This written marketing plan

• Provides a method to spend the marketing budget in the most efficient manner
• Establishes the goal for Marketing to put competitors out of business

This blog will take you step by step to develop the ultimate marketing plan and deliver marketing strategies that destroy the competition.

Summary

Step 1 Internal Analysis understand your strengths and weaknesses

Step 2 What threats and opportunities are in the macro-environment

Step 3 External Analysis; Market Research (size, profitability, prospects)

Step 4 External analysis; Competition analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Capabilities)

Step 5 Customer analysis, (Needs, Wants, Likes, Dislikes, Information)

Step 6 Porter’s 3 General business strategies (the only 3 that survive long term)

Step 7 Organizing all of the information and implementing it

Internal Analysis is the first step in How to create and implement the ultimate marketing plan to destroy competitors

The first step in producing the ultimate marketing plan is to analyze the internal organization.  In order to improve the organization from the customer’s perspective, you must change internally first.

1. Develop a Detailed SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) for every function of all departments in your organization, including marketing.

Example Sales-SWOT on Prospecting, Sales Pitch, Negotiating, Knowledge of Competitors, Closing, sales skills

The purpose of doing a detailed SWOT analysis for the marketing plan is

HR-employee training

Marketing-uncovering internal strengths for communication messages to customers

Marketing-reducing marketing weaknesses to limit competition

Management-developing strategies to remove overall weaknesses and double down on strengths

2. SWOT analysis (one for each department) on communication and coordination between departments, such as marketing and sales

The purpose of this is to remove silos and bottle necks to increase productivity among departments

Create a flowchart of all the processes in the organization and how much time it takes for each process

Example Sales gets an order sends it to whom?  What do they do with it then? What is the time spent?

 

This information can be used to do future cost-benefit analysis, improve processes to increase productivity, a check to see if best practices are being used, and industry benchmarking analysis.

 

4. Interview sales accounts for wins/losses and retention. Use product performance, sales team’s perception, company perception, marketing brand, marketing messages. Ask the question, where positive performance correlates with wins and where does negative performance correlate with losses

 

In order to succeed an organization has to show value and expertise.  What metrics are the most important to the customer, target these first, this will provide the biggest impact for sales increases or retaining accounts.  By brining your negative up to the competitor’s level, it just makes you even with competition; you must go that extra length to be better than them.

 

These items will provide a great detail of information that you can use to develop marketing strategies and the ultimate marketing plan.

Marketing plan

External Analysis (Part 1)

In order to create the ultimate marketing plan, you must take into account the overall environment and the markets that you compete in.  The goal is not to look at the present, but to look into the future.

 

1. List of all markets and submarkets the organization is in or should be in (marketing)

Example Transportation-Buses-School Buses, Passenger buses

 

The purpose of this is to have all of the markets on one list, those that you are competing now and those that you could compete in the future to remove the possibility of attacking markets on an ad-hoc basis.  These markets will be the basis for many of the following steps that will continue later in this blog.

 

Pest Analysis–environmental changes

 

Political-power relationships, regulations, taxes etc

Economy-capital needs, are there enough customers to target, what is the future business environment

Social/cultural-open new horizons, major changes

Technology-threats needed to consider, opportunities to lower costs/improve productivity

 

Again, you are not looking for the present aspects, but trends that you can apply to the future.

For Economy, I look at 2 factors interest rates and unemployment.  If interest rates decline, there is a high probability that the economy will expand in the next 18 months.  If interest rates increase, there is a high probability that the economy will decrease in the next 18 months.  Unemployment is used to determine how much the economy will expand or contract.

 

Again, you want to plan for the future and implement marketing in the present, to achieve the future.

Market Research

Using the list that was created in the previous step, you will now analyze each submarket in order to prioritize the markets. (Marketing)

Markets

• The size in dollars and growth rate of each individual submarket

(Can be found in magazine journal articles, snippets from research reports, and other marketing resources, and usually look into the future for about 5 years)

• Your sales market share percentage of each sub market
• Profitability of each sub market via your products
• Porters 5 forces analysis on each sub market (constraints on profitability)
• SWOT analysis of each sub market versus your company
• SWOT analysis of each department of your company versus each sub market
• Who are all of the companies (potential customers) in each of these sub markets
• Who are the strategic customers (potential customers) in each of these sub markets

Marketing plan

Competition analysis

Sun Tzu-those that know their enemy’s capabilities will win the battle

The purpose of marketing competition analysis is not nice to know information (nice to know is a waste of time and money). It is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors (marketing), in order to develop strategies that will attempt to put them out of business. There is a 90% probability that they do not have a written marketing plan, therefore they are probably wasting 20% of their marketing budget. The probability that they are looking into the future is only 45%, and the vast majority of those that do, will not have the capability to implement those strategies.

