8.1. Marketing - General marketing

Knowledge is power

Marketing research helps you understand your competitive position, spot opportunities, lessen risks and take better decisions. It is more than just market research, which is concerned only with examining aspects of a given market, such as its size, location or growth potential.

Marketing research can give you indications, but it cannot give you answers. What it can do is allow you to make marketing decisions based on the best, most up-to-date information available.

This briefing covers:

• Using different research methods.
• Sources of information.
• In-house and commissioned research.
• Budgeting for marketing research.

Let marketing lead

Successful businesses focus on getting the basics of marketing right.

Marketing is based on identifying and satisfying customers' needs - profitably. It encompasses market research, pricing, promotion, distribution, selling, customer care, and much more.

This briefing will help you plan and monitor your marketing. It covers:

• The basic objectives of all marketing.
• Reviewing your market and how you fit into it.
• Creating a marketing strategy.
• Setting out your marketing action plan.

The right price

The prices you charge for your products can have a dramatic effect on sales and profits.

Setting your prices too high can reduce sales abruptly, while undercharging can devastate your profits. The logic is simple. Your optimum price is one that gives the largest total when you multiply your margin by the number of sales you can achieve. But making sense of that, in relation to the costs you pay out and the markets you serve, is a key issue for every business.

This briefing covers:

• Understanding the market and how your product fits in.
• Deciding on a pricing strategy.
• Pricing tactics.
• How to increase prices.

Easy pickings

Successful companies focus first on selling more to their existing customers, rather than finding new ones. The cost of selling more to existing customers may be minimal.

A loyal customer tends to buy more, more regularly. And throughout the period, a loyal customer will regularly recommend your business to others.

This briefing covers:

• Understanding who your most valuable customers are.
• How to achieve a high standard of customer care for all your customers.
• How to turn your most valuable customers into your most loyal customers.

Lining up your targets

Databases make information management easy and relatively inexpensive. Mailshots, telemarketing and customer service activities can be more purposeful when you have instant access to details of all your customers and prospects and all your contacts with them.

This briefing focuses on using the database as a marketing tool. It covers:

• Using your database as the main tool for achieving your marketing objectives.
• Selecting what information to collect.
• Designing your database to make it flexible and thoroughly useful.

Having a brand can differentiate your business from your competitors and drive customer loyalty. And branding isn’t just for multi-nationals with huge budgets: small and medium firms can create an effective brand by examining how the business works, what it means to its customers and acting on the results.

This briefing covers:

• What makes a brand.
• The business benefits of creating a brand.
• How to create and maintain a brand.