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The Executive's Corner

Developing Your Marketing Strategy   A careful and thorough self-assessment can reveal your marketing shortcomings and opportunities. To that end, we offer this survey. It is intended to give a wide range of businesses a starting point in their marketing planning. It is the kind of detailed thinking a marketing consultant provides, and puts the fundamental work in your hands. It may overwhelm a small business owner; an established, successful large business may find it insufficient, or not targeted to their specific product or market. Be flexible in your interpretation. Please modify the questions and terms appropriately. An effective marketing strategy begins with Research: where are you now and what do you want to achieve? Detailed planning comes next: how will you achieve what you want? Follow this with an adequate test of your new marketing program: assess exactly what results your new strategy produces and determine if you are satisfied with it's effectiveness. Finally, fully implement your strategy, with continued assessment. Carefully and thoroughly answering these questions will help you focus your research and planning. Answer as many as you can for best results. Be forewarned: this questionnaire is long and will require you give it many hours to yield best results. Answering a few questions at a time from anywhere in the questionnaire is an acceptable approach to getting started and completing it "a bite at a time." Use the answers and realizations you now have to begin planning your marketing strategy. Hire the best marketing consultant you can afford: they know lots about effective marketing the way you know lots about your technical specialty. It's not only more efficient, your results will be better and come sooner. If you are having difficulty implementing any part of your new marketing, you may want to use the services of an executive coach, or another of Allies Consulting Services' performance skills programs. 1) How long has your company been in business? 2) What are your annual revenues? 3) What do you want them to be? 4) What was your best year? Why? 5) How much did your company make that year? 6) If this year isn't your best, what happened? What did you do differently? What opportunities or indicators did you miss? 7) What is your company's Mission? 8) Your company's long term Vision? 9) What are your goals (personally and professionally)? 10) What kind of goods/services does your firm ultimately want to specialize in? 11) What kind of client does your company ultimately want to cater to? 12) What, exactly, does your company do? 13) What makes your company and product unique? 14) Who in your firm is responsible for deciding on your marketing strategy? 15) How desirable is your product or service? 16) How and where is a similar product or service now being used? 17) How will technological advancements affect your future? 18) How will government regulations affect your future? 19) How will societal trends or the public's tastes affect your future? 20) How will the global market impact your future? 21) What current limitations affect the growth you want? 22) Are your profits holding, eroding, or increasing? 23) Are your current prices holding, eroding, or increasing? 24) What weaknesses do you have that will affect your marketing and sales? 25) Identify which of the following methods of marketing you already use:: PROMOTIONS PUBLIC RELATIONS ADVERTISING DIRECT SALES Audio/Video Tapes Media Releases Web site Contracts Gifts Magazine Articles Radio/TV Commercials Proposals Advertising Specialties Newspaper Articles Portfolio Sales Tracking Trade Shows Guest/Public Speaking Brochures Sales Tools Samples TV/Radio Show Guest Sales Literature Sales Goals Certificates Media Kits Business Cards Sales Support & Management Contests Seminars Display Ads Business Relationships Customer Events Receptionist/ Answering Service Classified Ads Networking Newsletter Customer Satisfaction Surveys Yellow Pages Sales Presentations Discounts Company Literature A Logo Telemarketing Coupons Staff Training in Customer Service Catalog Training and Manuals On-line Promos Direct Mail 26) Regarding the above list, what forms of marketing have you done in the past? 27) What worked? 28) What didn't? 29) What other marketing have you considered doing and haven't? 30) Why not? 31) Identify which would give you the greatest return, if added to your marketing strategy. 32) What are you doing to shift to and promote the kind of work your company wants to do in the future? 33) What are you doing to identify and prospect to the kind of clientele you would ultimately like to cater to? 34) How do you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts? 35) How do your sales trends compare with those in the rest of your industry? 36) Describe your guarantees/promises/return policies. 37) What is your pricing strategy? 38) How did you create your current pricing strategy? 39) How long ago did you create or review your pricing? 40) How do you plan to improve your goods and methods for delivering them to your clients? 41) Are your message and presentation consistent with your goals? (At a company level, and at the level of the individual that interacts with the client.) 42) Are they consistent with your image? 