Small Business Marketing Strategies

Talent management is increasingly becoming a critical part of the business management strategy for most organizations, not only for the corporations, but also serve as a significant part of your small business marketing strategies. Hire the wrong guy and you will see your bottom line plummet over time. It is no longer a nice sounding buzzword that describes human resource management. It is a more profound terminology, with far-reaching effects in an entity’s long term future. In fact, it has evolved to become a critical part in strategic business management, living and breathing your business.

Talent Management is a never-ending process, that manages the start point of a new employee to the end point when termination (of either party) occurs, namely attracting, developing, and retaining talent. Embedded within the process therein lies the essence of critical factors which could spell its success or failures. An expanded definition of talent management is a more comprehensive approach of trying to build those competencies.

There are 4 anchor pillars which governs talent management, namely recruiting, performance management, learning management, and compensation management. Hence, talent management is the end-to-end process of planning, recruiting, developing, managing, and compensating employees. Still this is however, an overtly simplistic and inward looking definition.

Talent Management strategies must begin with the end in perspective. It must blend into the broad perspective of your Strategic Business Plan, supported by the long term growth of your organization, human resource management as well as Business Succession Planning. In essence, it provides the right people to drive the organization and is the bloodline of its growth. Talent Management speaks of and breathes life into your organization.

Talent Management is managing the long term expectations of employees by immersing them into the corporate culture, designing and delivering programs and initiatives to support the personal and professional development of employees which blends into the growth paths of your business plan. It is not difficult to see that there is an element of soft-indoctrination induced into this process.

Hence, in order that the organizations develops and deploys people who can articulate the passion and vision of the organization and make teams with the energy to perform at much higher levels, the organization itself must first create such employees.

Stay tuned for this series of post and articles on Talent Management, exploring the talent management gaps and how to’s in management talent for long term top organizational performance.

Never Forget Your Repeats

In this looming economic downturn, you would think that there is little you could do with your existing client base. Well think again. It is all about understanding your clients’ needs and meeting them exceeding their expectations. You have been in business for a while now with a list of existing, potential and dormant clients. What can you do to further the potential revenue from the list? Yes, you merge, purge and keep selling to your repeats.

Customer Retention vs Customer Acquisition

The cost of customer acquisition versus customer retention could reach as high as 700%, according to a report by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company as below:

• Acquiring a new customer can cost 6 to 7 times more than retaining an existing customer
• Over a 5 year period customer attrition rates could reach as high as 50% if databases are left dormant
• Businesses which boosted customer retention rates by as little as 5% saw increases in their profits ranging from 5% to a whopping 95%.

Regardless of whether your business nature is B2C or B2B, there are critical steps which you must execute whenever you run your direct marketing campaigns. This applies for both online and offline direct marketing campaigns. I shall skip the basics and we shall proceed to delve deeper into your databases.

Repeat Buyers – Make Them Sticky for Life

What at Repeat Buyers? They are your loyal customers who continue to use your services by virtue of the fact that you provide a specific product or service which they need, they are used to and that which is not available elsewhere. You may have exceed their expectations by a superior product or service, over delivered on your product value proposition or provided additional value add to them in a special way. You might also have given them privilege pricing which is unmatched elsewhere. Or your delievery channels are good match for their needs. In all aspects, you must have impressed your repeat clients well to keep them coming back for more. And there are ways you could further capitalize on them.

These repeat customers are what you might deem as Cash Cows as in the BCG Matrix, which require little maintenance cost, and consistently repeat revenue over time. You need to analyze the greatest “hook” your product or service have on them, which could be anything from the above stated.

Milk The Cash Cows, Build Relationships, Help Them To Help You

“Milk” them well by continuing to delivering your services over and above expectations. You may launch a special marketing campaign specific for loyal customers and package your most popular offerings using bundled pricing.

For B2C businesses, consider organizing “Loyalty Rewards Nights” and have them invite their friends and families, or have a quarterly “Bring a Buddy” Special Seminar. For B2B businesses, organize Business Partner’s Nite where business partners bring along their extended business associates for networking purposes or Golf Charity Outing for fostering relationships.

