.

MARKETING PLAN - SAMPLE PLAN

1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

Marketing plan. A marketing plan is critical for the development of a successful business. The following table gives you an indication of the marketing process you should be going through in order to produce a coherent and achievable marketing plan. The large multi-national companies will spend many months on this and hold many, many internal meetings to debate the options. Smaller companies should at least consider the process and attempt to answer the same questions - although it should be much quicker/easier.

1. Mission 2. Objectives 3. Strategies 4. Tactics

(Plan and Time & Events)

What is the overall goal of the company? What are you trying to achieve (usually over the next year) must be measureable and specific

What resources need to be applied to achieve these objectives?

Which elements of the marketing mix are most appropriate? Which weapons in the marketing armoury should you be using? Set out the detailed action plan including the time frame for all elements?

You are currently promoting your products. Why do you promote them in the way you do? Why do you attend that exhibition? Why do you continue to reprint that leaflet? If you can satisfactorally answer questions like these, then that's great. My experience however is that all too often the answer is

"because we've always done it" or "because our competitors do it". These are not good reasons, and they invariably come about because the above planning process has not been gone through. The "classic" approach to developing a marketing plan would involve the above process. Those of you who are not used to a " market led" approach to business might be inclined to think that this approach is too theoretical and not of the real world. Let me attempt to quash that view immediately.

The most successful, efficient and profitable companies are those that have a very clear vision of what they are trying to achieve and how they will achieve it. If these goals (objectives) are successfully communicated within the organisation then everyone is pulling in the same direction and all resources have the same end in mind. Profitable business growth is then just a matter of time. Lets take a look at a simple hypothetical example for a car-manufacturing plant in the Midlands Objective. (The objective should be specific and measurable. E.g.) To capitalise on the growing customer demand for energy efficient cars and secure 10 per cent of the small car market by 2005. Strategy. (What resources need to be committed in order to achieve the above objective) By building a new 800 cc engine at our Midlands plant. By distributing direct to consumers and bypassing the traditional dealers and showrooms. Tactics. (What are the individual activities that need to be carried out in order to fulfil the above strategy) Explain the new distribution network to consumer and trade journalists. - PR campaign - Targetted radio advertisement campaign - Produce leaflet Set up a website able to take enquiries and orders etc Whether the above is a viable projet or not is not the point. What I am trying to demonstrate here is that the individual tactics (advertising, press releases, leaflets, sponsorship, etc) should be determined by the marketing objectives/strategies. Just because you have always attended the Birmingham car show for the last 25 years it is clearly now not a sensible use of your limited resources given that it is primarily attended by members of the traditional distribution system. Your current management team (especially your sales team) might argue very strongly for a continuation of attendance at the show. Also, given that you are attempting to do something different it is quite likely that your management team have little experience of the marketing tactics (armoury) available to support such a (new) strategy.

1.MARKETING PLANNING PROCESS - OVERVIEW

1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

The marketing planning process explained a little more STEP 1. The SWOT analysis is a very simple but effective means of carrying out an initial assessment of your business/product. STEP 2. Once you have done a SWOT analysis. What are your objectives & strategies? You must decide on these before you start to spend that limited marketing budget!! STEP 3. This is where you start to spend your marketing budget! These are the actual tactics you will use to promote your business in the most cost-effective way. One of the 4 'P's. some products are priced too expensively and hence never generate the volume they should, and some products are priced too cheaply and never generate the profit they should. One of the 4 'P's. Place refers to the means by which your customer acquires your product. This includes the actual place it is purchased (the shop, telephone, web page, warehouse) as well as the actual route of distribution. What are the products features? What are the benefits of those features? Do you need all those features? Is it the product the customer is really interested in? Or is it the back-up service? Critical to decide before you print that literature. Promotion: This is the P that most non marketeers are familiar with, as it includes the elements that most people believe to be marketing such as selling and advertising etc. Public Relations is, in my opinion, a vastly underrated and under-used weapon in the marketing armoury - particularly so because of its potentially low cost Advertising is the most widely known weapon in the marketing armoury, and tends to be the most expensive! You do not have to be Coca Cola to sponsor events/teams/whatever. Sponsoring a local charity can vastly increase your local visibility. You do not need to give money, it could be goods or services where the perceived value to them is much greater than the actual cost to you. In my twenty years experience of marketing one of the biggest problems I come across is the inappropriateness or mis-targeting of printed material Marketing has set the back-drop for the salesman to make the sale. When thought through as part of a targetted marketing plan, this back-drop can make the sale much, much easier to achieve. Maximise your business potential by producing quality pre-qualified leads or appointments for your sales team. A model for thinking through how to generate sales leads Clear, concise copywriting can make all the difference to your required end result - sales! The quality of the business decisions you take is dependent upon the quality of the information you have As with other weapons in the marketing armoury, be crystal clear about what you're trying to achieve with a promotional scheme. They can be very costly and very time-consuming if you allow your enthusiasm to run away with itself.

