THURSDAY: CONVERTING YOUR OBJECTIVES INTO ACTIONS PLANS.

These are three steps you have to go through to convert each of your objectives (from yesterday) into a strategy, or action plan:

• Look at the options.
• Consider the practicalities.
• Select the best route.

LOOK AT THE OPTIONS:

For the most objectives, you have set, you will that there are a number of ways to achieve them; in other words, you have the number of options.

For a moment, simply write down the possibilities. We’ll discuss how to pick the right one in a minute.

The important thing is to think as freely as possible to make sure you consider everything that might be useful. This is a process in which imaginative thinking and open-minded approach are valuable. Try to brainstorm ideas for this with the other people if you can; it’s an excellent way to generate ideas.

FIVE KEY AREAS OF MARKETING:

Most of your objectives will fall into one of these categories.

1. Increase awareness of your company and your product or services.
2. Increase existing customers loyalty.
3. Secure sales.
4. Generate higher turnover.
5. Increase your knowledge of your market.

MAKE IT MORE SPECIFIC:

Of course, they are not the whole story: each of the above points still begs several questions that need answering.

• Increase awareness through exhibitions.
• Increase loyalty by making more contacts with customers.
• Secure sales by improving staff training.
• Increase market knowledge by commissioning the research.

CONSIDER THE PRACTICALITIES:

The way to do this is to examine the implications of each option from a practical point of view. In each case you need to calculate:

• The potential revenue.
• The cost.
• The time implications.
• The staffing implications.
• The training.
• The transport implications.

You should have enough information to be able to do these calculations quite easily. Then you will be ready to weigh up the options against each other. If any of your calculations show that a particular option won’t be cost-effective, either revise it or abandon it.

SELECT THE BEST ROUTE:

If you find that there isn’t much to choose between two or more of the options, don’t waste time on deciding which options to take. If either will do the job equally well, pick either; it probably doesn’t matter which you choose.

There is one thing, however, you must consider: combining options.

TIP: WHEN IT COMES TO OBJECTIVES THAT RELATE TO INCREASING AWARENESS OF YOUR COMPANY, OR YOUR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES, YOU’LL FIND THAT SEVERAL APPROACHES WILL OFTEN WORK. THEY CAN FREQUENTLY BE MIXED WITH OFTEN SUPPORT EACH OTHER TO GIVE YOU A BETTER RESULT THAN THEY EVER COULD ALONE.

YOUR FINISHED ACTION PLAN:

At the end of all this, you will have a clear list of objectives, and you will have drawn up your action plan for meeting each one. This should not only outline how you will meet each objective but also give you a schedule for doing so.

SUMMARY:

Today you’ve gone through the process of converting your objectives into workable marketing strategy or action plan. You took the steps needed to work out how you’re going to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Some areas will be challenging and at times frustrating, especially if you don’t have all the information you need, and taking an educated guess will have to do.

 

With respect.

 

 

WEDNESDAY: FINDING YOUR OBJECTIVES.

1. YOUR CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS:

These are the things you absolutely must do well in order for your business to succeed.

• Reducing costs.
• Improving customers services.
• Speeding up lead times or delivery times.
• Developing new products.
• Improving quality.
• Increasing the size of your business base.
• Improving after-sales services.

For example, when it comes to reducing costs, critical to your success will probably be fairly precise factors such as reducing delivery or sales costs.

Use your competitor comparison table.

Double-check your facts.

The author says again, don’t forget to list your critical success factors.

2. YOUR OBJECTIVES:

the answers to your questions about products or services.

the information about your customers.

the information about your competitors.

and your SWOT analysis.

Set your timescale.

How far ahead are these objectives supposed to be set?

Are we talking next week’s plans or next year’s?

Start with a one-year plan, unless there’s an obvious reason not to, and revise this later if necessary. You will be reviewing your plan regularly, as we will see on SATURDAY, and every so often it will need a full update.

Set your priorities.

Your sales forecast:

To you estimate what your sales will be, you need to consider several factors:

• The market.
• The product or services.
• The competition.
• The customers.
• Contract payments.
• Seasonal payments.

DRAWING UP THE FORECAST:

The important thing is that you should register a profit. If you don’t, it’s no good tweaking the figures. You will have to adjust your entire operation until the forecast shows that you will be in profit.

Weekly or monthly??