How ever your approach, you need to keep building relationships with this segment and provide them with genuine help in support of furthering Their business objectives. Essentially, you need to help them to help you grow your business. This way, good word-of-mouth & “testimonial” will bring you much more sustaining revenue over time.

Why Did You Stop Buying? – Reviving Your Dormant Customers

As for the Dormant Customers who have been one time buyers, run a “Survey Gift Pack” and ask them why they have not bought from you again. This is the customer segment which could well turn into your Cash Cows if you only listened to them. You might be surprised to find what they have to say about your product or service. Keep an open mind and take criticism constructively. Past experience is that further product development and refinement arise from customer feedback giving rise to new lease of life to the product life cycle.

Check out more good reads, visit Product Life Cycle Rejuvenation

This is a discussion exploring the process on how to dominate online niche marketing. The process will cover defining niche market, conducting keyword research for the optimal list of keywords or keyword phrases, exploring the volume of Demand and CPC for Google Adsense profitability, affiliate and CPA programs.

We will adopt market accessible free software tools whenever possible but there will be suggestions to explore paid versions should the need arise. But I will share with you a very efficient tool which will cut your keyword research time by 90% at the end of this series.

I am a strong advocator for starting things right at the start. So First Things First, let us go through the following step by step

Define “Niche Market”

Firstly, I would provide you with a simple description of a “Niche Market” as follows:

A niche market defines a small group of people with similar and very focused demand for a certain product or service. This demand is currently met with little or ignored amounts of supply .

This reason I qualify niche market with “demand is currently unmet with little or ignored amounts of supply” is to ensure that as we proceed, you will find that your supply will meet the demand profitably, with little competition.

Find “Demand” – Look for Search Count

We proceed to find the niche segment keywords. You would probably have a niche in mind.

Step 1

Find out the functional list of keywords by going to Google Adwords Keyword Tools , a free software by Google. Note that you should start with a niche with a exact term or phrase and narrow down. If you are comfortable with the amounts of keywords sufficient as writing topics, proceed to the next step.

For building Micro Niche Sites, 1,000 < Search Count < 2,000.

Step 1 Part 2

Purpose of this is to explore the CPC from Google advertisers’ perspective. This is especially important if you are searching for niches words for Google Adsense. The higher the average cpc the better because this would imply that the higher your adsense reward.

Alternatively you could go to Google Adwords Keywords Tool which gives you the average searches of your niche on a monthly basis. Check the drop down list as exact search count. Click to include Est CPC, and Search Trends.

The real objective of part 1 and part 2 is to Derive the Demand via Search Count and hence the potential profitability of your niche from the keywords derived so as to make things worthwhile for you when you finally decide to embark on the chosen niche.

Monetising Your Online Niche Marketing Site with Affiliate Programs and Adsense

As a niche market product or service marketer, the onus is on you to seek out the most effective affiliate program, evaluated from the perspective of a potential user. Hence, exploring the spread of affiliate programs offerings in the market is essential.

The following listing would give you good coverage although not exhaustive – ClickBank, Commission Junction, Associate Programs and popular CPA networks are PepperJam, Affiliate.com, Revenueloop, just to name a few. Note that there are other successful “undercover” affiliate programs not in the mentioned list, yet to be fully leveraged, if only you look hard enough.

A Parting Note… for this Segment

Check out the the next session where we approach the topic of exploring supply, or rather, evaluating your competition for online niche marketing.

For more in depth understanding to identify which online niche marketing approach is most appropriate for you, check out Keyword Driven vs Emotive Online Niche Marketing

Often times, some internet marketers approach online niche marketing too much like a business, forgetting that there is an ultimate entity at the end of the food chain – Your Target Customers. Don’t get me wrong, I have no issue with the fact that niche or no niche, internet marketing ultimately is all about driving traffic for Business.

What I noticed lately of online niche marketing is how it is driven by the approach adopted to target and drive traffic to generate income. Many may feel that my approach is more idealistic than money-making, but I am inclined to stick to my guns because I strongly believe that whatever niche your choose to generate traffic and income must reflect your interest in that topic and more importantly, for the long term.

Then and only then can you fully immerse yourself in thoroughly researching, writing with inspiration and marketing the niche whole-heartedly for a long time to come. Remember, Personal web branding is important, and branding is a direct by-product of your web creations.