2.MARKETING PLANNING PROCESS

1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

How to write your own marketing plan

SWOT analysis: The SWOT analysis is a very simple but effective means of carrying out an analysis of a company/product.

The SWOT analysis is probably the first step in putting together a marketing plan or business plan for your product/business. If you would like help with your SWOT analysis, please contact us. Marketing plan. A marketing plan is critical for the development of a successful business. The following marketing plan table gives you an indication of the marketing process you should be going through in order to produce a coherent and achievable marketing plan. The large multi-national companies will spend many months on this and hold many, many internal meetings to debate the options. Smaller companies should at least consider the process and attempt to answer the same questions - although it should be much quicker/easier. Marketing mix. You have decided what your overall company mission is. You have then gone through the process of defining your marketing objectives, and defining the marketing strategies you will employee in order to meet those objectives. You are now moving into the decision-making process for defining the actual tactics you will utilise.

Which elements of the marketing mix are most appropriate? Which weapons in the marketing armoury should you be using?

3.SWOT ANALYSIS
1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

SWOT stands for Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats.

The SWOT analysis is a very simple but effective means of carrying out an analysis of a company/product.

The SWOT analysis is probably the first step in putting together a marketing plan or business plan for your product/business. If you would like help with your SWOT analysis, please contact us.

Strengths: what are the strengths of your product? What makes it better than other products? Are these
strengths being sufficiently exploited? Are they being sufficiently defended?

Weaknesses: what are the weaknesses of your product? What makes it inferior to other products? Are there
strategies you should be adopting to offset these weaknesses? Should you be removing these weaknesses completely?

Opportunities: what external factors are there that could be embraced if appropriate resources were
allocated? (One of the biggest opportunities, especially for a small business, must be the setting up of a web site. Click here to see the small business package.)

Threats: what external factors are there that threaten to reduce your market share? Strengths

No 2 brand in this market sector Very strong customer loyalty to the brand Further product improvements due for launch within next 6 months will offer real competitive advantages

Weaknesses

Brand not so appealing to youth market Product specification means it is difficult to supply variants at short notice

Opportunities

Government legislation about to be introduced will enable us to make additional product claims New technology being developed will mean a re-allignment of the market sector

Threats

Usage figures suggest that customers in this sector are using these products less frequently because of health concerns.

The above table gives an idea of what some of the major issues might be under the four main headings. This is a very simple exercise that all businesses should do, not least because of its simplicity. It also forces you to take a much more global view of your business - something which many owner/managers find very difficult when their working day is completely dominated by day-to-day firefighting activities Once you have completed this task, you should proceed to the marketing plan. Why not recruit the hourly consultancy services of a marketing professional?

5.MARKETING MIX
1. overview 7. price 2. planning 8. promotion 3. swot 9. place 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

13. advertising

14. sponsorship

15. sales

Marketing mix. You have decided what your overall company mission is. You have then gone through the process of defining your marketing objectives, and defining the marketing strategies you will employ in order to meet those objectives. You are now moving into the decision-making process for defining the actual tactics you will utilise.