YOU can be twice as profitable, and put them out of business, simply by being more efficient at distributing resources than them (marketing). This is where you use that to your advantage; find their weaknesses (marketing).

1. Set up Google alerts for each of your competitors to continuously monitor your competitors, this will prevent marketing surprises by providing early warning to new products or markets competitors enter
2. List the competitors that are in each submarket from the list you did in previous steps
3. What is the Market share percentage of each competitor for each sub market (you can use sites like manta.com, hoovers.com, or if publicly traded their annual and quarterly reports and use estimations)
4. SWOT analysis of each competitor (again detailed, website, brochures, sales team), (marketing)
5. Marketing analysis of your interpretation of competitor’s objectives and strategies, unique selling points, position strategy, product/service offering, what they feature prominently, brand strategy, revenue, growth rate
6. Competitor’s financial position via Dun and Bradstreet credit ratings
7. Marketing evaluation of their Website, brochures, press releases, for keywords, messages, strengths, etc
8. Human resources- frequency and types of positions, # of employees, location of sites
9. The competitors prioritized target markets (press releases, blog post, etc.)
10. What are the marketing messages of your competitors?
11. How are your competitors selling against your company and what are their main points (marketing)
12. Who are the strategic customers of each competitor in each sub market and how long have they been customers
13. What geographic markets are they strong in (marketing?)
14. Classify competitors as first movers, those that defend positions, reactors, expanders innovators or risk takers etc. Use this information to determine counter-reactions and develop marketing strategies to thwart competitor’s efforts
15. SWOT analysis of all the competitor’s products/services versus yours (marketing)
    (buy them), reverse engineer, have it cost out using your suppliers, (find out if their suppliers are more efficient) Learn from their knowledge, (not copy, but learn) (marketing)

What year was the product launched?
What is the product lifecycle in years?, new, growth, mature, declining?
Sales of each product volume or dollar amount
what is their pricing strategy, skimming or penetration?
Do they offer discounts and promotions, financing options, Guarantees?
What are the Historical changes of all these?
What is their Distribution Strategy, Channels, Partners, Reach/market penetration
Are they able to achieve/successful, not successful at any of the above

Marketing plan
Customer Analysis

This is probably the most overlooked and potentially the greatest step on how to create the ultimate marketing plan. Companies (marketing) continuously say they are customer oriented, but they (marketing) never ask the customer what they want, how the company is providing value, or even input into product development. Maybe the organization has a customer service team that is used as a reactionary rather than a progressive customer front. Either way, customer service as a whole is well below expectations of the customer.

Warren Buffet recently stated that 80% of new products fail in this country. How much is marketing, sales, and customer service involved in the product design team? The initial stages?  Never?  At the end to market the product? This should be were marketing excels, but it fails miserably.

This is a great failure of many marketing departments, and can provide exceptional opportunities to the right marketing department

1. Understand the customer needs, wants, likes and dislikes of each submarket that was listed in previous steps (marketing)

Do your strengths coincide with the needs and likes of the prospect?
Does the prospect’s wants correlate with your weaknesses? (Hopefully no)
Do your competitor’s strengths coincide with the prospects wants? (Hopefully no)
Do your competitor’s weaknesses coincide with the prospects dislikes? (Hopefully)

Has marketing called on readers of articles that it produced to find out what they liked/disliked?
Has marketing called on those that opened the emails to find out why the customer opened the email?
Has marketing called on those that did not read the articles or emails to find out why not?
Has marketing called on those that were sent direct mail pieces to determine if they read it and why/why not?
Does marketing get any direct input from the prospect?

Is there a proactive customer service team that calls on customers to find out how the purchasing process went at each stage or provides a customer survey?

Does an engineering team call up a prospect to get their input into the design of the new product?

Does the prospect know your company?
Do they see value in what you offer?
What do they value?
What are their needs for a vendor?

