Marketing Strategy Business Development
One of the most common questions that I get asked when acting in the capacity of a marketing strategy consultant by those individuals who are looking to start out in business [these include work from home entrepreneurs as well as small brick and mortar business owners]; also by those who have been involved in business maybe for some time who maybe running a functioning business and making a decent living is : ‘just how to I actually go about developing a marketing strategy’ ??.
Developing A Business Strategy
For some this may be a strange question for an organisation that already has paying clients however, the fact is that depending on how the business came into play, it may well have gotten to the stage that it is at without developing a coherent business development plan as it may have been presented with a core set of clients [this could be regionally based or based on client market segment profiling – such as having a captive audience of say women over 79 years of age].
At a recent networking event when speaking about the business strategy development process [that I have developed over the years based on my corporate marketing experience as well as working over the past years as an independent consultant for small businesses as well as delievering business training programmes within corporates] a business owner who by his own admission staed that he is of course well versed in the technology – the products, goods and services – of his business (but not in the marketing of the organisation) I spoke of the three pillars that I use when thinking about, explaining and developing a marketing or business strategy. They are :-
- Product / Service Categories
- Channels To Market
This includes the channel that is used to deliver the products and services to the end user as well as the path made use of to push the branding messages through.
- Client Market Segmentation
… that is to say, we work on defining the category of the market that the Product or Service fits into, we then work on the marketing Channels. When it comes to channels we consider the channel that we use to deliver the product or service to the marketplace and secondly the channels that we use to push the message to the marker place through. And finally, we have to ensure that our preferred market segments are at the end of the channels that we use. That is the essence of the framework that I work through when refining and developing a marketing strategy.
Now, let’s assume we are you are selling massage therapy services [as one of my previous clients were]. For sure the channel for delivering the service would be in the therapist’s salon but they business owner will have many options in terms of channel marketing for delivering the branding message and services of the business to the market place at large. They can use direct mail, blogging, mobile, articles, newspapers, radio and more to deliver their message to the target market.
Next, we need to ensure that our product/service is positioned appropriately in terms of location, offering and pricing – a particular segment of the market may wish to pay say $15/hour for a massage but other high end clients may be perfectly happy to pay $100/hour if they see the value in what it is that you have to offer. The question is – which market segment is it that you will choose to target ? If this discussion we have covered the market segments and the category of the market that we wish to be positioned in.
So there you have it – an insight into my methodology for developing marketing strategies whether working with $multi billion clients in China [Swatch Group] or with a wedding reception services business such as http://www.lowcostchaircovers.co.uk/ that I consulted for last year.
In summary we want to be thinking of Channels, Market Segments and Product/Service categories.
To your marketing strategy development success,
Let me know if you wish to engage with myself and the team to assist you in your business.
-Success,
-Stephen C Campbell