-- elements of the marketing mix.

McCarthy identified the four P's of the marketing mix (40 years ago!)

Product: Defines the characteristics of your product or service that meets the needs of your customers.

Price: Decide on a pricing strategy - do not let it just happen! Even if you decide not to charge for a service (a loss leader), you must realise that this is a conscious decision and forms part of the pricing strategy. Promotion: This includes all the weapons in the marketing armoury - advertising, selling, sales promotions, Public Relations, etc. Place (or route of distribution): Some of the revolutions in marketing have come about by changing this P. Think of telephone insurance and the internet! A bit of lateral thinking here might reap rewards for your business. The leap forward in thinking at the time was that it put the customer at the forefront of the company thinking. Although marketing has got much more sophisticated over the years, I still find this model a very useful way of communicating to non-marketers exactly what marketing is all about. There are a vast array of circumstances that will dictate which elements of the marketing mix are to be employed and in which proportion. If you have put sufficient time into accurately defining your marketplace, your market segment, your product positioning, and your unique selling propositions then it becomes much easier to carry out this task. I cannot stress this point strongly enough. Taking time to think through your marketing strategy forces you to take some very difficult decisions. The most difficult ones are those where you decide NOT to do certain things; such as deciding certain market sectors are not key to your company's success due to the difficulty in competing effectively. The benefits of taking such decisions are that it really helps you to focus on a more limited (and achievable) set of objectives. It then becomes much clearer which elements of the marketing mix need to be used, and hence you achieve profitable results from your marketing budget. A few years ago I took on a senior marketing role within a large organisation and one of the biggest problems I experienced over the initial weeks was a constant supply of "promotional opportunities" being offered up by a whole range of agencies and promotional companies. Because I had not inherited a clearly defined marketing strategy I could not decide which of these opportunities were good and which were inappropriate. Although this is a frustrating situation to be in, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I could put together an agreed marketing strategy and then cherry pick the most appropriate of those promotional ideas. The point is that less experienced managers can easily become totally snowed under by such an array of conflicting and costly opportunities. This then leads to a promotional campaign based on "which agency sent in the glossiest brochure" rather than on a promotional campaign that supports the marketing objectives/strategies

6.MARKETING MIX - PRODUCT

1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

What are the products features? What are the benefits of those features? Do you need all those features?
Where a product is technically orientated it is not uncommon for the product to contain features that have dubious benefits as far as the customer is concerned. These features might be very clever, or even technically brilliant but unless they can be appreciated by the customer and perceived to be of use by the customer then they have no relevance. Now this in itself is not necessarily a problem except that products with added features usually cost more to manufacture. Your profits are hit.

Alternatively, I have been involved in the marketing of technical products where some of the more basic requirements for a successful product are overlooked or ignored - usually because the feature the customer would like to see is not a technical feature. An example here is where I was involved with the marketing of the installation of security products such as burglar alarms. In the company, dominated by engineers, the product supplied was sometimes over specified and yet the time spent with customers explaining the way it worked was minimal. And on many occasions the customer was left with either no instruction booklet at all or was left with a document that more resembled a technical manual! All the customer really needed was something which sets out in layman's terms exactly how to use the product. How will the product be serviced? Is it the product you are really interested in or the back-up service behind it? Does Hewlett Packard make more money by selling printers or by selling print cartridges and other ancillary products/services? A clear understanding and recognition of points like this will have a dramatic impact on, for example, your pricing strategy!

Depending on how important this is to you will obviously determine how much resource you put into this area and how much expertise you choose to develop. It may be that the development of a thorough and efficient servicing operation provides your company with the competitive edge you are looking for. Alternatively, removing all support for your product and directing your customers to alternative companies might enable you to reduce your overheads substantially and give your product a different competitive edge - that of cost (and hence price).

