Total Marketing Means Business

Approach and Objectives

Strategic Overview:

Marketing is your business. Marketing efforts are more successful when every tool – from a basic internal form to your corporate brochure to your employees – is seen as an ambassador for your firm, one that carries an important message to your customers, employees, the world. The message your customer most wants to hear. You and everyone in your firm are part of your firm’s image.

To make every facet of your business work cohesively to market your business, we’ve designed a system that includes preliminary work, a bounce session (or workshop) where we’ll review your business plan, and talk about your business and the goals and dreams you have for it. During this session, we’ll define what you really want to accomplish for your business. From there, we’ll establish the positioning statement and other marketing elements to help reach those goals, whatever they may be. We’ll look at every facet of your business – from hours of operation to the message recorded on your voice mail to determine what these items convey to your customers, vendors and the public – and how to make them really work for you in a total marketing effort.

We create the marketing strategy that will help you reach your goals.

• The marketing strategy will identify target market demographics and psychographics, service area, positioning, USP, positioning statement, sensory service description, the marketing mix (the media & tools), competitive analysis, and key marketing indicators and benchmarks. See Step 6 below for a Marketing Plan Outline.
• Establish a working budget for printing and other costs associated with the marketing.
• Establish systems that need to be in place to handle additional calls, orders, sales, and the increased exposure the marketing will generate.
• Establish ways to monitor the marketing efforts to track results.

Marketing Strategy Approach and Outline

• Preliminary Work: Purpose & Mission based on core values – Begin prior to Bounce session. The first step will be to identify your purpose in life (also called a primary aim) so that we can mold the business to fit your purpose. Your purpose drives the mission for your firm.
• Gather materials we’ll review – Assemble the following: Business plan, marketing plan, Employee list and duties, Operations & procedures manuals, Ideas you’ve written down for any marketing activity, Recent events, trade shows, results, ideas, plans, Brochures and other marketing material so that we can review them during the bounce session.
• Bounce Session – A half-day workshop where we’ll use a “business review process” to assess current situation and goals and outline your expectations and objectives. Upside Down will facilitate this workshop where we will look at the organization’s leadership, strategy, process, product/service, business management, and environment as viewed through the perspective of service and relationships with customers.
• Create the Marketing Team – During the bounce session we’re going to create a dynamic, fun, high-energy team (comprised of your people working with Leita.) This team will develop a systems-oriented business development process to grow the practice for your unique primary aim. We will need to establish duties and accountabilities.
• Marketing Review Process – This may require a second bounce session. Through a series of questions we will take a bold new look at the service so we can develop a marketing strategy that will meet client expectations.
• External Information Gathering – Surveying the Customers, plus market research such as census data etc. The results from the surveys, interviews and Bounce Session will be used to determine priorities for further information gathering.
• Analysis – All the findings will be used to identify current state, desired state and associated gaps. Analysis will be performed by Upside Down and confirmed by the Team.
• Marketing Plan or Creative Work Plan Recommendations – The above process will serve as the input to the marketing plan. For an outline see Step 6.

Step 1: Purpose & Mission based on core values – Begin prior to Bounce session. The first step will be to identify your purpose in life (also called a primary aim) so that we can mold the business to fit your purpose. Your purpose drives the mission for your firm. The mission for your firm is sometimes called your strategic objective or mission statement. It’s a detailed, descriptive document that will probably be different from mission statements you’ve developed in the past. It is really like a constitution, a set of principles you will adhere to, goals you’ll set for your firm.

Step 2: Gather materials we’ll review – Please assemble the following items if you have them:

• Business plan, marketing plan
• Employee list and duties
• Operations & procedures manuals
• Ideas you’ve written down for any marketing activity
• Recent events, trade shows, results, ideas, plans
• Brochures and other marketing material
• Tear sheets of previous ads
• Brochures
• Annual reports
• Catalogs
• Article reprints
• Technical papers
• Copies of speeches and presentations
• Audiovisual scripts
• Press kits
• Market research
• Advertising plans
• Sales reports
• Letters from users of the product
• Back issues of promotional newsletter
• Files of competitor’s ads and literature
• Internal memos
• Letters of technical information
• Product specifications, blueprints, plans
• Illustrations and photos of product prototypes
• Engineering drawings
• Business & marketing plans
• Reports
• Proposals

Step 3: Bounce Session – A half-day workshop meeting to assess current situation and goals and outline your expectations and objectives. We will facilitate this workshop where we will look at the organization’s leadership, strategy, process, product/service, business management, and environment as viewed through the perspective of service and relationships with customers.

Meeting objectives:

• To review your primary aim/ purpose and to identify the goals and objectives of your firm so that your purpose is in alignment with your business.
• To create the marketing team, see “step a” below.
• To conduct a review of your business (see “step b” below) to determine gaps and ideas for the marketing strategy.
• Present marketing ideas for further discussion.
• Establish timelines for completion of specific tasks and projects.
• Establish a “to do” list of other tasks which need to be completed to finalize the plan, such as gathering additional data on competitors or information about your industry.