There are 2 approaches online niche marketers adopt. The first is what I would term as Keyword Driven Niche Marketing. It is the fast forward approach whereby you simply go to your niche finding software, click on the niche for today to generate a random choice of keyword or related keywords. You check the supply and demand of the niche. You then go through the process of producing keyword rich niche good content and populate with adsense or affiliate links.

The alternative approach is more of Emotive Niche Marketing. It is one whereby you pre-define your desired niche, run preliminary checks on the demand and supply of the niche. The difference kicks in here. You research and drill down to explore the type of forums & clubs your niche target participates in, the kind of lifestyle behavioral traits they possess, the kind of passionate hobbies and interests they have. Join their activities, Understand their mindset and what drives them, Live & experience their lifestyles, Find out their needs and provide the appropriate offerings. Essentially, generate strong bonding via active social networking with your niche target segments. This is also good web branding.

Do you see the difference between the 2 types of approaches? Yes, the first is aimed at methodically building traffic and ranking, the second is truly bond-building to last over time.

However, let me clarify that we are not here to judge the effectiveness of either approach. The effectiveness depends on the creator’s expectations and purpose. And real life tests have been conducted by online niche marketers that both approaches do work.

Next stop, we shall start exploring the Keyword Research approach to exploring Market Demand of your intended Niche.

For more information on Online Niche Marketing, check out How To Dominate Your Niche Markets For Small Businesses.

The Product Life Cycle describes the life path of a product. All products go through four stages, namely the Introduction, Growth, Maturity & Decline stage. Every product has a life cycle, some of which has potential for product life cycle rejuvenation.

For multiple products, the marketer’s task is more complex as he or she needs to map the various life stages of each of the products to stagger and phase them across the product universe in order that each product life cycle is fully optimize for cash generation across the business horizon.

The product life cycle analysis is a fluid document which needs to be revisited annually for planning purpose. Most product life cycles do not follow a straight path, and various business and political factors could cause less certainty of the product living through its life stages as planned.

As a prudent marketer, you should pro-actively look to rejuvenating the life cycles of Cash Cow products, in the BCG matrix, at their matured and declining stages. Some even plan ahead at the growth stages of their product lines for product life cycle rejuvenation.

Product rejuvenation ideas could be generated from the perspective of enhancing or changing the product features, adding new usages for the product, enhancing the product manufacturing process, product packaging technological innovation, creative and unique channel delivery process etc.

Baking soda, a product traditionally used for baking cakes and facing decline stage in the product life cycle has taken an innovative twist of fate for the good. Product development and marketing departments worked together to discover a creative and very practical new usage of utilizing baking soda as an odor-removing agent. The rest is marketing history and sales have rejuvenated leap and bounds since.

As a smart marketer, you must carefully weigh the pros and cons of product rejuvenation. The ultimate decisions whether to rejuvenate a product and extend its life cycle depend largely on costs associated with the process as well as the ability of your company to successfully re-position the rejuvenated product and convince potential customers of their extended usages and value add.

Niche marketing is the process of searching out small but profitable market segments via custom-made products or services to service this niche. Essentially, it is a marketing strategy to address focused target segments, or narrowly defined group of prospects largely ignored by mainstream providers.

Large corporations, by virtue of their business clout, often forgo niche segments for the mass segments by way of economies of scale which accords greater profitability. Having said this, there are large corporations which focus specifically on niche markets, whereby the niches are identified as profitably viable and usually dominate that space.

Traditional niche marketers are often reliant on the loyalty business model to maintain a profitable volume of sales. I shall address the slight difference between online niche marketing and traditional niche marketing.

Niche markets can open windows of opportunities for entrepreneurs and become feasibly profitable, at times in a big way against mainstream competition, thanks to the clever implementation of strategic focused specialization, and a largely dismissed segment by large competition. Simply look to Ben & Jerry’s Premium Ice Cream and you will know what I am driving at.

In the Porter’s Competitive Advantage Model , niche marketing dominates the “Differentiation” and/or “Differentiation Focus” quadrants of the matrix, with the former expounding on intrinsic value-added features as well as benefits, and the latter on extrinsic, high niche perceived value of the product/service.