Is there an opportunity for expanding the product range? In the personal finance market, if you already have a customer who is purchasing a mortgage from you it is not inconceivable that he would be interested in purchasing a pension plan or an insurance policy from you also. Sometimes the inclusion of additional products like this are not as obvious as it might seem and a bit of lateral thinking is called for.

7.MARKETING MIX - PRICE

1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

As has been already stated in, price is one of the four Ps in the marketing mix and is yet another weapon in the marketing armoury. The price you decide to charge for a product or service can support its positioning. Likewise a pricing which appears to be out of synchronisation with the product and with the other marketing elements will only confuse customers and hence lead to lower sales.

A situation I commonly encounter is where a company bases its selling price on the cost of the product plus an internally agreed percentage or margin. This calculation is done irrespective of product or market sector or customer perceived value.

This means that some products are priced too expensively and hence never generate the volume they should, and some products are priced too cheaply and never generate the volume or profit they should. Also be aware of the salesman's anecdotal evidence that price seems to be the only factor that a customer considers in making a purchasing choice. A huge amount of research has been done on this subject. Whereas the salesman will generally place price as the number 1 factor in a list of factors such as delivery, service backup, functionality, etc; customers will place it as only the number 3 or number 4 factor. The production of good sales presentation material can help enormously here in that the salesman can be guided to promote other positive aspects of the product or service on offer and hence build up its perceived value to customer. If there is no attempt by the company to influence the sales story then invariably it will be driven by the customer and this can lead very quickly to a debate on price and nothing else. To take this argument a little further it is quite possible to sell exactly the same product to two different customers and charge radically different prices. This is simply because the customers operate in different market sectors and value the product quite differently.

Do you have a clearly defined and written pricing policy? I am always surprised by the number of companies who do not seem to have thought through all eventualities and decided how to charge for the various scenarios. A well thought through strategy can give you the ability to sell the same products at vastly different prices to different market sectors without upsetting any of your customer base. Is your product a loss leader? By offering a product at a greatly reduced price you can generate a lot of interest from customers in a relatively short period of time and give yourself the opportunity to generate more business from those customers in the fullness of time. It can even be worth your while to make a loss on this product.

8.MARKETING MIX - PROMOTION

1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

Promotion: This is the P that most non marketers are familiar with, as it includes the elements that most people believe to be marketing such as selling and advertising etc. Unfortunately it is these same people who underestimate what marketing can do.

A huge amount of work should have been done prior to arriving at this stage in the market planning process if a promotion is to be successful and profitable.

Too many managers who have not been exposed to a market led approach all too often jump straight to this stage in the process and commence to waste large sums of money and effort. Even worse, they recruit a full-time marketing person to sort out the ailments of the company and then expect the marketing person to produce a new corporate brochure which will suddenly turnaround the fortunes of the company.

If a company is not generating the sales or profits it should, then it is usually not simply a failing of the company's promotional tactics! It is usually something much more fundamental than this.
Hence the benefit of bringing in a marketing consultant such as myself in order to take a more global look at the company's weaknesses. This P in the marketing mix deals with all the communication vehicles such as PR, sales, advertising, etc. these topics are covered in other pages of this site.

9.MARKETING MIX - PLACE

1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

Place refers to the means by which your customer acquires your product. This includes the actual place it is purchased (the shop, the telephone, the web page, the warehouse) as well as the actual route of distribution.

The distribution chain

Most consumer goods are purchased from a retailer, who purchase them from a wholesaler/distributor, who purchase them from the manufacture. If the goods were imported there might be more merchants in this distribution chain. Sometimes, this distribution chain can be bypassed or leapt over. In the security industry, some manufacturers of security systems sell their product directly to end users at the same time as selling them to security installation companies at the same time as selling them to national distributors. The point is that these different distribution channels can provide different levels of profitability and they can quite happily run alongside each other provided a well thought through pricing strategy has been decided upon. For example a consumer is likely to want only one variant of your product and expect to purchase it immediately. A retailer is likely to want limited stock of a number of variants and not expect to pay for 60 days. A distributor is looking at large volumes of product in all its variants at greatly discounted rates. Your ditribution policy needs to take account of these variables. If it does not, then you will find yourself in a very embarassing position with a customer sooner or later which would result in the loss of a sale. The complication to this approach however is that you need to consider the fact that your 'customer' might be a consumer, a retailer or a distributor and that each of these customers will be looking for perhaps different features or different levels of service.

