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