8. Create a forecast
9. Determine action steps, tactics etc
10. Develop contingency plans
11. Implement your plan
12. Check the progress of your plan frequently and measure constantly
13. Make any amendments


Chapter ten

MARKETING CONTROLS
There is no planning without control. If an objective states where you want to be and the plan
sets out a road map to your destination, then control tells you if you are on the right route or if
you have arrived at your destination.
Resources
• Is your organisation allocating enough (or too many) resources to accomplish the
marketing tasks?
• Are your marketing resources allocated to various markets, territories and products of
your organisation in the best way possible?
• Are your marketing resources allocated to the major elements of the marketing mix
(i.e. product quality, personal selling/contact, promotion and distribution) in the best
way possible?
Budgets
• Do you have a budget set? What is it?
• Do you know how much each campaign/promotion etc costs and what your ROI (return
on investment) is?
Implementation
• Does your organisation develop an annual marketing plan? Is it effective?
• Does your organisation implement control procedures (monthly, quarterly, and yearly)
to ensure your annual objectives are being achieved?
• Does your organisation carry out periodic studies to determine the contribution and
effectiveness of various marketing activities?
• Does your organisation have an adequate marketing information system to service the
needs of managers for planning and controlling operations in various markets?
Organisation
• Does your organisation have a high‐level marketing officer/manager to analyse, plan
and implement the marketing work of your organisation?
• Are others directly involved in marketing activity?
• Does your staff need more training, incentives, supervision or evaluation?
• Are the marketing responsibilities structured to serve the needs of different marketing
activities, products, markets and territories in the best way possible?
• Do the staff understand and practice the marketing concept?

Measurement
• How do you measure success?
• How do you follow up your campaigns?

How long does it take to work out if a campaign is effective?

You will soon know if your activities are working when the phone rings, or someone you meet
comments of something that they have seen.

How long it takes depends on your objectives, your target market, your products and services
etc.

You may have a plan which is about brand awareness, in which case 3‐6 months is reasonable.
You may work in a market where it takes a year for someone to switch supplier, in which case
12‐24 months is reasonable.

What is important is that you run your campaigns consistently over a period of time and review
everything that you do, change it where necessary, but do not just do one thing and expect to
see results.


Chapter eleven

STUCK FOR IDEAS
Stuck for ideas
When ever you are stuck for ideas, take some time out, have some fun.

Try these exercises.

25 uses of
List 25 uses for a sheet of paper.

10 ways to improve
List 10 ways to improve a ball point pen.

10 ways to change the world
10 ways to change the world with fruits.

What if?
What if you could see smells?
What if everyone looked almost the same?
What if petrol went up to £25 a gallon?

What would this mean, what would the consequences be, what could you do with it?

Removing the logic filters
Write down or act out as many methods of communicating that you can think of.

What irritates you?
Compile a list of things in every day life that irritate you and then work out "inventions" to
overcome the difficulties

Visualisation
"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein

The real key to turning imagination into reality is acting as if the imagined scene were real and
already accomplished. Instead of pretending it is a scene from the future, imagine it as though
you are truly experiencing it in the present.

As an exercise take anything about your life you would like to change or enhance. Sit back,
relax, close your eyes and fantasize what you would really like to occur in your life. Don’t put
any limitations on it, and don’t shroud it with doubt. Remember, there is no one who is going
to judge this fantasy and no one who is going to prevent it from happening. Only you have the
power to deter it’s realization. You have the power to do anything you want if you first imagine
it in your mind’s eye.


The Wishing Well – start capturing options
This is where you start to put down some real options for action, with no concern about
realism.

Do it with a team, you will get the most out of the process.

Establish Rules
If team members stick to the rules and try this method, they will experience success. If the
team wish to discuss why brainstorming works, try to arrange this discussion after it has been
used so that people know it does work.

When running a brainstorming session first post the rules on the wall and run though them,
getting agreement that they will be observed during the session. This should be done to
reinforce use of the rules, even if the team is familiar with them.

Next a recorder should be appointed to write all the ideas on a flip chart. The recorder can be
the team leader. As each flip chart sheet is filled, it should be stuck on the wall to ensure that all
ideas remain visible. It will help if the ideas are numbered as they are written.

Brainstorming is most effective when conducted in a relaxed atmosphere in which wild ideas
can be encouraged and humour is OK.

If some members of the team are much quieter than others, then it can be an advantage to go
around the group in turn asking for one idea from each person. People then say, "pass" if they
have no more ideas, and the process continues until everyone has passed. Note that people
who pass in one round may contribute in the next.

Once all the ideas have been listed, the team must then decide on one or more ideas to follow
up. Here the voting process may be used to identify the small group of ideas that the team
wants to examine further.

Establish Criteria
If the purpose of the earlier brainstorming session was to determine the root cause of a
problem, then the selection criteria is obvious, i.e. which items on the list are most likely to be
the root cause?

If, however, the team is choosing a problem on which to work, or a solution to implement, the
criteria for selection should be discussed and agreed in advance of the voting process. The
criteria are then displayed for everyone to see during the voting.

Typically, criteria will address resource constraints, timing and output requirements.

An example of typical constraints follows:
- Cost less than £2000.
- Achievable in three months.
- Reduce defects levels by 60%.
- Acceptable to staff.

Normally the criteria will be between two and six items.

The Voting Process
The voting process is used after the brainstorming session to help the team decide on one or
more ideas to pursue further.