Sourcing and “sniffing” out the customers initially could be a challenge but it is true that you will be able to lock them in as your life-long customers once you are able to meet and exceed their needs with your products and services, continuously enhancing and delighting them with the product/service experience.

Note that your success to dominating your niche market is reliant on easy access a group of fast-growing prospects with no current dominating competitor in sight as yet. Work out a comprehensive marketing plan, have a stream of products in consecutively to ensure that you lock in the loyalty of your customers and henceforth, protect your continued profit streams.

Always remember, this is your space, your niche and you must grow it with the ultimate aim to dominate it.

There is an interesting tussle of views between online mass marketing and online niche marketing . Internet marketing traditionally began with information-giving and this has given rise to the perspective that the internet is appealing to the masses. And rightly it should. The extensive growth of e-commerce and affiliate marketing has however given rise to online niche marketing, and has become a very profitable topic of discussion at that too.

There is no right or wrong about which perspective one takes. It all boils down to the objective of the site owner and his or her trade, of which will determine what perspective he or she will take to catapult the site to the next level. For instance, a site owner representing a corporate entity would likely design the site with an information-centric perspective, whilst an avid online e-marketer will be ecommerce-centric.

I would consider that every business is in a niche of its own. The main difference being that it’s either a broad niche or a narrowly-defined niche .

While searching for business ideas, both traditional or internet marketing alike, we start off exploring a viable board industry, narrowing down to a digestible segment and finally specializing in providing a focused line of product offering.

So essentially, the extent of the niche depends on the breadth & depth of your product range, your chosen target market(s), and the market needs to be fulfilled.

For example, you could consider an Aston Martin dealership selling a couple of Aston Martin DBS per year. Or you could also consider a Toyota dealership selling a couple thousands of Toyota Corrollas per year. The former is obviously a Super Niche while the latter is a broad one.

Similarly, in internet marketing, there is also need to niche both your product offerings and target segment. The reason being that as an internet marketer, you only have that much time and energy to ensure certain level of success.

Your internet SWOT and viability analysis are much more skilled and technology-driven. You use keyword search tools, and supply search tools to measure the product’s potential viability. You use traffic-driving tools to route internet traffic to your site optimizing backlinks from social networking & bookmarking, social media, article marketing, link-exchanges etc.

The smaller the niche, the greater the amount of effort to grow your product offerings separately, differentiate them, maintain your clientele base. Traditional brick and mortar businesses need to build-in the niche segments expansion requirements, be it from marketing or budgeting perspectives.

Internet marketers are able to achieve greater operational efficiency, sometimes at faster pace, by leveraging upon ready or customized technology-driven tools to manage the ever-growing number of niche offerings within a portfolio.

Internet Marketing for Small Business or online marketing is a whole different realm altogether. Most businesses, regardless of size, use the website as an informative tool. Still more are those who actively participate in internet marketing with the purpose of generating an income. Internet Marketing is essentially marketing via your website. This tool is used in varying extent depending on the expertise and budget apportioned by your company. Internet Marketing for Small Business can be a lucrative sales and effective advertising channel when done correctly.

The demographics and psychographics of an internet user tend to deviate from that of the traditional consumer, although the profile gaps have greatly narrowed in the recent 3 to 5 years, thanks to recent years’ extensive proliferation of the internet. These differences have given rise to an entire spread of marketing-based activity in cyberworld to generate income.

The unique characteristics of the Internet gives rise to new approaches to bring internet marketing to the next level. The internet has the unique ability to receive and provide response. In addition, it works very hard for you, 24 hours 7 days a week. Customers from all over cyber, of all time zones, are hence exposed to your products and services. By the same token, your potential customers can be reached round the clock, 24by7, enhancing go-to-market strategies. Hence, the internet has a global appeal which is capable of immediately expanding your target segment exponentially worldwide.

So how does one manage such an open market place? The traditional marketing rationales still apply, with additional internet-specific marketing strategies to boost. Both traditional and internet marketing strategies synergize to support the overall business model. A broad internet marketing model would include namely, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), display advertising, behavioral marketing, email marketing, newsletter marketing, affiliate marketing, blog marketing, viral marketing, CRM marketing etc.