The Internet.
Needles to say the internet offers a new "Place" to many business sectors. It has enabled many middlemen to be bypassed resulting in a price advantage to be offered to the customer followed by the inevitable increase in volume for the seller. This could be selling direct to your consumer and missing out the retailer, or it could be direct to your retailer, missing out the wholesaler.

Business growth for you?

Is there any way you could generate extra volume on the internet? Given the relatively low set-up costs, you should be seriously looking at this avenue! You do not need to set up a complex site, we may be able to set up a simple income-generating site for only a few hundred pounds. I personally favour this approach because it gives you enormous flexibilty in developing your commercial site - especially useful

for small businesses with little experience in this medium. You literally develop the site over a few months as you uncover the secrets to success for your market sector. Costs are minimal. How many small business-owners would like to take on a new business-building strategy that offered almost no risk?

10.MARKETING & SALES LITERATURE

1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

In my twenty years experience of marketing, one of the biggest problems I come across is the inappropriateness or mis-targeting of printed material.

Who reads your sales literature?

Do YOU read the direct mail, sales letters, and email that turn up on your desk? Probably not! But occasionally you will come across an exception apiece that captures your attention. A piece that will draw you to the sender's message, because the message is clear and genuine and creates a need for that product where a need may not previously have existed. So, is your company producing the well read or the unread literature? Can you tell the difference?

Who writes your sales copy at the moment? Is it too technical?

Many companies will give the responsibility for writing the copy for sales leaflets to the relevant product experts within their company. That makes sense doesn't it? Not necessarily! The product specialist has a technical bias and usually finds it very difficult, if not impossible to pitch the communication at the right level. One just needs to look at some of the companies selling computer hardware and software to see examples of this. Additionally, different customers will require the information to be pitched differently, so you may well need 2 leaflets selling exactly the same product, targeted at 2 quite different customer segments.

Who writes your copy at the moment? Is it targeted?

Another important issue to consider is ensuring your leaflet range has been organised and targeted correctly. Your internal product experts will probably produce literature based on your product range i.e. one leaflet on product A, one leaflet on product B, etc. The marketing approach (or market-led approach) is more likely to recommend a range of leaflets based on customer groupings. Therefore, customer group X could be interested in products A and B, while

customer group Y could be interested in products C and D. This approach is much more likely to generate additional business. It also lends itself much more effectively to mailing and telesales campaigns for example.

What we can do for you

We have an understanding of and access to a range of technical expertise and a long and successful history of sales and marketing campaigns. Together, these skills enable us to efficiently and effectively translate your selling argument from your product experts, making it relevant and attractive to the appropriate customer group.

Producing your Marketing Literature

Supporting product literature must present your company image very clearly and professionally. The detail and text are as important as the overall visual image that it projects. When producing your literature it is vital to focus on the benefits of your product or service, and just produce a list of specifications to the reader, and not just list specifications and features. You need to be very clear about your focus before producing your literature.

What is the purpose of this literature? General company information; specific product details and benefits; specialist information? Who is the target readership of this literature? You need to absolutely sure you have this right. It can be very easy to lose focus and end up with something vague like working mothers between the ages of 34 and 42. That is far too general, and if you miss the mark here, your literature is worthless. How do you get them to read it? Actually, getting their attention is pretty easy keeping it is the tricky bit. A clear message with a logical flow, and an understanding of your readers needs will keep them reading. If your research has been done correctly, you should be able to create a scenario that is familiar and one that your product can improve. A clear explanation of its benefits should help create a desire for your product or service. Your readers need to relate your product to real-world situations, and this is where a well-written case study can prove invaluable. What is your budget for this literature? This will help you focus on the level of quality you should expect from this literature? Who is the best person within your organisation to co-ordinate this literature? Marketing department, technical staff etc. Should you offer freebies? Free stuff can be useful and of significant value. Either premium items or information, it should be both useful and consistent with your company's image and product or service. Be very sure that, as with your product line, your freebies are of good quality and give a favourable impression.

