Tag: strategy - Page 6

The American dream, something the world wants and everyone can have…. or well used to be able to have. Times have changed. Little mom and pop places are being replaced with huge corporate businesses like Walmart and Publix. Even little restaurants are falling behind to the national expansions of places like Chili's and LongHorn. They can still be found though, you might just have to look harder than you imagined.

It’s time to break your business out of the Stone Age! Without a proper marketing and communications strategy your business will not accomplish exponential growth. Think to yourself, is it okay to start a business without a business model/strategy? No.

So why are you still marketing without a marketing and communications strategy? It’s a waste of time and money and time is money so basically you just wasted a ton of money due to your lack of marketing efforts.

The poison that one person can throw on a company is insurmountable, all made by humans of course in the form of the internet. Yet, we all breathe faith into common sense as a whole and how one complainer, may in fact be the only.

Back in my fathers generation, one bad egg would not have crippled a business, though in these times it would. And so how the world has changed. 

Recently I shared a presentation about the value of marketing automation implemented correctly in a business. I gave the presentaton at Cebit 2015 and rather than use a generic case study, I focused on my own company, Marketing Eye, as an example of how to implement marketing automation and gain immediate results.

To give perspective to this, Marketing Eye has a substantial amount of traffic coming to our website each month, mainly due to the popularity of this blog and the effectiveness of our SEO team.

When writing my business plan 9 years ago, I took many things into account like how the business would look in 10 years time, employees, what services we would provide, and how we would expand into new markets.

But what I didn't take into account is how I would actually make it happen. You see, like many entrepreneurs, I have struggled with working in the business and trying to at the same time work "on" the business - never quite getting the mix right.

At long last, since I made some smart strategic business moves last year, including changing management, I have become the entrepreneur I always wanted to be. I am implementing our business plan that was written so long ago, and it feels really good. There is a sense of satisfaction that is growing deep inside me and I believe in every single thing that we are doing.

After reading HBR's 10 Must Reads book "On Strategic Marketing", it has made me realize how much small businesses are being confused by what they read and hear in regards to strategic marketing.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Right? Well, not always, but it is a good idea to have a plan in place that is a blueprint for what your business is trying to achieve.

The thing with strategic marketing plans is that there are so many variables that have changed and continue to change, that no plan can be set in stone. In fact, you really do need to pick it up out of your drawer every month and revise it, otherwise, you may find out that you are losing ground on what you are trying to achieve as a business.

Googling strategic marketing plans and looking up examples of what other people have written is a waste of time and energy. If this is how you put together your marketing blueprint, then think again. What comes up on Google is simply embarrassing to the marketing industry. Often the examples have been written years ago and do not take into account new marketing techniques, changes in economic conditions or the fact that social media is something that no business can ignore.

Like many books today, On Strategic Marketing is all cover, with little substance relating to the topic at all. Yes, it talks about how sales and marketing can work together, it talks on customer relationships, branding in the digital age adn more. But to be totally honest, its a bland read that needs some real substance. Not too indifferent from other reads on the bookshelf that have eye catching titles but fail to live up to expectations.

Strategic marketing has changed and there are many variables to take into account:

1. Overall business goals, objectives and resources
2. Target market and SWOT analysis
3. Customer relationships
4. Employee relationships and culture
5. 5 P's; Product, price, promotion, place and people
6. Social media
7. Technology 
8. KPI's

By moving Social media and technology out of what we all learnt at University in the 5P's, it allows us to give these areas of importance individual focus and accomodate the fact that social media and technology are the biggest drivers of marketing strategies today.

Establishing a workable marketing strategy that is continually updated and deeply ingrained in your company's DNA is paramount to achieving marketing success.

How many people have you heard, started their businesses from their kitchen table? I have heard many tales of people who started their businesses from their kitchen table, but other than foodies, I have never heard of someone who started their business from playing it ingredients in their mother's kitchen on the stove.