North Star Marketing provide a detailed overview of “10 hints that a company may need marketing help” based on their experience of small to medium sized companies.
1. Firstly, do you plan for the future? Usually companies will plan for the next year, three years and 5 years ahead to help support their business growth.
2. Do you communicate with your customers? Marketing is about two way communication which can mean talking and listening to your customers, not just advertising or trying to sell to them.
3. How much research and information have you gathered? It’s essential to understand your customer, their behaviour & buying patterns to maximise your profits as well as provide the right products and service to your customer. Research can take the form of qualitative and quantitative depending on the required information.
4. Analyse your market & Marketing campaigns. Sometimes the easiest ways to grow your business is to analyse what is there already – look closer at your customer, the market place (how and why people buy) and competitors as there may be a gap missed.
5. Evaluation. If your business is not evaluating their marketing efforts this may signal that marketing support is needed. Evaluation of campaigns can be simple, but it may require a trained marketer to help guide your business with their marketing knowledge.
6. Do you budget? Every marketing campaign should have a budget for marketing guidance. It’s necessary to set a budget so campaigns don’t get out of hand. It’s also important to ensure your business can afford the marketing campaign – so setting a budget is essential.
7. Numbers, numbers and numbers – know your market inside and out. How big is your market place and how much profit is there to be made? What channels can you sell through? Segment all of the customers in your marketplace by age, location, buying habit and other key demographics.
8. Everybody has competitors. Your competitors will be marketing their product in a different way to yours. What are they trying to be? How do you compare? What do customers think about their brand? Marketing help can establish these answers and are generally questions not asked by SMEs
9. What is your businesses USPs? The USPs are Unique Selling Points and you must have these to offer a product or service of genuine value. The USPs can include the cheapest product, the best quality or perhaps the most convenient product at that time (best example of convenience is purchasing a beverage on a plan – you can’t get one anywhere else so the price is quadrupled!)
10. How will your business be number 1 and remain there? This is a desire of all business owners – I want to be the biggest company. Well, it’s all well and god being the largest company but we always tell client’s “It’s better to be the most profitable, even if that is the 10th largest company”. Think about the profit margins on your product or service. How can these be improved? What can be done so as your profit is maximised? Businesses will survive or crumble based on their pricing and profit margins. Marketing help focuses on making campaigns and indeed businesses profitable.
It’s essential to get the right mix of marketing advice and help based on your companies need. Many SME’s do explore these questions and are not surprised by their market place. If marketing advice is required it’s better to gain this advice sooner rather than later to give the business the best chance of survival. Plus in the current economic climate you can be sure marketing help is at a cost available to all businesses.
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