So, before you start putting together your sales literature think long and hard about what you want it to do for you. Bad sales literature can be worse than no sales literature. Do consider having your sales literature professionally produced. We can work within most budgets, and understand the financial constraints often faced by small businesses. Please let us know what you are looking for; we are friendly and professional and would love to help. We can work with even the most basic ideas, and will help you work the smallest thoughts into targeted and meaningful sales literature.

11.PUBLIC RELATIONS / MEDIA RELATIONS

1. overview 7. price 13. advertising

2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship

3. swot 9. place 15. sales

4. marketing plan 10. literature

5. marketing mix 11. public relations

6. product 12. promos

Public Relations is, in my opinion, a vastly underrated and under used weapon in the marketing armoury - particularly so because of its potentially low-cost. With advertising, for every 10,000 spent you will be able to acquire 10,000 worth of advertising space -- whether it be on TV, on radio, or in a magazine. The beauty of a Public Relations campaign is that 10,000 of spend can generate 100,000 or more of communication space if you know what you're doing.

There is a range of activities which can be included under the "public relations" banner and might involve liaison with a whole raft of organisations such as opinion formers, trade associations, influencers and of course journalists. As mentioned earlier however (literature) the argument needs to be pitched quite differently at all these various groups. By composing copy aimed at these different groups and incorporating it into press releases etc. a very efficient and productive communication programme can be implemented for relatively little budget. Once again the key is the ability to understand what information these different readers would find interesting and want to read. Let's assume you have a locally based or regionally based business, and your customers are therefore local consumers. Your local newspaper is constantly looking for stories to publish and most businesses (even yours) will have events every now and again that are worthy of coverage in the local press. A simple press release can be put together and, provided it is pitched appropriately, stands every chance of being picked up by the local journalist. The same situation exists if you are operating in the business to business environment. These local newspapers still carry business sections of some description and hence would be interested in local business stories.

If this strategy is successfully followed, over a period of time opportunities invariably present themselves which really can provide your company with openings to communicate what would not be available to any of your competitors.

The Trade Press

Do you liaise regularly with your various trade publications, either in person or in writing? It has never ceased to amaze me how often I acquire novel and inexpensive marketing ideas over a cup of coffee with an editor or journalists from one of these publications. Why not let us visit some of your trade journalists and open up these communication channels? Another by-product of this approach is that very often they will then come to your company and ask your advice and views when they next come to write an article on your industry/market sector. There is no reason why members of your own management team cannot takeover from these activities once I have been able to set up the core system. Hence my comments at the beginning of this page about the cost effectiveness of the PR weapon.

10 tips for an effective Press Release

The first simple step towards starting a public relations campaign. Here are10 tips to help your press release makes the news. 1. Make sure the information is as newsworthy as possible. 2. Tell the audience that the information is intended for them and why they should continue to read it. 3. Start with a brief description of the news, then distinguish who announced it, and not the other way around. 4. Ask yourself, "How are people going to relate to this and will they be able to connect?" 5. Make sure the first 10 words of your release are effective, as they are the most important. 6. Avoid excessive use of adjectives and fancy language. 7. Deal with the facts 8. Provide as much contact information as possible: Individual to contact, address, phone, fax, email, Web site address. 9. Make sure you wait until you have something with enough substance to issue a release. 10. Make it as easy as possible for the journalists to do their jobs. 11. Do not give up! How many customers buy from you the first time they hear from you? The same situation exists here - but establishing contact with them is the first hurdle.