43) Are they consistent with your customers needs? 44) Do you have a current cash flow projection for the next year? 45) Does your cash flow projection have a marketing budget for next year? 46) Itemize your marketing budget for the next year. 47) What is your daily (or weekly) break-even? 48) Have you got a clear sales forecast for the next year? 49) What different ways does your company produce revenues? (List profit centers and total revenue for each) 50) What profit centers don't produce adequate revenues? 51) Are they worth putting more time and energy into, or dissolving? 52) What profit centers could you improve, and how? 53) What are new markets or niches you could easily offer your goods to? 54) What other methods of distribution could you use? 55) Describe the geographic distribution of your market and what you would realistically like it to be. 56) In what measurable ways do you stand apart from your competition? 57) Who is your competition? 58) How does your competition market themselves? 59) How would your customers compare your product with those of competitors? 60) How do you think your business is perceived [rated from 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent)] by each of your professional peers? 61) What advantages does your product or service have (improvements over existing goods)? 62) What protection do you have from your competition? 63) What weaknesses do your competition have? 64) Is your appraisal of the competition open-minded and honest? 65) Who are your customers? (Give a demographic profile) 66) Who do you want your customers to be? 67) Where do your new clients come from? (by percentage) Yellow Pages: Organizational Affiliation: Telemarketing: Return business: Coupons/Promotions: Flyers Networking: Referrals from clients: Cold Calling: Advertising: Referrals from professional peers: Other: (Define) 68) Why do your customers prefer doing business with your company? 69) Why would someone want to buy from you? 70) What are your clients' greatest needs? 71) How many new clients do you get each month? 72) How many would you like? 73) How many repeat clients do you see each month? 74) The number you'd like? 75) How many active clients do you have? 76) How many would you like? 77) How many inactive (infrequent) clients do you have? 78) Why don't they patronize your company more often? 79) How many clients have you ever had in your company's lifetime? 80) How long do you keep clients, on average? 81) How long does your competition keep clients? 82) How many clients do you see daily? 83) How many would you like to see? 84) What is the dollar amount of your average "order"? 85) How does your product or service provide a solution for your clients? 86) What are your clients' spending habits? 87) What they can afford? 88) What are your clients' "conditions" (effects of the economy, other industries, seasonal variances, etc.)? 89) How do your clients decide to buy? 90) Who really makes the decision to buy? (It may not be the person you see or talk to.) 91) Does your packaging stimulate sales? (Are your place of business, and your personal appearance conducive to prospects buying from you?) 92) Can you package your goods or bundle them with another's offering? 93) Are your marketing materials and presentations clear enough for a ten-year-old to understand? 94) What is your internal marketing? 95) Describe your customer service program. 96) Have you formally surveyed your clients needs & level of satisfaction recently? 97) Has customer satisfaction improved in the last year? 98) How easily can your clients get service if they have a problem? 99) How does your place of business appear to your clientele? 100) How does your staff appear to your clientele? 101) Are you fun to know/do business with? (Do others enjoy doing business with you, appropriate to your industry and clients?) 102) Do your clients get value from you beyond the goods they buy? 103) What is your system for increasing referral business? 104) Do you collect testimonials? 105) How easy is your product/service to acquire or own? (Are you easy to do business with?) 106) Do you maintain a lead tracking system? 107) Do you maintain a client database? 108) What system do you/your staff use to consistently follow up with prospects? 109) What method do you use to consistently contact customers? 110) How often? 111) Do you pre-qualify your prospects before making presentations? 112) Do you/your staff consistently refine your sales skills? 113) What incentives do employees get for attracting clients and repeat clients? 114) If you have a web site (or are considering one), have you contracted with a proven expert to assist you in its design? 115) What is the purpose of your web site? 116) Are you certain you have realistic expectations regarding what your web site can do for you? 117) Are you implementing adequate tests of your on-line strategies' effectiveness? 118) What other questions come to mind in answering these questions? 119) Do you have the resources to implement your marketing strategy? 120) If not, how will you get them? 121) Regarding all the above questions, which answers are assumptions and which are provable facts?   | Home page | Site Map | © Copyright 1996, All Rights Reserved Allies Consulting POBox 9635 San Rafael, CA 94912 (415) 459-2272 www.AlliesConsulting.com