BY GRACE UENG - CORRESPONDENT
News & Observer
Published Sun, Nov 15, 2009 06:09 AM
Modified Fri, Nov 27, 2009 06:38 PM
Modified Fri, Nov 27, 2009 06:38 PM
The tendency in tough times is to shut off marketing. But bad times actually are the best time to promote a business, says Grace Ueng, founder and CEO of Cary-based Savvy Marketing Group.
For starters, your message won't get lost in the clutter and you have more room to negotiate on price. Bad times also feed an entrepreneurial spirit as laid-off workers start their own businesses - and those startups need to market themselves to survive.
Over the next few weeks in Work & Money, Ueng, who coaches local executives and lectures at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School, will offer her 12-step guide to marketing new and existing businesses.
Here are the first three.
Step 1: Make marketing strategic. Make sure that management understands that "marketing is too important to be left solely to the marketing guys." Marketing cannot exist and operate in a silo; it should interact with the rest of the organization. The head of marketing should ideally help the executive team develop the company's business plan and strategy. Equipped with this big picture thinking, marketing is in a better position to help drive revenue and add to corporate value.
Investing in marketing earlier rather than later can offer strategic value. Choosing to invest only in a sales force over marketing will only lead to unhappy salespeople later. Highly compensated sales reps should not and do not want to spend their time doing marketing.
Likewise, investing only in research can cause problems if there's no thought put into how to market a new product, or even whether there will be demand.
"Entrepreneurial companies are always resource constrained," says Sean Murphy, vice president of Sales, Marketing, and Business Development at NeoNova Network Services, a Morrisville company that manages IP services. "Development's effort is best leveraged when you understand the voice of the customer. Our executive team has recently made visits to our customers throughout the U.S., not to pitch new products to them, but to really understand their needs and pain points."
Step 2: Devise a marketing plan. While many entrepreneurs wing it, their chances for success are much higher with a plan - hence the saying, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." If you need outside funding, an executive summary of a business plan is essential.
Often we are asked to help a company write a marketing plan, but we end up helping them with their overall corporate strategy and business plan, which should be decided before putting together the marketing plan.
Once you have a prioritized plan, revisit and track progress on a monthly or quarterly basis. If you don't plan for it, it won't happen. Otherwise you will be reacting and executing, not being strategic.
Compose a realistic budget and tie marketing investment to volume and profit. Create a fully integrated marketing plan. One-off marketing initiatives - ads that neither build on each other nor fall under fully integrated brand messaging - are often a waste of time and money.
Large companies with higher staffing levels can afford to have branding groups in a rigorous review and planning process mode for up to a quarter of the fiscal year. Entrepreneurial ventures simply don't have the resources to invest this much time, but they can mimic a modified process: Review business annually, boil a plan down to addressing three key issues (more than three are too many to remember, and then none will be accomplished well), and then write a plan to guide the next 12 months.
How are you going to resource marketing? What is your budget? What percent is it of revenue? Who will do the work? Companies sometimes have great ideas but no one to execute the tasks or vice versa - know what your talents are and where you need help and fill in as appropriate.
Step 3: Grade your marketing plan. Does your plan contain a solid market assessment, thoughtful business review, definition of the top three key marketing issues, positioning and key messaging, road map for products and lead generation, marketing programs complete with budget?
Have you done each of the following:
Market assessment: How big is the market potential in which you compete? What is the growth rate? How big will it be five or 10 years from now? Who are your direct and indirect competitors? Do you have a competitive advantage that is sustainable and defensible? Ideally, you should. Do you compete in a growing or a crowded market? Are your competitors growing or shrinking, and why? If direct competition cannot be identified, is the market opportunity big enough? Or are you truly a "market maker"? This can be positive in that you are first to market but your challenge will be in evangelizing and educating, which means sales may be slow.
Business review: If your company has been around for a few years, conduct a complete analysis of the business: What are its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats? Review deals to date and the robustness of your pipeline. Review marketing: What in your sales kit is working? Missing? What is the quality of your leads? What should you continue? Stop? What are the three top sources of awareness? Internally: Who is contributing the most? Who is not? What outside marketing partners are working? Not?
In what markets are your customers? What additional markets would you like to target? What are your rates of trial and retention or repeat purchases? Awareness?
Corporate and product positioning: It is important to have a quality foundation on which to build all communications. Positioning can often take hours if not days to think through carefully to net the concise and unique positioning in the mind of your prospect. Whom do you sell to? Who are the decision makers and who are the influencers?
What do you do that no one else can do? This is called a unique selling proposition and is a key question to answer.
"We've invested a lot of time in fine-tuning our corporate messaging - had an outside facilitator manage the process, included all functional groups in the sessions, and then shared the outcomes with customers for their feedback," Murphy said. "We look forward to rolling out the results with our various audiences."
Do not try to do all things for all people - focus and prioritize.
Is your product line too broad? Too narrow? What is profitable - what is not? What is your product road map? You should have prioritized product pipeline to grow your company. How does development get its market requirements? Are you in constant touch with your customers and target market?