12.PROMOTIONAL SCHEMES
1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

As with other weapons in the marketing armoury, be crystal clear about what you're trying to achieve with a promotional scheme. They can be very costly and very time-consuming if you allow your enthusiasm to run away with itself. Conversely it can be a very targeted weapon and an appropriate creative approach can increase its perceived value well above its actual cost. An example I would cite of this is a promotion carried out by a leading condom brand to young people to encourage them to carry condoms just in case. The condom key-ring was developed which was a small plastic sleeve on a key-ring and just large enough to hold a single condom.

These plastic sleeves were produced with appropriate "slogans" on the front face. The result of this promotion was that the company were inundated with requests for this item by both consumers and health care professionals involved in promoting safer sex. This then resulted in considerable media attention and hence considerable free advertising of the brand. It even resulted in this promotional item being sold to health care professionals as they proceeded to be of great help in spreading the safer sex message. This promotion did not cost money; it actually turned in a profit! Your promotional scheme might be aimed at:

consumers your retailers your distributors

With your customer audience of consumers/retailers/distributors. The objective of your promotional scheme might be:

to generate new customers to entice current customers to use the product more frequently to entice current customers to purchase other products from your company to reward current customers

Suffice it to say promotional schemes can be put together to meet a wide range of marketing objectives. All I would add is that they can become quite costly and they can take up considerable management time if they are to work effectively.

13. ADVERTISING
1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

Advertising is the most widely known weapon in the marketing armoury. This is a paid medium involving radio, TV, poster-sites, press, or direct mail. Each medium offers several advantages and disadvantages which I will touch on below. However, it is not my intention to say much about advertising for the following reasons.

1. 2. 3. 4.

As far as small businesses are concerned, this is the marketing weapon they are most familiar with and have most expeience of. It can be a very expensive weapon and one that has very often left the small business owners feeling 'cheated' because it has not generated the results they were looking for. One of the goals of this site is to point out to small businesses that there are a number of other weapons that can be used to communicate their wares apart from advertising, and that these other methods need not be expensive. Any advertising that is done by a small business is (or should be) very targetted and as such would not necessarily fit into any generalised 'rules' I might set out here.

Television
Television, with its properties of sound and moving pictures, makes it the fastest and most dynamic medium for selling products and services. Also consider the fact that most people relax in front of the television and tend to "surrender" to it. The brain becomes relatively inactive, therefore advertisements with a production quality that are often far better than the quality of the surrounding programmes can have quite a dramatic impact. This is particularly useful for products with minimal intrinsic interest whose advertisements in the press for example would be largely ignored.

Television is a useful medium for telling a story or for demonstration purposes. The fact that viewers are very often in a relaxed mode also leads to one of the disadvantages of this medium -- namely that the message needs to be easily understood. It is not like a press advertisement where are you can re-read the information in order to clarify the message. Historically, television has been a pure mass media method of advertising and so has been used extensively by companies promoting F.M.C.G. (fast-moving consumer goods). With the explosion in television channels this is now not necessarily the case and a relatively high degree of targeting can be achieved.

Cinema
The cinema is superficially very similar to television. But with two key differences. 1. The audience tends to be much younger -- in the 15 to 25 age bracket. This is good for certain clothes manufacturers as well as for less (cool) service providers such as banks and building societies. 2. The audience is much more awake and hence more inclined to become involved in a more complicated story.

Radio
With the high regionalisation of radio stations this medium can be very popular with small to medium-size companies attempting to build up a local or regional business. It goes without saying that the production costs of radio advertisements are a lot less than a TV or cinema advertisement and of course the cost of the advertising space itself is a lot less because of the greatly reduced size of audience.

Press
Press is a static medium - words and still pictures. It is therefore the prime medium for communicating information in detail such as financial interest rates, performance of cars, etc., etc.. Also, press advertisements can be kept and referred to at a later date.