Most businesses forecast monthly sales and find this sufficient. But if you’re in a fast-moving market, where you have to respond quickly to new trends, you may need to forecast on a weekly basis.

What does sales forecast look like?

A sale forecast can be just about as simple or as fancy as you like. To begin with a simple version, all you do is draw up a table with the next 12 months (or 52 weeks) across the top.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FOR SALES FORECASTS:

• The number of units of each product you expect to sell.
• At what (average) price you expect to sell each unit.
• Income earned and cash due as separate entries, especially where payments may be slow or delayed.
• Sales of each product to each customer type, where you are selling into more than one market.
• Sales by geographical location.

SUMMARY:

Today we made real progress towards creating a marketing plan. You know where you are right now and, even more vitally, have set your objectives based on your critical success factors.

The important issue now is to determine what needs to be placed and enabled, focusing on things that are absolutely essential to your current and future success. Then it’s a matter of knowing where you are going. So set yourself challenges, but make them realistic ones, and draw up a sales forecast, based on what you expect your sales to be and not on fantasy.

 

With respect.

TUESDAY: RESEARCHING THE ANSWERS.

Today you will learn about the places you can go to answers to your questions. you can research your answers from:

OFF-THE-SHELL INFORMATION:

The first place to find ready-made information is inside your head. So the first to do is to go through the list of questions you drew up and write down all the answers you are sure you already know.

YOUR OWN RECORDS:

This is one of the best places to start, and one of the many reasons for keeping through customers records.

For example, if you look at how your customers responded when you introduced an express delivery service – how many used it regularly, how many used it occasionally, and so on – you can start to answer the questions about delivery times.

DIRECTORIES AND WEBSITES:

These are some of the most useful directories and websites.

• BRAD (British Rate and Data) www1.bradinsight.com/
• Bureau van Dijk http://www.bvdinfo.com
• The Directory of British Associations http://www.cbdreserach.com
• Europages http://www.europages,com
• EXPO21XX http://www.expo21xx.com
• FITA (The Federation of International Trade Associations) http://www.fita.org
• Kompass gb.kompass.com/
• Marketsearch http://www.msearch.com
• The Municipal Yearbook Book
• The Retail Directory
• Solusource http://www.solusource.com
• The Source Book
• Wer liefert http://www.wlw.de
• Yellow Pages and Thomson Directories
• Zibb

TRADE ASSOCIATIONS AND REGULATORY BODIES:

Regulatory bodies such as Law Society and the British Medical Association, are often good sources of information, along with trade associations.

THE TRADE PRESS:

BRAD will give you a list of every trade and specialist magazine or newspaper you can imagine.

GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS:

Go to http://www.statistics.gov.uk in the UK or FedStats.gov or USA.gov in the US for list of government publications. If you need information about exporting, contact the Department for Business, innovation and Skills (BIS) in the UK or export.gov in the US.

YOUR LOCAL ENTERPRISES AGENCY:

This will be listed in the Yellow Pages under ‘Business Enterprise Agencies in the UK or Business Enterprise Programs (BEP)

YOUR CUSTOMERS:

The three categories of customers you can talk to are:

1. Existing customers: to find out why they buy from you.
2. Potential customers: to find out what would persuade them to buy from you.
3. Ex-customers: to find out why they stopped buying from you.

TALKING TO YOUR CUSTOMERS FACE TO FACE.

TELEPHONING YOUR CUSTOMERS

USING WRITTEN QUESTIONNAIRES

GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR RESEARCH:

• Keep your questions neutral.
• Don’t be ambiguous.
• Be consistent if you want to add up the answers.
• Don’t ask the customers to give up more than five or ten minutes of their time.
• Use multiple-choice questions on written questionnaires.
• Don’t expect an overwhelming response to postal questionnaires.

The author had mentioned one more book. If you want more information about conducting this kind of research, you will find another book in this series. SUCCESSFUL MARKET RESEARCH IN A WEEK.

You could able to find your answers from the internet, Forums, Blogs so on. And from the other people such as suppliers, picking competitor brochure and advisors.

RESEARCHING UNDER TIME OR BUDGET LIMITATIONS:

Ideally, always allow yourself a few weeks at least to put together a marketing plan. The work is likely to take a solid week or two but it will probably need to be spread over several weeks.

You will have to put the time available into answering the questions that fall into one of two categories.

• Questions that are important.
• Questions to which you can’t even hazard an answer.

