The Best LinkedIn Tips For 2018

Marketing Planning is too important to leave to the marketers!

I hear it all the time ‘Why do I need a marketing Plan?’ or ‘We are too small to spend time planning our marketing sure it’s only for big companies!’. Wrong: marketing planning is for companies of any size who are serious about building their business, their brand and making money.

Let’s start with talking about what is Marketing? Simply put: It is a matching process between on one side what the market needs and on the other what a company can supply or deliver (it’s capability) with the goal of delivering a profitable competitive advantage. The other way of looking at it is how can you attract potential customers to consider what you are offering and to get them to buy from you while creating some form of competitive advantage.

As Peter Drucker, the Father of business consulting said: “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer" he also very wisely said “Marketing is not a function, it is the whole business as seen from the customer’s point of view.”

Bottom line is that without attracting customers a business will not survive. And to attract customers you need to understand the process of marketing and marketing planning along with the benefits it can and will deliver for a business.

Marketing planning should be a logical sequence of decisions and actions, helping a business develop products and services that meet the needs of a target market. The actual marketing plan is the driver of the business which will help a business grow or die! It’s objective is to turn strategy into tactics, bridging the gap between ambitions and actions.

To kick off any planning process you need to know the desired result: what exactly do you want to achieve, is the objective to launch a new product or service, generate new leads, increase sales, build brand awareness. You need to set specific and measurable goals that inevitably will be a sales number you want to achieve. Simple, well not really, many business owners start spending money without a thought on what they want to achieve so they end up with no means to measure if the marketing was a success and delivered an acceptable return on their investment (ROI).

A key fundamental to any marketing planning process is research and planning. Starting with market exploration: is there a gap in the market or put it another way: is there a market in the gap? And if so what is the market size and how much of the market are you looking for.

Who are the competitors, what are their strengths and weaknesses, what areas of the market are they not fulfilling, how will you compete against them in terms of quality, service offering, value, performance, reliability, innovation, convenience, location, price, delivery, brand, packaging, promotion, advertising and messaging.

You need to clearly define your target market. Who exactly will be buying your products or services, what are their needs and wants, how are they currently fulfilling those needs and why should they think about buying your products or services. What are their buying behaviours, interests, demographics, likes, dislikes. The research process is a time to listen and learn with the goal of making a better commercial decision leading to a more successful and profitable outcome.

How are you going to reach out to your target audience, what marketing channels are you going to use: traditional off-line advertising, trade shows, events, promotional offers or online campaigns such as Facebook advertising and social media?

By planning your marketing it will help the day to day running of the business allowing you to allocate resources and budget, focussing effort, improving products, launching new offerings, motivating your team, rewarding performance, increasing brand awareness, evolving and building your business.

How long should the marketing plan be? Well no one has the time to spend reading War and Peace! Write it so it will be read and used and not placed in the bottom drawer or on the top shelf in your office gathering dust. It should be as long or as short to be effective – why not aim to get it down on just one page – here is an link to the Get 2 Growth One Page Marketingplan site – worth checking it out.

If you are looking for help to work on your business growth or marketing strategy why not call or email me. (M: +353 87 2555263, E: howard@kentconsulting.ie)

Are you struggling with trying to grow your business?

Are you having sleepless nights worrying about your business? Do you feel constantly overwhelmed, stressed out and out of control? Are your employees running your business ‘their’ way, constantly complaining and not delivering the service your customer wants?

Does this sound like you, all stressed out, exhausted or worse still thinking of throwing in the towel? I bet you thought none of these problems where planned when you decided to start your own business, right?

If you would like to get out of the daily grind in your business and be a Business Owner that enjoys your business and life while making the money you would like, there are two simple mindset shifts you need to make to start moving in this direction: 

1) You are now a Business Owner! One of the elite few who have made the shift. But this requires a completely different mind and skill-set than being an employee. You now need to start working “ON” your business rather than “IN” it! Without this shift, you will probably find yourself in the same place or maybe in a much worse position twelve months from now. 

2) Think of your business as a product rather than what you provide or do. What do I mean by this? Everything you do in your business should be all about developing a process and building equity. Have you seen the movie ‘The Founder’? If you haven’t then go see it. Its all about McDonalds Ray Kroc played by Michael Keaton who built the McDonalds brand into what it is today. Let’s face it McDonalds is not only a fast food chain but it is primarily a tried, tested and proven process to anyone that wants it and can pay the price to have it. Can you achieve such results in your business? 

What you need is a great product or service, well trained employees, a business process, a marketing system that works every time, a proven sales system, a financial system with KPI’s and an operations system. The objective is to leave nothing to chance in your own business, everything must work together like a well oiled machine.

Think of how you can build your business into a turn-key operation that someone else would want that can be duplicated. Now you have a recipe for success. You will be in a position to get your life back, make more money than you ever thought you could and sleep like a baby at night.

To create a business that will work without you it takes time with the right mind and skill set. You cannot be expected to do on your own. You need to employee the right people for the job that needs to be done and not necessarily like-minded people but people who will bring specific expertise with them and be able to work as part of a team. In a lot of cases it makes economic sense to employ specialists or consultants to oversee certain aspects of the business while it is evolving and growing. Learning from their expertise while you focus on other areas.

Having a business that works which is profitable and sustainable is every Business Owners objective! So, if you are struggling with your business, cash flow, marketing, sales, people, process etc. I would really like to have a chat with you and show you in just a few minutes how you can evolve and turn your business around. Click https://my.timetrade.com/book/8C2RQ to schedule a 30 minute call with me now! I look forward to hearing from you!