Search Engine Marketing includes broadly keyword search, search engine optimization (SEO). I would consider keyword search and SEO as trend-mapping marketing model. By maximizing the exposure of certain related keywords, the internet crawlers and search engines would be able to better locate your site and materials and you are able to maximize your website profile and increase traffic for potential business generation.

Display advertising, namely CPA, PPC, is simply the internet version of your press ads and they cost less. There are ways to help you further narrow down your specific target segment. This is not to specially advertise for Google Adwords, but to highlight how display advertising works at a more efficient level. You create display ads, choose your relevant keywords, and when netizens Google search using one or some of your keywords, your ad may just appear in the search results. So you are effectively advertising to a very focused and interested target segment.

Behavioral Marketing tracks a user’s surfing or searching content & path on the web. Essentially, it bears resemblances to LSI, latent semantic indexing. They are then provided with relevant predefined categories of information which might interest them.

Small Business Email Marketing is all about list building, email delivery and tracking to help you keep in touch with customers, drive traffic to your site, sign up for newsletters or buy your products. With an active and high quality email list, you manage run email marketing campaigns. Should you intend to utilize email marketing as one of your tool, be reminded to apply permission marketing which lets you politely ask your customers to opt-in, which positions you as a considerate marketer who does not engage in spamming. Small business email marketing, when done correctly, could multiply your business many folds.

Affiliate marketing is the web-based version of physical network marketing. Affiliate marketing essentially leverages on the various online marketing approaches to maximize sales revenue, namely, search engine marketing, online display ads, email and newsletter marketing etc. The beauty of Affiliate marketing is that if done correctly, you can generate a comfortable income with low cost model and of course with a lot of hard work as well.

Viral marketing is essentially word of mouth marketing leveraging on the latest craze in social networking sites and Twitter. Social networking potentials or SNPs are members of such social websites which has great word of mouth marketing power.

To formulate successful Internet marketing strategies requires certain level of internet understanding, whilst not necessary IT-in depth. Such knowledge is easily acquired. More significantly, you must retain the primal creative instinct of a marketer.

For brick and mortar businesses, the Internet Marketing serves as an additional tool which adds ammunition for you to drive your revenue generating goals. However, if you run an online e-business, you will surely need to adopt a very focused Internet Marketing business model which utilizes much of the above tools mentioned.

BusinessFast4ward Business Plan Template Framework and the BusinessFast4ward Business Viability Analysis discussed the array of viability analysis models which evaluate the broad market and business environment for suitability to conduct business.

Having carefully weighed the various models namely Target Segment Analysis, Product life cycle, Competitive Advantage Model, Product Growth Directions as well as the BCG Matrix and concluded the broad business strategies to adopt, we are now ready to explore Your Marketing Plan which will help you investigate your Marketing Mix (4Ps), Internet Marketing, Integrated Marketing Communications, Marketing Budget plan as well as Marketing Implementation plan.

1. Value Proposition > Unique Selling Point (USP) >> The Positioning Statement

Value propositions are product characteristics turned benefits. Your Value Proposition must be clear and to the point. Having defined your value proposition, you can craft the UPS. With creativity, you then come up with the Positioning Statement. Of course, your positioning statement must map to match your target segments identified in Part 1 of your marketing plan.

2. Marketing Mix (4Ps)

The 4Ps essentially denotes Product, Pricing, Promotion, Placement decisions which interplay to cumulatively create compelling value proposition, UPS and positioning statement for your potential customer.

Product decisions define the real physical product characteristics which might include your product brand name, quality, packaging, functions, after sales services, etc. Not that Product benefits give rise to USPs which allow you to provide your customers with a compelling purchase reason.

Pricing Decisions includes list, retail, wholesale, seasonal pricing, volume discounts, early-bird discounts, bundled pricing, flexible pricing, consignment options etc. Depending on your viability analysis strategies and in particular, your Competitive Advantage strategy and which you adopt in Marketing Plan Part 1, you might consider pegging your pricing with a cost leadership model, or cost focus model.