The organization is built to develop relationships that are win-win, ask the prospect for their input. (Marketing)

Marketing plan

Marketing plan

In order to destroy your competitors, you must first learn what works from a general stance.

Remember CUSTOMERS BUY ON VALUE, NOT PRICE. If price were the only option, the $3,000 TATA motors car would be in every garage, the dollar stores would be the only retailers, Dial-up internet would be in every household, Spam would be the only meat consumed, there would be no bottled water, and APPLE Corp would not exist.

A company’s vision defines what the organizations purpose is, it compels trust, motivation, and inspiration, to not only employees, but also customers. Vision answers what does the business do? It is not general (providing exceptional value to our customers….), but very specific “we are going to produce the lowest priced car”

Michael Porter’s 3 General business strategies or a combination of these (the only real long term strategies that work)

How will the business compete?

1. Focus- ON the most profitable products, geographies, markets, customers (Only compete in these/become the expert)
2. Differentiation-Being different, (products, distribution, pricing, promotion)
3. Low-cost-Get the same done at a lower cost/getting more done for the same cost
   (if only using low-cost, there can be ONLY be one low-cost player, the others will go out of business eventually)

Should use these for the organization overall AND each separate department

Marketing
What markets do we focus on?
How do we market differently?
How can we get the same done for less or get more done at the same money?

Objective (smart)– should look into the future 3 or 4 years. Each department should have its own objective and answer how do they achieve the overall objective?

Specific–target a specific area for improvement
What: What do I want to accomplish?
Why: Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.
Who: Who is involved?
Where: Identify a location.
Which: Identify requirements and constraints

Measurable–quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress
How much?
How many?
How will I know when it is accomplished?

Achievable– specify who will do it.
How can the goal be accomplished?

Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
Does this seem worthwhile?
Is this the right time?
Does this match our other efforts/needs?
Are you the right person?

Time-related – specify when the result can be achieved.
When?

Where do you want to be in the future then implement actions today get you there?

How do you use resources to overwhelm competition and do your resources match the ways you compete? (Marketing)

Decisions are based on 2 key elements
1. Objective conditions in the environment- Be the first to recognize a major change in the environment (marketing)

2. Subjective beliefs of your competitors in that environment-Be the first to respond to that change correctly (marketing)

Force competitors to react rather than attack. (Marketing)

If you fail to identify and analyze the obstacles, then you don’t have a strategy. Instead, you have a list of things you wish would happen. (Marketing)

If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete. (Marketing)

Systems when left alone disintegrate and lead to chaos. (Marketing)

5 main reasons why strategies fail

1. Omission of responsibility-nothing happens when there is no responsibility
   2. Over reach
   3. Breakdown of communication
   4. Poor intelligence
   5. Inertia- people are unwilling to change the way they do things

Marketing plan

1. Understand how many leads it takes to meet revenue targets, the formula is

Revenue goal (-) reoccurring revenue = number of leads needed (X) average annual revenue per customer (X) average closing % of your sales reps

Then solve for number of leads needed to achieve revenue goal (do this for each submarket, then the total will be the overall objective) (marketing)

2. Develop strategies to capitalize on opportunities or threats from the PEST analysis. (Marketing)
3. Are your strengths consistent with internal analysis, 3 general strategies, customer analysis, internal processes and submarkets? (Marketing)
4. Prioritize submarkets based on profitability, market share, market size, and overall competitiveness. (Marketing)
5. Prioritize weaknesses to fix based on internal analysis, 3 general strategies, customer analysis, and external market analysis.
6. Develop marketing strategies to limit Porter’s five forces (constraints on profitability) to gain an advantage over the competition. (Marketing)
7. Develop marketing and sales strategies to target strategic customers in sub markets. (Marketing)
8. Marketing messages are then your strengths (marketing)
9. Marketing brand message is a combination of strengths and your 3 general strategies from Michael Porter
   (how you compete, marketing)
10. Target competitors to put out of business, focus on their customers. (Marketing)
11. Input on a calendar the deadlines for fixing each weakness, major and minor objectives, and strategies to achieve these objectives.
12. Determine how your competitors are going to react, then develop strategies to thwart those reactions
    (Be proactive, marketing)

The more efficiently you use resources versus your competitors, overtime it will allow an amazing competitive advantage. (Marketing)

Do this analysis annually, and over time you will destroy your competitors. It is the ultimate marketing plan.