Apr
24

Basic Marketing Strategy Questions

Nick Booker

 Re- examining your company’s marketing strategy requires answers to some fairly basic questions. The questions are simple but frequently the answers are not - so you might need some outside help…

 So what should you be asking yourself and your team?

 1.      BLUE SKY APPROACH

  •  If there were no limits what would we do/what do we want?

 2.      WHERE ARE WE NOW?

  • The audit or review - what do we know about our situation - markets, competitors etc?
  • What are we?
  • What do we do?
  • Which of our markets are most/least profitable?
  • What products/services do we supply?
  • What products/services are most/least profitable?
  • Who are our A1 customers?
  • How profitable are our largest customers?
  • How good are we at what we do?
  • What do we want to provide in terms of activities/products& services/customers?
  • Can we write down a Business Statement ie what we are and what we do?

 3.      WHERE DO WE WANT TO BE - WHAT IS THE VISION?

  •  Where do we want to be in 5 years time?
  • What are we going to need to change?
  • What will be like following that change?
  • Who do we want our customers to be?
  • Which market segments/industries do we want to target?
  • What do we know about them?
  • What issues and challenges will they face over the next 5-10 years and what products/services will they need to cope?
  • How does our performance measure up?
  • Where do we need to be?
  • What do we need to concentrate upon?

 4.      WHAT ARE OUR USPS OR SCAS?

  •  Unique selling points or sustainable competitive advantages?
  • Value to customer
  • Ability to beat competitors
  • What are they?
  • How do they rank (1-10) in terms of value to customer and ability to beat the competition?
  • What performance measures can we identify ?
  • What are the critical items to our success? - “We will win by having the best…..”
  • How can we measure these?

 5.      OBJECTIVES AND GOALS

  •  What are they and when do we want to achieve them by?

 6.      SWOT ANALYSIS

  •  What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
  •  How can we use our strengths to achieve our objectives
  • How can deal with our weaknesses - are they important?
  • What are the threats to us currently and our vision and objectives?
  • What are the opportunities - what do we need to do to exploit them - do they match our vision and objectives? 
  •  What do we need to change?

 7.      THE PLAN

  •  What can we take from our “Blue Sky” that is realistic and achievable and incorporate in our objectives for the short, medium and long term?

 Summary:

  • The Vision
  • Where we want to be
  • SCAs
  • Objectives
  • Issues/strategies
  • Action Plans

       copyright © Nick Booker 2008