Marketing
for Success
For
every small business that succeeds there are nine failures!
After ten years, only 10% of small businesses are still
operating. So why the high failure rate? And, more importantly,
how do you avoid it? Being a small business ourselves we
are tempted to blame corporation tax increases, red tape,
banks and enterprise support policy changes amongst many
in the mix. But maybe success is more in our control than
these other factors suggest.
It’s
a Matter of Judgement
We are all operating in the same macro-environment –
it is just that the factors that are driving changes in
a negative way for some organisations are the opportunities
for others. Whether we judge factors to be opportunities
or threats depends upon our judgement and a realistic appraisal
of our capabilities in relation to the challenges out there.
Good management often comes down to having good judgement
in the decisions we take, backed up by the feeling of certainty
that our knowledge gives us, and then successful actions.
It follows then that good marketing management comes down
to aligning the resources and strengths we have as an organisation
in such a way that it matches up to what our customers requirements
are.
…
and Strategy
Strategy is obviously the most important element to making
a product or service succeed. What you have to offer must
be clear, differentiated and offer value to customers. Understanding
who you are in competition with, what is important to customers
and what they don’t value is a key part of designing
a winning strategy.
A marketing
plan can take considerable time and effort to truly analyse
and understand the specific characteristics of your marketplace
and customer base. In the current turbulent environment,
good information, sound judgement and an element of creativity
and expertise are essential.
There
are essentially three marketing strategies needed to grow
a business:
(1) Increase the number of customers
(2) Increase the average amount they spend per transaction,
and
(3) Increase the frequency of repurchase and retain those
customers that represent most profit to you.
The
success of your marketing strategy should be measured by
its ability to directly impact and improve upon each of
these three factors. For companies starting out, the concentration
tends to be on the first strategy and this is one reason
why they fail – sales personnel can often take the
lead in the marketing strategy and invest disproportionate
time and resources in finding new business that is not always
profitable. Rewarding existing customers for referring new
ones is one easy step business owners can take to increase
their total number of customers and it is more profitable
as it allows your sales team to really concentrate on strategies
2 and 3.
Future
articles will talk in more detail about the tactics and
tips to achieving a balanced marketing plan to ensure that
you are really leveraging your marketing activity towards
growing your business.
In the
meantime why not click here to see our top
tips for marketing in a downturn.
