By Patrick Rea MCIM MIPR MIPS, Rea-TMA Marketing Group

How to achieve Marketing Excellence?

Marketing excellence requires the purposeful, planned activity necessary to a) anticipate and b) fulfill client needs profitably. It is your biggest investment opportunity ever.

Successful marketing offers you control over the future of your business, the projects you will undertake and ultimately your financial and career destiny. By following the key principles summarised below, you can start to reap a return worth many times your investment in marketing. It will help to build the ‘brand value’ of the business, and this will assist in attracting potential VC and other funding.

Marketing involves a two-way communication process, in which a) you identify, understand and quantify client wants and needs and competitive forces and b) educate the client and communicate persuasively the matching applications and benefits of your product/service solution.

The Marketing Plan
Every business should have a marketing plan, or ‘blue-print’ for growth: a map, so you know where you are going and how best to get there. You can then regularly measure performance, question your assumptions and re-assess your strategy and plan of action. In rapidly changing markets, it is essential to remain ‘on target’, and to have the objectivity and flexibility to recognise and adapt to new opportunities and threats as they arise.

Success requires you to work on your business, not just in it.
The marketing plan is also a key element in the business plan, for the benefit of investors, to support your financial projections.

Key elements of planning are described below.

Objectives & Outcomes
Consider your objectives – ‘well-formed outcomes’ - for the business. Q: Where do you plan for your business to be in 12 months… in 24 months time? (Any longer time-frame is probably unrealistic). Consider targets for revenue, costs, profitability, services, products, equipment, location, staffing. Start with a review of the results over the last 12/ 24 months and then project forward – based on your current situation - with simple, ambitious but realistic targets.

Determine the objective in advance for every marketing activity - and then measure.

Your Products & Services
What do you really sell? What are the features and, most importantly, the benefits for clients? For each benefit ask yourself the question “which means that…”, to uncover the core benefits for clients – to arrive at issues for the client, such as ‘more revenue streams’, ‘higher profits’, ‘cost savings’ or ‘peace of mind’.

Identify competitive/ alternative products and services and then decide what makes yours unique, compared to competitors. Quantify the benefits wherever possible..

Your Clients & Industry Sector
Who, exactly, are your targeted clients for these products/service? Identify them by their use of similar or ‘substitute’ services to your own – and by the industry sector, company size, location, their customer base and other relevant factors that qualify them for your product/ service. Consider the profile of businesses to whom you have sold successfully in the past.

Now you can identify a specific ‘niche’ to which you can market cost-effectively and manageably.
Next, identify to which people/ ‘positions’ in these companies you need to market. For ‘blue chip’ client prospects, it is often eight separate departmental decision-makers or influencers – one or more each in IT, marketing, distribution, design, sales and planning for example. Find out and recognise the organisational ‘culture’ and departmental needs: how do they like to buy? Who decides, when and how? What are the budgets and who sets them?

Meet with buyers and ask them these two key questions: “ What do you want from (your product/service)?” and “ How will this help you?”. Their answers will enable you to identify their real requirements and the matching key benefits for you to promote.

Look ‘through and beyond’ the organisation, to the client’s customer base or audience – understand your clients’ commercial needs, and help them to justify buying from you.
Gather information on the industry and potential competitors: from web sites, brochures, press articles and by asking around.

Finally, a database is essential, to capture and store information on each company, relevant competitors, client needs, people and other parameters – for mailings and to monitor your contact with the prospect.

You should by now have the basis for a marketing Strategy: a plan that sets out what you are marketing, to whom, the resources required and also the ‘main thrust’ for communicating and delivering your solution.

SWOT
Can you list your business Strengths, Weaknesses (internal to your business), Opportunities and Threats (external in relation to your market position) ? Consider these key issues: finance, product/service competitiveness, staffing, equipment, innovation, marketing activity, selling skills - and others that are particular to your business and market. Write them down and review them regularly.

Sales Process
Marketing is a process: it involves, on average, seven significant contacts over a period of weeks, months (or even years) for companies selling to ‘blue-chips’. These contacts will involve: sending information (or making it available on the web), telephone contact, meetings (and more calls and meetings!). So don’t be disheartened if your marketing does not produce orders spontaneously.
You can and must ‘help the process along’, and always have an objective for each stage of that process - perhaps to further identify client needs, to educate or develop a relationship.
The process activities are the marketing Tactics.
Consider whether and how to develop and employ the following activities: client presentations, the web, video/CD, PR editorial, events and seminars, direct marketing (letters, brochures, e-newsletters), telephone sales and advertising. All have their relative strengths – consider getting some expert help from Rea-TMA or other specialists, to ensure you use these tactics effectively.
The best marketing is known as ‘direct response’ – it prompts the recipient to take action: if not to buy from you in reply, then perhaps to apply for a free CD presentation or report or (a limited) trial you might offer, or attend your seminar or perhaps to invite you to telephone.

Your Process
Consider your marketing process: why and how you develop products/ services, prepare support information, present your solution, respond to enquiries - through to keeping current/ former clients informed. Ensure you are responsive, flexible and persistent in this process – remember to make it as easy as possible for clients to do business with you. Consider for example: your response to e-mail and telephone calls, as well as service support and handling of complaints.

Your Message
All marketing material should communicate features and the matching benefits of your solution directly, fully and clearly. This is essential: ‘shorter’ does not mean ‘better’, in marketing material, and avoid over elaborate or obscure design concepts which get in the way of delivering information – the design should enhance and illustrate your message (usually). Continually re-visit and test your material.

Finally, ensure you have available (and promote) client testimonials - and consider how you can ‘reverse the risk’ (such as through guarantees). These measures may be crucial to entice cautious blue-chip buyers to sample your, as yet untried services.

ref: mbe00103
Copyright Rea-TMA: This document may be copied and distributed subject to the following conditions: 1. All text must be copied without modification and all pages must be included 2. All copies must contain Rea-TMA’s copyright notice

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