Placement Decisions essentially means distribution channels which you utilize to bring your products to your customers. Extent of coverage in your market could be defined by inclusive or exclusive or selective distribution. Distribution and warehousing centers, inventory management as well as logistics. Internal extension of sales distribution is a common consideration. If you are selling mass retail products, you might consider using a broad network of distributors to maximize your sales, hence the inclusive distribution approach. You may also need to decide on applicable warehousing, inventory and logistics methods which fit your mode of operations and budget.

Promotions Decisions is the final phase of the Marketing mix which, to certain extent could make or break a product. This is the phase whereby you successfully communicate your product to your target segments with communication tools available. Your promotional mix includes Advertising & Promotions, personal selling, sales promotions, public relations and publicity as well as sponsorships. Essentially, what promotional mix you apply to your business is largely determined by your marketing communications budget.

Advertising Strategies were traditionally considered to be an expensive medium, and it still is. One can, however, consider cross “advertising”, or what I might consider “barter-advertising” by cross-advertising in a collaborative channel partner’s newsletter and allowing your partner to cross-advertise in yours. Internet advertising if controlled well, could also generate better lead to sales potential.

Internet Marketing Strategies are the latest most popular approach to tap on huge potential business revenues. Driving Traffic is the key critical element in this equation. Check out more of this in Internet Marketing Category.

Personal Selling Strategies not only include individual sales persons, but more extensively of late – telemarketing as well as direct-marketing. To cascade you sales more exponentially, you may consider a mix remuneration package combining the benefits of network marketing model and the traditional sales force structure. (of course, do ensure clearance for authorities as certain countries may impose restrictions to this mode of sales structure)

Publicity is initiated by your company. It is the deliberate attempt to manage the public’s perception of your company or products. Publicity is internally created news for external dispersion to subtly portray the desired positive image. Publicity activities include speaking engagements at public seminars, contests, exhibitions, testimonials, interviews with the CEO, award presentations etc. Publicity could also take the form of free featured news and business information in trade magazines and websites to enhance company’s positioning. Sponsorship is a very effective exposure tool for the company, and monetary benefits could be exchanged for database listing from participant lists.

Events Management is a tool which many marketers tend to ignore and believe that they can manage the process should they be required to do so. Event management should instead be viewed as a tool for lead generation as well as positioning your business. Sometimes it can be closely tied to sponsorship where organsing events become a part of the “package”. Very few materials have been written in this area whereby ready-to-use templates may be tweaked to fit your business process.

Indeed, Business Viability Analysis is a boring topic. But this is also the most critical component of your business & marketing plans which provides direction on the potential market environment, market demand and supply, and to extent, guides your potential market direction decisions. Note that financial modeling is beyond the scope of this article.

About 70% of all businesses are Small Businesses. And you can never be more wrong should you feel that this viability analysis outline is only for corporate businesses. The framework below is met out for both segments with the basic fundamentals in place.

I have segregated the Business Viability Analysis into two major categories, namely Overview Evaluation models and Your Domain Business Evaluation models. The former includes Porter’s 5 Competitive Forces Model, P.E.S.T. Analysis. The latter includes SWOT Analysis Matrix, Target Segment Analysis, Product Life Cycle Analysis, Competitive Advantage Model, Product Growth Directions, BCG Matrix. Both set of models will help you to qualify if the business in question is viable from market demand supply as well as potential market perspectives.

1. Porter’s 5 Competitive Forces Model

Porter’s 5 Competitive Forces model is developed by Michael E. Porter, an important strategic analysis from a broad market environment perspective. It explores the 5 major factors namely Bargaining Power of Supplier, Customer Power/Buyer Power, New Entry Threats, Substitution Threats & Competition Rivalry.

These 5 forces are interdependent, influencing and interplaying with each other at any given point in time. This is a model which needs to be revisited on a consistent basis, usually, over a half yearly time frame for re-evaluation of market trend.

2. P.E.S.T. Analysis

Doing your “PEST control” ensures good health a strong pulse for your business. PEST analysis essentially means macro environmental evaluations such as Political & Legal, Economic, Social & Cultural, as well as Technological.