Marketing programs: Have clearly defined goals and objectives for each as well as how to measure return on investment before the launch of each program.
Budget: Be realistic. It is hard, if not impossible, to market with no financial resources or people. If possible, spend more in the first half of the year to affect the second half of the year positively.
For starters, your message won't get lost in the clutter and you have more room to negotiate on price. Bad times also feed an entrepreneurial spirit as laid-off workers start their own businesses - and those startups need to market themselves to survive.
Over the next few weeks in Work & Money, Ueng, who coaches local executives and lectures at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School, will offer her 12-step guide to marketing new and existing businesses.
Here are the first three.
Step 1: Make marketing strategic. Make sure that management understands that "marketing is too important to be left solely to the marketing guys." Marketing cannot exist and operate in a silo; it should interact with the rest of the organization. The head of marketing should ideally help the executive team develop the company's business plan and strategy. Equipped with this big picture thinking, marketing is in a better position to help drive revenue and add to corporate value.
Investing in marketing earlier rather than later can offer strategic value. Choosing to invest only in a sales force over marketing will only lead to unhappy salespeople later. Highly compensated sales reps should not and do not want to spend their time doing marketing.
Likewise, investing only in research can cause problems if there's no thought put into how to market a new product, or even whether there will be demand.
"Entrepreneurial companies are always resource constrained," says Sean Murphy, vice president of Sales, Marketing, and Business Development at NeoNova Network Services, a Morrisville company that manages IP services. "Development's effort is best leveraged when you understand the voice of the customer. Our executive team has recently made visits to our customers throughout the U.S., not to pitch new products to them, but to really understand their needs and pain points."
Step 2: Devise a marketing plan. While many entrepreneurs wing it, their chances for success are much higher with a plan - hence the saying, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." If you need outside funding, an executive summary of a business plan is essential.
Often we are asked to help a company write a marketing plan, but we end up helping them with their overall corporate strategy and business plan, which should be decided before putting together the marketing plan.
Once you have a prioritized plan, revisit and track progress on a monthly or quarterly basis. If you don't plan for it, it won't happen. Otherwise you will be reacting and executing, not being strategic.
Compose a realistic budget and tie marketing investment to volume and profit. Create a fully integrated marketing plan. One-off marketing initiatives - ads that neither build on each other nor fall under fully integrated brand messaging - are often a waste of time and money.
Large companies with higher staffing levels can afford to have branding groups in a rigorous review and planning process mode for up to a quarter of the fiscal year. Entrepreneurial ventures simply don't have the resources to invest this much time, but they can mimic a modified process: Review business annually, boil a plan down to addressing three key issues (more than three are too many to remember, and then none will be accomplished well), and then write a plan to guide the next 12 months.
How are you going to resource marketing? What is your budget? What percent is it of revenue? Who will do the work? Companies sometimes have great ideas but no one to execute the tasks or vice versa - know what your talents are and where you need help and fill in as appropriate.
Step 3: Grade your marketing plan. Does your plan contain a solid market assessment, thoughtful business review, definition of the top three key marketing issues, positioning and key messaging, road map for products and lead generation, marketing programs complete with budget?
Have you done each of the following:
Market assessment: How big is the market potential in which you compete? What is the growth rate? How big will it be five or 10 years from now? Who are your direct and indirect competitors? Do you have a competitive advantage that is sustainable and defensible? Ideally, you should. Do you compete in a growing or a crowded market? Are your competitors growing or shrinking, and why? If direct competition cannot be identified, is the market opportunity big enough? Or are you truly a "market maker"? This can be positive in that you are first to market but your challenge will be in evangelizing and educating, which means sales may be slow.
Business review: If your company has been around for a few years, conduct a complete analysis of the business: What are its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats? Review deals to date and the robustness of your pipeline. Review marketing: What in your sales kit is working? Missing? What is the quality of your leads? What should you continue? Stop? What are the three top sources of awareness? Internally: Who is contributing the most? Who is not? What outside marketing partners are working? Not?
In what markets are your customers? What additional markets would you like to target? What are your rates of trial and retention or repeat purchases? Awareness?
Corporate and product positioning: It is important to have a quality foundation on which to build all communications. Positioning can often take hours if not days to think through carefully to net the concise and unique positioning in the mind of your prospect. Whom do you sell to? Who are the decision makers and who are the influencers?
What do you do that no one else can do? This is called a unique selling proposition and is a key question to answer.
"We've invested a lot of time in fine-tuning our corporate messaging - had an outside facilitator manage the process, included all functional groups in the sessions, and then shared the outcomes with customers for their feedback," Murphy said. "We look forward to rolling out the results with our various audiences."
Do not try to do all things for all people - focus and prioritize.
Is your product line too broad? Too narrow? What is profitable - what is not? What is your product road map? You should have prioritized product pipeline to grow your company. How does development get its market requirements? Are you in constant touch with your customers and target market?
Marketing programs: Have clearly defined goals and objectives for each as well as how to measure return on investment before the launch of each program.
Budget: Be realistic. It is hard, if not impossible, to market with no financial resources or people. If possible, spend more in the first half of the year to affect the second half of the year positively.
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