SUMMARY:

However, with the information you have gathered today, you will have some well-researched and accurate answers by using four main sources of information.

• Off-shell-information.
• Customers.
• The internet.
• Other people.

 

With respect.

 

MONDAY: ASKING QUESTIONS.

There are two stages to this: asking the right questions, and finding out the answers. Today we are going to concentrate on the questions.

In order to establish where you are now, you need to ask specific, thoughtful questions about:

• Your product or services.
• Your customers and prospects.
• Your competitors.
• Your business.

QUESTIONS ABOUT PRODUCTS OR SERVICES:

What exactly is it that you’re marketing? You need to describe your product or services range and every variable that it has.

This is the main reason why businesses fail to construct a strong message that fulfils the needs of a market. They take for granted that the market place knows what they offer and what their offering will do for them.

Questions to ask about your offer  :

• What is our product or services?
• Where do the raw materials come from?
• What is the packaging line?

QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT SELLING?

• How is the product transported?
• Where is it sold?
• In what form does it reach the customer?
• Does it need explaining?
• Is it easy to use?
• How easy is it to increase production if sales go up?

Another way of coming up with the right questions is to ask a focus group of your ‘A class’, those who are loyal, love your services and are a pleasure to work with. They can ask questions of you that you may never have thought of. In addition, they are asking from their own perspective and for their own benefit.

TIP: SINCE YOU WILL BE REVIEWING AND UPDATING YOUR MARKETING PLAN REGULARLY, YOU CAN ALWAYS ADD INFORMATION LATER. BUT TRY TO COVER EVERYTHING YOU CAN FROM THE START. 

QUESTIONS ABOUT CUSTOMERS AND PROSPECTS:

• Who are your customers?
• What are their buying trends?
• How much will they pay?
• How do they know about your product or services?
• Where do they buy?

Questions to ask about customers’ attitudes:

• What do they like about our products or services?
• What do they dislike about it?
• What do they like about this type of product or services?

USP = Unique Selling Proposition.

EVP = Extra Value Proposition.

QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR COMPETITORS:

Your marketing plan must, therefore, take into account satisfied-but open-minded-customers as well as those remain loyal.

Far too many people fail because they convince themselves that they are wonderful and the competition is hopeless, so there is no need to change.

TIP: THE SEVEN MOST EXPENSIVE WORDS IN BUSINESS ARE ‘WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE IT THIS WAY.’ BY CONSTANTLY ASKING QUESTIONS, YOU MOVE AWAY FROM THOSE DEADLY WORDS.

Questions to ask about your competition:

• Who are our competitors?

Questions to ask about their offer:

• Do competitors offer anything beyond a basic service or product?
• What have that our competitors go that we haven’t?

QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS:

If you haven’t come across this before, SWOT analysis is simply acronym for:

• Strength
• Weakness
• Opportunities
• Threats.

SUMMARY:

The quality and timing of the questions you can ask dramatically change the direction of your business. If your competitors ask the correct questions, find the answers and you don’t, they’ll have a competitive advantage.

You may already know the answers to some of the questions we’ve asked. Tomorrow (TUESDAY) we’ll find out how to go about answering the rest of them.

 

With respect.

 

SUNDAY: WHAT IS MARKETING PLAN?

Marketing is one of the most important aspects of growing your business and is an investment that will pay for itself over and over again.

Essentially, a marketing plan is like a route map for your business. Every plan will be unique, but it should always cover three basic areas.

• Where you are now
• Where are you going
• How are you going to get there

WHERE YOU ARE NOW

Whether you’re starting a new enterprise or running a mature business, your marketing plan needs to take your current position. It needs to include information about:

1. Your product or services.
2. Your customers and prospects.
3. Your competitors
4. Your business

Focusing on where are you are now will help you see where your strengths and weakness may lie.

“YOU’RE ONLY AS STRONG AS YOUR MOST IMPORTANT WEAKNESS.”

BY BRIAN TRACY, renowned business expert.

For example, if you identify a weakness in your online marketing, you could ask yourself the following questions:

• How can I include online marketing in my marketing plan?
• Could I tip the scales in the eyes of prospects so that they opt for my offering instead of that of my competition?
• What would be the results of my profits?

TIP: THINKING ABOUT WHERE YOU ARE NOW AND IDENTIFYING YOUR WEAKNESS CAN HELP YOU IN YOUR PLANNING.

