The Five “R’s”

I have worked with many business leaders who employ a shiny new Marketing Director to help transform their marketing function and then provide them with a “To Do” list of all the initial things that the MD feels “needs” to be done rather than what actually “should” be done.

The new Marketing Director, desperate to impress, resorts to type and begins to “restructure, repackage, redesign, relaunch and then resign” mainly because they did not begin at the right starting point and ask the right questions.

A new refreshed logo, a new funky website, a few new promotions, and some funky social media campaigns, may tick all the boxes initially with your MD, but if it fails to engage with your core customer base, then it will not deliver long term success and growth for the business.

Understanding Your Market & Customers

Marketing is the process of understanding your marketplace and competitors, which helps to define your company’s market positioning, pricing, and service. All of this helps to promote the company effectively to your target audience and explain clearly how they might benefit by working or buying from you.

Every successful Marketing leader should always have funds allocated in his annual marketing budget for structured systematic research that explores questions about the company’s competitors, products, and services, which then helps to build up a knowledge base about the environment the company is operating in. Simply put, without this core understanding of your “market & customers” the marketing team are just churning out the same activity they have always done in the past, which will flat line results and hamper true long-term growth.

Knowledge Drives Strategy & Growth

Creating a knowledge base within your business is essential, and is derived from effective research and planning tools, both qualitative and quantitative,  which once in motion, helps to craft a successful marketing strategy which continuously evolves over time to drive long term business growth.

Fail To Plan, Plan to Fail.

There are many recent examples where companies have failed to understand their customer or taken their customer base for granted and paid a high price as smart competitors move in on their complacency. The assault by Aldi and Lidl on the UK grocery market whilst Tesco was looking the other way at expansion in the USA or the refusal by Arcadia Group to adapt quickly enough to their customers online buying habits are two classic examples.

When I joined CK Tools in 2012, my very first starting point was extensive International market and consumer research on the brand, competitors and the products. This then helped the brand team create activity growth plans for their categories that kickstarted the programme for significant company growth over several years, in what was a mature and competitive marketplace,

If you need help in reviewing if your marketing team are working on the right things PMF Marketing can help. Please call me today for a FREE 30-minute call and let’s get building your business back to growth together.

Do your products stand out from the crowd?

The post Are Your Marketing Team Effective ? appeared first on PMF Marketing.

Many suppliers have gone into liquidation, customers who were earmarked for growth are sat on months of stocks due to their premises being closed, new markets that were identified for development are not accessible due to travel restrictions and looking at your P&L account, you face the dilemma that your existing marketing budget cannot sustain the low level of sales you are now seeing. But where do you start and what exactly do you need to do to grow your business again ?

To help kickstart your thinking there are some simple steps you can do to help get the business fired up again.

Fail to plan, plan to fail

Now is the perfect time to review the business plans you had in place for 2020 to ensure you are set up for success in 2021. Look at your sales and marketing plans, do they need to change?

The use of simple business models like a SWOT or a DMAIC may help you to explore new ideas or new markets which are now a necessity if your home market is under stress. Do you need a strategy day with your sales teams to understand the new trading environment? Perhaps you need to conduct some research about how your customers are now buying your products, has it changed? Do you need to prioritise your business growth opportunities? do you need to look at new products to cater for a market segment that you know is now in growth, but you are not equipped to service?

Think Digital
Without doubt the crisis has accelerated the shift to digital and many of the better companies are going further, by enhancing and expanding their digital channels. They are successfully using advanced google analytics to make better and faster decisions about improvements to their website or using e-marketing to strengthen their links to customers.

Is your website representative of your business? are you regularly updating content to give visitors the information they need when they visit your website? are you actively promoting your goods and services on all possible social media channels?

Video Is King
With many of your sales team having to work remotely or talking to their customers via video conferencing, the importance of good video content is now more important than ever before.

Infomercials about your latest new products or promotions are quick and easy to make and deployed across social media or sent out as links in an email to your customer database, can provoke real customer engagement and get those phones ringing again with those sales leads coming in.

The above are just a selection of business growth solutions that are available from PMF Marketing.
If you would like to understand more how I can help your business, please call me today for a FREE 30 minute call and lets get building your business back to growth, together.

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/from-surviving-to-thriving-reimagining-the-post-covid-19-return#

The post Returning To Business Growth After Covid19 appeared first on PMF Marketing.