Here are our complimentary articles. Feel free to browse them as you wish.
Situation Analysis for Marketing Plans that You Develop – Your First Strategic Step
Rushing into a marketing plan for your product or business without first creating a situation analysis is a recipe for failure. Our natural bias makes us miss important clues to what people are buying and how to sell them. This article provides a brief overview of the situation analysis for the marketing plans you create and a little about how to develop them.
http://greatmarketingplantips.com/marketing/situation-analysis-for-marketing-plans/
Small Business Marketing Plans – Why So Many Suck
Boiler plate, fill-in-the-blanks marketing plans are a large reason why so many small businesses have problems. In general, from our schools and training programs, big-business thinking and processes get applied to smaller businesses, sometimes with a few guerilla marketing tools thrown in.
But almost no small business marketing plans address your or your company’s unique personality and how to ensure those qualities in how you market — or, especially, the unique strengths and limitations of smaller business.
For example, how do you achieve your goals with limited resources? Or more importantly, what are your specific goals? This article tries to open your eyes to some of the issues and opportunities available for smaller businesses.
http://greatmarketingplantips.com/marketing/small-business-marketing-plans/
Why Strategic Marketing Plans Can Be So Valuable
There’s a natural tendency to not create strategic marketing plans because of the time and effort involved. But the result is, you end up using one or two isolated tactics to bring in customers and miss the greater opportunity of a coordinated strategic plan.
For example, the strategic marketing plan makes it easier to combine tactics like advertising, website landing pages, email, etc., to capture ready-buyers while holding onto prospects who have not yet made a decision. Many potential buyers need to get to know you before they are comfortable buying from you, so the process may require several combined tactics over a period of time. Developing annual strategic marketing plans gets you to think through the process for both these quick-buyers and the slower-buyers.
Strategic marketing plans also help you take advantage of seasonal spikes, for holidays and slower periods, where you could increase spending to take advantage of more or fewer buyers during a particular time of the year. This article reviews some of the key issues involved.
http://greatmarketingplantips.com/marketing/strategic-marketing-plans/
Small Business Marketing Plan – Breaking the Rules and Thriving
Smaller businesses have so many opportunities combined with serious limitations. Unfortunately, schools generally remind us of the limitations without highlighting the incredible opportunities available.
To truly succeed, a small business must break many of the rules and counter the conventional thinking of larger businesses. However, rarely do we see a small business marketing plan coming from a school that reflects much of this out-of-the-box-thinking that is essential for smaller businesses.
I believe the reason is simple. Many teachers and professors consider small business boring compared to, say an Apple Computer, with its sexy products and cool advertising.
But the truth is, there is an excitement in understanding how a smaller business transitions from a survival mode — just making a living — to a thriving mode. This article reviews many of these issues.
http://greatmarketingplantips.com/marketing/small-business-marketing-plan-breaking-rules/
Sales and Marketing Plans – What They Are and How They Work
When personal selling is an important part of your attracting buyers, partners, etc., sales and marketing plans can be crucial in getting you to create a strategic process for bringing in revenue and growing the business .
Guess what? Unless you live in a cave, personal selling is somehow involved in virtually every business — even if you are crouched by your computer with an Internet or writing business. Top web marketers are on the phone getting partners to promote their products and services to the partners’ audiences. Writers are trying to get publishers and audiences to buy their work.
If selling is important to you, particularly if you have salespeople and distributors, or if you are involved with personal selliing or networking, understanding the selling process can be invaluable.
This extensive article goes through many key aspects of selling and managing people who sell – briefly covering elements of both HOW-TO-SELL and HOW-TO-MANAGE-SALESPEOPLE and THE SELLING PROCESS..