A Winning Marketing Strategy for Small Business

Description

Welcome and thank you for attending this course on Developing a Marketing Strategy for your Business brought to you by Constructum Online Learning.

At you Constructum Online Learning we have a passion to help entrepreneurs develop skills with which to succeed in business.

Please look out for my other courses on

· Product Development,

· Business Operations,

· Accounting and,

· Finance.

In this course you will learn how to develop a marketing strategy for your business.

The course consists of:

· An Introduction where I look at the larger business planning context in which you develop a marketing strategy followed by 7 steps:

o Understanding the Customer,

o Analyzing the Market,

o You and your Competitors,

o Deciding on how to Distribute your product,

o Crafting your Marketing Mix,

o Consider the Economics of your plan, and

o Revise your Marketing Strategy.

Introduction

Before we get into this topic let us consider the business contexts.

From Idea to Profitable Business

All businesses start with an idea for a product or service. A product or service to meet a need or desire.

Your first job as an entrepreneur is to develop your idea or concept into a product or service.

Then you need a marketing strategy. How to get customers to buy the product?

To fulfil the sale, you need effective business operations. A machine made up of people, processes, and policies to produce and deliver the product or service.

But you must keep control of the flow of money and the use of resources within the business, to ensure profitability. For this you need accounting systems. Systems that keep you up to date on how money flows into and out of the business. And how the business uses its resources in the production and delivery processes.

You need this information so that you can understand how much money and at what times the business needs to fund all its operations. Where will you find this money? How much capital do you need? You need to understand finance.

I present these five areas in linear fashion. But the planning process is by no means a straight line. It’s much more of a circular process. You need a business plan that is internally consistent and mutually supportive. All the parts must work together.

I am not talking about creating a business plan to be submitted to a funder. What I mean is a business plan for you to understand the viability of your business model and how you are going to build this machine to produce products and ultimately make you lots of money.

To successfully start and run a business you need to develop skills in each of these areas. Now you don’t need to become an expert on each of these topics. But you do need to have a minimum level of understanding and skills in each of these areas to successfully navigate the world of entrepreneurship.

Success as an entrepreneur depends not so much on which area you are best at, but success is limited by the area you are worst at.

Being a great marketer is of little use if you cannot design and maintain business operations to deliver on your promises. To develop an appealing and profitable product requires funding.

As you aim to develop your business you must develop your skills in each of these areas also.

Now let’s jump right into today’s topic.

Who this course is for:

• For entrepreneurs and prospective entrepreneurs