During the brainstorming sessions, criticism was not allowed, and wild ideas were encouraged
with the purpose of discovering new and novel solutions. As a result, the brainstorming list will
contain many ideas, which do not justify further discussion and should be eliminated without
criticising them. Voting for the ideas that are liked the best, rather than trying to eliminate or
cross out the ideas that are disliked can do this.

Because the team is aiming for consensus in choosing items from the list, it should never use a
simple majority vote as the reason for choosing a particular item when other team members
disagree. Rather, the voting process should be used by the team to identify the few ideas,
which the team wishes to discuss, with the purpose of achieving a true consensus on which
ideas to adopt.

There should be a number of rounds of voting, with group discussion between each round. In
this way, the list of ideas the team is considering is successively reduced until agreement is
finally reached on the one or more ideas, which will be followed up.

The number of rounds of voting, and the number of votes each team member has, may be
varied, with a longer list of brainstormed ideas possibly benefiting from more rounds of voting.

However, for most purposes the recommended is to use three rounds of voting, with each
team member having three votes in the first round, two votes in the second round and one
vote in the final round.
Round 1
• The team leader asks each member to vote for three items on the brainstormed list
and marks up the list accordingly.
• The team reviews the items, which have received votes, and agrees that only those
items with the most votes go though to the second round.
• Any team member may champion an idea, even if it only has one vote. (S)he will
explain why he believes the idea to be important and have it brought though to the
next round to be voted on again.
Round 2
• The team leader confirms the short list of ideas now being considered, and asks each
team member to cast two votes.
• Round 2 is now continued in an identical manner to round 1, with the team finally
agreeing a reduced list to consider.


Round 3
• The team leader now asks each member of the team to cast just one vote, and then
leads a team discussion to agree on the one idea (or few ideas) the team wishes to
adopt.

Note: As a result of discussion between rounds, two or more ideas may be combined or
modified before being voted on in the next round.

AND FINALLY
What holds people back from becoming successful in marketing a business?
Confusing advertising with marketing, and thinking that you have to spend a lot of money on
advertising to generate leads. Good marketing takes effort more than it does money.

Also thinking that sales and marketing are two separate functions. Sales is an element of
marketing. Marketing and sales teams need to support each other.

Too many businesses want to get straight into the tactical implementation without doing the
research and thinking first. So many times the ineffectiveness of a business’s approach is due
to the fact that they are not really clear on who their target market is and what their needs are.

What do we need to say and how do we need to say it in order to get our message across? Then
decide what the most appropriate medium to deliver that message is.

Marketing is not rocket science, but it does need to be consistent, implemented and measured.
We often say that it is better to have a marketing plan that you feel is 80 per cent complete (in
terms of strategy) but 100 per cent implemented in a consistent manner. Take one step at a
time, but don’t sit around talking about it, do something!

Good luck and keep up the good work.
END
APPENDIX
Tactics ‐ Sample action plan (tactics) for a small business
Activity Number Responsibility By When Cost
1. Employ a designer to brand xyz
a. Logo
b. Colours
c. Fonts
d. Other graphics
e. Strapline
2. Update new business opportunity profile
3. Pricing
a. Further research into competitor prices
4. Data lists (buy in or develop)
a. SME’s South Wales and South West
b. Training providers
c. Public Sector
d. Press contacts
5. Direct mail / email
a. Formalise e‐newsletter
b. Run campaign over 3 month period to test
c. Follow up with calls
d. Appointment setting
6. Telemarketing
a. Investigate costs of using 3rd party
b. Develop & test call plans
7. Develop campaign plan (physical)
a. Schedule activities


b. Allocate resources
8. Action Plan (E.g. SME’s)
a. Fact find via trade associations
b. Check with network if they have any contacts
c. Select 10 key companies
d. Call/ direct mail / email with opportunity ideas
e. Follow up calls with the objective of getting an appointment
f. Presentation
g. Proposal
9. Events
a. Visit local networks to obtain further market research and make
contacts
b. Investigate costs of joining networks
10. Presentation
a. PowerPoint
b. Presentation pack for visits
11. PR
a. Create several press releases for publication and publish with
i. WebPR
ii. Contact local press
iii. Contact national press
iv. Arrange a launch stunt
b. Create expert articles for publication in other journals / online
i. Identify journals / online sites and contacts
ii. Call / direct mail / email
iii. Follow up

12. Collateral
a. Business cards
b. Brochure
c. Letterheads
d. Email template
13. Website Plan
a. Specification
b. Graphics
c. Copy
d. Keywords
e. Titles
f. Ecommerce
g. Payment Service provider (e.g. Protx, Worldpay)
h. Bank
i. Domain name
j. Hosting package
k. Google ad word campaigns (first 3 months to test)
l. Web submissions
m. Banner ads
n. Terms and conditions
o. Privacy statement
14. Partnership opportunities
a. Explore possibilities for becoming an affiliate /partner
b. Call other relevant parties and using a set of prepared objectives,
make telephone calls.
15. Join relevant associations

16. Develop legal documents
a. Contracts ‐ customers
b. Service level agreement with suppliers/customers
c. Delivery terms
d. Finance agreements / credit terms
e. Proposal template
f. Understand distance selling regulations
17. Implement CRM
18. Marketing Implementation
a. Identify and employ full time marketing assistant
b. Marketing management (1 day per month)


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