Marketing - why?
A marketing strategy is not a magical tool but it is a crucially important business tool. When asking questions about what makes the difference between failure and success, one might receive quite variable answers depending on who you are and who is being asked. However, there is a principle that is worth being considered:
You are worth as much as your marketing is worth.
You might be the best of the best but it is not who you are
that is important. The crucial element for success is marketing and corporate communication. You
stakeholders – clients, partners, communities, rivals, suppliers, media,
government – should know who you are, what you are good at and most importantly
why they should choose you before others who perform the same service/offer the
same product and are comparably good. It is your responsibility to communicate it effectively.
Maturity of business and marketing strategy
In the market there are several different situations a
company could find itself in. First, one might be the only provider of a
service/product. Secondly, the company could be a market leader in certain or
the specific category. Alternatively, one could be a small player in a mature
market battling for small segment of consumers. Last but not least, one might
be trying to enter a market that could either be mature or developing. All
those market situations require different marketing strategies which should
develop following the development of the environment.
In that sense before even considering advertising or any
kind of publicity/communication you should understand the importance of a
comprehensive marketing strategy, starting with research. If you are for
example an established company it is best to gather all available data
concerning experience, special competences, priorities, successes and failures,
old and current public profile, network, clients, economical and sales data and
figure out what resources you have, where you are starting from.
A next step requires that the market is researched.
Remember! It is not important what product you want to sell, it is important
what product the consumers want to buy. Therefore you should focus on the
branch where your core competences are and conduct bench marketing, consumer
research, market tendencies research.
When you have gone through all the resource and market data
you need to figure out where it makes sense to concentrate your efforts. As it
is a market with strong competition, it is important that you find a
differentiator. That could be anything depending on your company and it is
important that it is genuine, sustainable and difficult to copy. This will be
the core of your business.
Image
Once you have grasped the business core you start building
the company’s image. The image is a concept that stretches from the business
core through the whole business process to the end consumer and the other
stakeholders. You should remember that an image must be genuine. Further, you
should define vision and mission of the company which generally are a map to
its future and are inseparable of the image and interact with it. Remember that
setting a mission and a vision is not just words in the air. It is a promise
you have to live up to. They can also be a perfect differentiator if chosen
wisely.
After you have cleared the idea about where the company is,
where it is heading and what values it will stand for, you have to make sure
that the business is really structured according to the proclaimed values. Only
then you are ready to speak up and communicate your values. That you can do in many
different ways and choosing the right way again depends on your company and the
market you operate in.
DIDI
DIDI
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