Reading is a dynamic activity and the mind is very much awake. The reader is very likely to be actively seeking information and when the advertising message coincides with the reader's interest the probability of the sale is massively increased. However, the readers are also very selective and given the huge number of printed advertisements available it is very easy for them to skip over the vast majority of them. The key objective therefore in press advertising is to make sure the attention of the reader is grabbed!

Posters
The poster, because of the way in which it is seen, is very different from newspaper or magazine advertisements. Reading is usually a private activity and therefore newspapers and magazines can carry advertisements for personal products which could look out of place in more public settings such as on television or on posters. Conversely, the

poster is a highly public medium that can be seen by crowds of people at any one time. They also have the very distinct advantage of being at very specific locations. This factor has been extensively used by the large supermarkets who wish to make the local population aware of the proximity of their local store. Of course the major disadvantage is the fact that posters are usually seen on the move, often at 40 mph, and of the hundreds we pass in any given week very, very few are actually looked at. Good posters demand strong graphics and few words!

14.SPONSORSHIP

1. overview 7. price 13. advertising

2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship

3. swot 9. place 15. sales

4. marketing plan 10. literature

5. marketing mix 11. public relations

6. product 12. promos

I am sure we can all think of companies who have used sponsorship to generate exposure for itself and its products. A certain insurance company has become a household name in the UK as a result of sponsoring cricket over many many years - even before sports sponsorship became so popular.

"Fine" I hear you saying "but we do not have a budget of many millions of pounds." I agree, but are there no similar but smaller scale examples in your area? Also sponsorship does not necessarily mean that you have to provide money, you could be simply providing the product you normally sell but for free or at a radically reduced price. The key is to provide something of high perceived value to an organisation that is of much lower cost to yourself. I give you an example of a company who had a very basic printing machine and which was largely unused in its basement. I struck a deal with a national charity that desperately needed printed promotional material as part of its fund-generating process. By agreeing to print their literature for them at very very little cost my company was given the credit on the bottom of all printed material. The Result. My company received national visibility and achieved "independent" endorsement by an influential charity - for almost no budget at all.

15.SALES
1. overview 7. price 13. advertising 2. planning 8. promotion 14. sponsorship 3. swot 9. place 15. sales 4. marketing plan 10. literature 5. marketing mix 11. public relations 6. product 12. promos

It bothers me enormously the amount of times I have had conversations with senior managers who seem to think that sales is the same as marketing.

I started my commercial career many years ago as a salesman working in the pharmaceutical industry. I was very privileged to have received a great deal of training from my employers and in particular I remember a slide which spoke a great deal to me. It went something like this ......................

Who is your company? How long has your company been around? What is your company good at? How big is your company?

What is your company's product range?

What sort of reputation does your company have? Why should I be interested in your products? Who are you? Can I believe what you tell me? What sort of training have you had?

Now what did you say you wanted? You want me to buy a product from you?

The point is that the customer needs to be satisfied on a very wide range of questions before he is in the position to talk seriously with a salesman about the purchase of product. Usually, if these questions have not been answered then it is impossible for a sale to be made. If the salesman himself needs to attempt to answer all these questions, it will probably take him an enormous amount of time and probably over a prolonged period of time and many visits not an efficient approach.

Conversely a marketing campaign employing a wide range of weapons in the marketing armoury can answer many of these questions before the salesman even enters the office of the customer. Thus, marketing has set the back-drop for the salesman to make the sale.

Selling material?

Do your sales force have all the selling material they require to do a professional job? In a competitive market place if your salesmen do not have well rehearsed and logical arguments for why your product or service is better, then

the customer will drive the conversation onto the subject he knows will put the salesman on his back foot - price. However, if the salesman can control the conversation by discussing other positive aspects then the probability of sales success at a more profitable price is vastly increased. If you have adopted some of the other weapons in the marketing armoury then has this been put together as part of the sales literature? Not only is this an effectve way of making sure your customer is aware of the professionalism of your company, but it is also another opportunity to ensure the conversation is within your control and hence away from the subject of price.