WHERE YOU ARE GOING

1. Identify your critical success factors.
2. Set your objectives.
3. Draw up a sales forecast.

IDENTIFY YOUR CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS:

You will need to work out which aspects of your business or service are critical.

ESTABLISH YOUR MARKETING OBJECTIVES:

Objectives can be both large or small.

Larger objectives that also need to be stated in your marketing plan might be:

• Plans for expanding the business.
• Opening three branches over the following year.
• Franchising out the operation.
• Employing your own sales force instead of using agents.

DRAW UP A SALES FORECAST:

However, there are techniques, which we will examine on Wednesday, for removing much of the guesswork from this process. Of course, there are still some gaps that you will have to fill in with educated guess, but you can go a long way towards an accurate forecast once you know how.

HOW YOU ARE GOING TO GET THERE?

This is a good thing because a marketing strategy is not something to be woolly about. You need to be very specific about how you will achieve each objective, and to consider:

• Precisely what you will do to reach each objective.
• How often will do it.
• What it will cost.
• The results you expect from this action.

THE PRACTICALITIES:

Where are you are now, where are you going, how are going to get there. What does your document actually look like? And how long it will take to write?

By the end of this process, aim to have a neat clear document, smart but simply laid out, and probably 10-25 pages long.

THE BENEFITS OF MARKETING PLAN:

• It tells you things you didn’t know before.
• It helps you focus on areas you might otherwise miss.
• It helps prevent mistakes.
• It enables you to determine your critical success factors for success.
• It enables you to set clear marketing objectives.
• It means you can work out how to achieve these objectives.

WHAT IS MARKETING PLAN FOR?

• To show it to the people outside the business, such as bank managers, potential investors, advisors, accountants and prospective business partners.
• To tell you how your marketing operations are going
• To spot when things are gone wrong, and enable you to put them right.

SUMMARY:

Your marketing plan should contain exact tasks and specific targets. It will you things you didn’t know before and helps prevent mistakes by determining your critical factors for success and setting clear marketing objectives. It then helps you along the road to achieving those objectives.

REMEMBER:

“Your marketing plan is part of your overall business plan. Your business will take everything else into account.”

 

With respect.

SUNDAY: Understanding what makes a good marketing plan.

MONDAY: Ask the right questions about your products, services and customers.

TUESDAY: Find answer to your questions through effective research.

WEDNESDAY: Identify your critical success factors, draw up your sales forecast and set your objectives.

THURSDAY: Create a strategy from your list of objectives.

FRIDAY: Assembling your data to write up your plan.

SATURDAY: Use your marketing plan to implement your objectives and improve your business.

The authors had laid down the marketing plans in a week in this short book. We as an entrepreneur or a writer or whomever it is if we would like to do marketing to deliver the products/services or books to our customers/readers. I would like to recommend this one is one of the best marketing books.

I would love to re-share it. I’m gonna articulate the few sets of facts of this book. We all need to know the reality of marketing and its strategies.

ROS JAY is a freelance business writer and editor. She advises small business on corporate image and marketing. She has written several books on marketing and for small businesses, including Teach yourself titles. She has direct personal experience of writing a marketing plan, having set up and run her own publishing business. She has also worked as a business advisor for small businesses and business startups.

JOHN SEALEY is a marketing authority, international speaker, author and marketing coach. He helps businesses attract and keep customers, more profitably, with the least amount of effort. John works to show that an enterprise can thrive using proven marketing ideas to achieve more sales and profits. What he uses in his own business and teaches other business owners isn’t just theory. But strategies and tactics that work in the real world.

INTRODUCTION:

The well-known management consultant Peter Drucker once said, ‘Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.’ We would add to that wonderful statement, ‘attached a great marketing plan.’

Marketing is at the heart of a successful company. To win the lion’s share of customers and thrive in an ever-changing environment, you need a tailored strategy that will give you an all-important competitive edge. For this, your key driver has to your marketing plan.

While some business may fail to recognize the value of marketing planning, banks and financial institutions don’t make the same mistakes. A business that tries to apply for a loan or a grant without a good marketing a plan is unlikely to get very far.

This book will give you the information and skills you need to develop a sound marketing plan.

Let’s start with.

SUNDAY: WHAT IS A MARKETING PLAN?

So, tomorrow I have to share the Essential Manager’s Manual. I will start from a day after tomorrow.

 

With respect.