(a) Create the Marketing Team – We’re going to create a dynamic, fun, high-energy team that will develop a systems-oriented business development process to grow the practice for your unique primary aim. We will need to establish team members duties and accountabilities. Use the system of writing up a charter for each team member. What do we call the team? How do we make it fun?

(b) Business review process – Using the business review process we’ll gather information and review your business, your operating process – from how you obtain clients to how you fulfill your promise, to how your answer phones and more.

1. Review business plan. We’ll talk about where you are now and where you’d like to be. We’ll talk about the kinds of things you really want to do and those you’d like to steer away from. Establish a timeline of major accomplishments. We’ll talk about how you started your business, why, how you’ve structured it, how you came up with the ideas and more.
2. Review key executives. That means we’ll talk about your background, roles and responsibilities, and how this plays into the service and marketing efforts.
3. Review customers. Talk about their needs and concerns and whatts important to them. We’ll talk about how you acquired your existing customer base, and the reasons long-time customers continue to do business with you. We’ll talk about why you may have lost customers, and if customers have gone to the competition and why. We’ll establish an “ideal customer profile” for your various service categories, looking at the kinds of customers you’d most like to reach.
4. Review all current marketing materials, brochures, flyers, catalogs, letterhead, order forms. We’ll talk about how you are currently using these pieces and how we can streamline them, establish a template so they all have a consistent look, and what pieces you may need to fill in the gaps.
5. Review advertising, promotions, and other sales efforts and their effectiveness. We’ll look at the things you’ve been doing to obtain sales to determine how we can tie them in to the marketing efforts, make them more effective.
6. Review the services you offer. By reviewing these, we’ll insure we establish a clear concise message that conveys the benefits to the customer.
7. Review the service process. We’ll look at how you provide your services so we can determine what is important to your customers, what they need to know they may not know which might influence their buying decision.
8. Review operations, phones: answering, voice mail recording. We’ll look at how phones are answered and how this affects sales. We’ll also look at the message on the answering machine and determine ways the positioning can be conveyed. The idea is to look closely at everything to determine how best to serve the customer.
9. Review employees and functions. We’ll look at employees and sub-contractors and determine what ways they could be involved to serve customers better, what message they convey.
10. Review relationships with suppliers, vendors, and associations. We’ll talk about your suppliers and any network you have to determine ways you can work together for the common good of all, support your marketing efforts.
11. Review competitors. We’ll look at the competition and what they’re doing so that we can differentiate your firm, or react to their efforts. We’ll look at ways we can establish friendly competition if possible, or protect your marketing efforts so you stay ahead.
12. Review the industry, trends, where it has been, where it’s headed. We’ll look at what’s going on that you need to be prepared for. We’ll look at what’s going on with the economy, factors which influence your business. This will help in establishing the budget so that we keep costs in perspective.
13. Review media. Determine which are most influential to your customer base and establish the best way to gain the attention of editors and reports.
14. Review associations, events for your industry and how you participate in them. Are there events you could be involved in that would increase exposure for your firm with your target markets.

Step 4: Surveying the Customers – We will conduct two surveys, one written, one oral. During the phone survey, we will ask direct questions of customers to see where to improve. The survey results will go to our team, a third party so clients will “talk”. Assure they can leave their names out.

• Customers appreciate surveys. It shows you care. You can use the scores in your marketing. It gives credibility to your statements about service quality.
• Benefits of Survey:
• Opportunity to sell or make offer
• Keep in contact
• Learn from mistakes
• Flag possible problems
• Keep from coasting
• Keeps from wondering what you are doing wrong
• Tells you what business you are really in, what people are really buying
• Conduct phone survey so you can clarify questions and ask people to clarify answers. Voice conveys feelings not conveyed in a written survey.
• Talk to individuals not groups.
• Find out what clients are really buying.

Step 5: Marketing Review Process – The questions below will help us take a bold new look at the service so we can develop a marketing strategy that will meet client expectations. During this process, I may present examples of other public relations, advertising, marketing plans along with information on how various tools can be used to convey positioning, what colors say, and I’ll show examples of promotional and sales materials which were created with “multi-functional” capabilities.

1. The starting point: Core: What is the service?

These questions probe to determine precisely what the core service is, its current state and what you would like it to be.

Thematic topics to explore:

• What is the reality and how can we improve?
• How can we make it extraordinary, leverage what we already have. What are the ways we care, what can we leverage?
• Assume the service is bad, how can we improve?
• How can we deliver quality, speed and price like McDonalds, Disney, Federal Express?
• How can we help our customers set the standard? What do they want/value, what matters to them?
• What industry standards do we sometimes adhere to and are they serving us?
• What tiny effect can make a huge difference?
• In what ways can every single employee show he/she cares about the customer. How can we motivate them to provide extraordinary service?
• How do we respond when we make a mistake? How can we improve?
• How do we communicate the promise, picture, proof?
• How can we not just think better but differently? How can we be enterprising?

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