Click here for a free marketing planning consultation

Your marketing plan is a document that clearly states why you are in business, what you have to offer your customers, how to retain existing customers, how to price your products competitively and profitably and provides a plan of action to follow to retain and grow your existing customer base.

Bearing in mind that you are a small business, the strategies outlined here are practical and take into account the importance of obtaining a measurable return on effort and money expended on any marketing activities.

Today the marketplace is very competitive and changes constantly; that is why you need to update your marketing plan regularly, at least once a year.

It does not have to be specifically Ireland, but whatever country you are marketing your product in, it is vital that you identify your customers’

• Desires – what do they really want, because a lot of purchases are based on wants not needs – I mean who NEEDS a Porsche?
• Problems – what pain do they currently have that your offering will ease or cure?

Because when you know these, then you know WHY they will buy, and subsequently, it will be easier to ensure you have more customers. So let’s have a look at what customers’ problems and desires are in general, and then you will define them for each of your own customer groups.

Classify customers’ Desires

In reality, over 90% of purchase decisions are based on people’s desires, not only on “what we need.” I mean, how many of us grew up drinking tap water, yet we all still pay huge sums of money for water in bottles. Yes, we do need liquid to stay alive, but do we really need designer label water?

Classify customers’ Problems

People visit the doctor or dentist either because they have a pain, or to prevent pain. Why would people talk to your company – which problems would make them call you?

But this is just the beginning of the exciting marketing strategy creation. Next you need to look at the product you market and whether it really responds to the problems and desires of your customers.

When was the last time you reminded yourself why you started to work in your company? Was it purely the need to earn money, or did you also want to offer product of a value to customers?

Are you now completely confident that you fully understand the problems and desires of customers in Ireland and especially those likely to become your customers?

Would you like to know a way to vastly increase your profits through talking to Irish customers and finding out what is really important to them so that new customers are knocking down your doors?

Actually, do they know what is best for them?

You might want to read about How to Create Marketing Messages that do convince customers to buy.

Click here for a unique definition of marketing mix known as ADSPORT, developed by Irish marketing consultants

Would you like to find an easy way to explain marketing to people who haven’t heard about 4P’s? How to define marketing mix to students so that they not only understand it, but also are able to use it in future for their businesses?

Well, here’s my little story on how we did it.

Once I was giving a class on marketing - it was aimed at people thinking about starting their own businesses – I was saying our usual stuff about leads, sales and relationships with clients. Basically, that if you want to market your products, go to your potential customers first. No complicated science, just ask them, let them try the product and ask them for feedback. This will tell you an awfully lot about how to promote yourself. If you are interested in reading more about ‘what we preach‘ in marketing, read this article.

Students were giving examples of their own clients, saying about the vision for their businesses, they were taking notes – not of what I said, but they were scribbling their own thoughts that had been provoked by my questions.

The class was very interactive and people wrote parts of their future marketing plans on the spot.

Anyway, after my ‘lecture’ there was another one scheduled and it was given by a guy who seemed to be more teacher-like – skilled in how to educate people and how to explain marketing…

And he carried on defining marketing mix as 4 P’s – product, price, place and promotion. Giving a short description of every one of them and the students were vigorously recording every single word of the brilliant definitions.

The atmosphere became quite dull and harsh. With a sigh of release when the bell came, people left the class with books of marketing scribbled by their own hands.

I was just wondering – what did they get from the second part, what was in it? What is the use of knowing a definition of promotion by heart when they don’t have a clue how to apply it for their own business? People who were there don’t really need to understand marketing mix as a set of rigid definitions. What they are really looking for, is the know-how, so that they know what to do next.

This is the way we teach marketing when we run sales and marketing workshops for companies and business owners in Ireland. We give them a road map they can follow – a step-by-step action plan they can follow, starting the next day.

Click here for a unique definition of marketing mix known as ADSPORT, developed by Irish marketing consultants

In order to run
smoothly a wheel needs to be balanced. In order to have a stream of qualified
leads coming in to the business, you need to ensure that your marketing wheel
is smooth and continually turning

Extensive
research has shown that for marketing to be effective you need to have at least
7 distinct strands to any campaign over a period of time.

3R™ has created a small
business marketing strategy called ADSPORT™. In this article we have outlined the brief details
of ADSPORT, and given some examples of 
each of the seven strands as way of explanation.

Technorati Tags: marketing plan, marketing planning, marketing strategy, marketing tactics, marketing, marketing ireland, marketing success

You have everything well thought out, you have a brilliant idea that will turn into 1000000000000’s in profit, you’ll retire by 38 and you’ll spend the rest of your life at the Bahamas…  Nice!

BUT, hey, stop for a moment, have you done your homework and made sure all these dreams are at least half real? Have you done a proper research, have you identified potential clients’ needs and wants, do you know what you are actually going to sell and how will you explain the value to people?

There’s a hell more to it, and it actually can be a great fun – just have a look at this article on how to launch your product SUCCESSFULLY. Guaranteed.