Economic environment could make or break your business. In 2008, the US sub-prime issue became a global financial crisis which not only affected the housing market but nearly every facet of the economy by virtue of its spillover effect. The interest rate at time of writing, is 2%, a far cry from 4% a year ago. Banks tighten their lending belts and business loan borrowing become more difficult to obtain. But if you manage to get that business loan, you should be incurring a much lower interest repayment.

One Social factor which is growing in importance is the environment. Every large corporation nowadays are involved in one way or another in reducing carbon emission to the ozone and in dealing with climate change.

3. SWOT Analysis Matrix

SWOT Analysis, is the acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats affecting your business. Strengths component analyses internal capabilities throughout all business functions which could become unique propositions when mapping out business strategies. Weaknesses analyses the internal gaps in current state. Likewise, Opportunities & Threats analyse your business’s external environment which could give rise to opportunities or threats to your business. This is a fluid cheat sheet (not totally exhaustive & you should add on to it to cater to your own business type) which should be revisited annually as a reality business stop-check.

4. Target Segment Analysis

This is a very critical section of the marketing plan which helps you with your market segmentation and defines your target markets. Define & segment your clientele-base into Primary & Secondary Target market groups using demographic and psychographic information. Demographic data includes age, income group, geographic location etc. Psychographic data includes life-stage needs, lifestyle, consumer purchasing behavior etc. Upon completion, you would have a better gauge on the potential size of your target segments. You may adjust the segments to match your products, thereby expanding your segments for greater potential.

5. Competitive Advantage Model

The Competitive Advantage Model by Michael E. Porter suggests 4 approaches benchmarking against your competitors namely, Cost Leadership, differentiation or focus with 2 variants.

Cost Leadership strategy means leading in a low cost pricing strategy within your industry. This is achieved from economies of scale. You must almost solely dominate this competitive space otherwise more than one company in this space will cause a price war.

Differentiation strategy indicates unique value proposition, namely in areas such as the product, service, image, distribution, marketing etc or a combination of them.

Focus strategy aspires to be the best in a focused segment, with 2 variants of cost focus and differentiation focus

6. Product Life Cycle Analysis

The Product Life Cycle Analysis helps you to identify the stage of your product. All products go through four stages, namely the Introduction, Growth, Maturity & Decline stage. Every product has a life cycle. You need to know each of your products’ life cycles thoroughly in order to plan to phase their life-stage across the horizon.

This analysis is a fluid document which needs to be revisited annually for planning purpose. If you believe that your product has other potential uses not maximized currently, you should pro-actively look to rejuvenating the life cycles of such products at their matured and declining stages.

7. Product Growth Directions

Product Growth Directions shed light on the possible growth approaches you can adopt in driving your product sales. This is a matrix which maps your product growth strategies across new vs existing markets and products. Potentially, the four segments are Market penetration, Market development, Diversification as well as Product Development. Market penetration essentially denotes leveraging new markets with existing products. Market development means making inroads on existing markets & products. Diversification indicates leveraging on existing markets with new products. And of course, Product development is expansion into new markets with new products.

8. BCG Matrix

Boston Consulting Group developed this BCG Matrix which helps you to determine what priorities should be given in your product portfolio of a product. It has essentially two dimensions – market share and market growth rate, with 4 categories fitting into these quadrants.

Stars = Leaders of the Business – Products with high growth rate & high market share. Generates high cashflow and requires high cash input. Usually, Net cashflow is flat.

Cash Cows = Foundation of the Business (stars of yester years) – Products with low growth rate & high market share. They generates high cashflow with low cash input requirements.

Dogs = Drags of the Business – Products with low growth rate & low market share. They must be avoided whenever possible. Liquidate as many as possible.

Question Marks = Ambiguity of the Business – Products with high growth rate & low market share. Have high cash demand and low returns. If keeping question marks, you must ensure increase in market share and deliver cash.

The identification of your products at the various categories will enlighten you to apply the correct growth & funding strategy. For instance, cash infusion could be provided to fund Question Marks &/or Stars to drive them towards the next level – Cash Cow positions.

True application of all the above mentioned viability analyses is a cumulative interplay of the different models, although they are developed separately by separate strategists. I advocate a broad yet conjugative approach to the application as therein lies great interdependence of each to the other.