Mastering Marketing

Overview

The success of any business depends upon effective marketing. An understanding of the key principles and techniques is vital for managers of all levels, and not just those in the marketing department.

Mastering Marketing provides a clearly written explanation of the core skills and concepts needed to market your business profitably. Offering more than just short-term selling ‘tricks’, it provides techniques for building and maintaining a long-term profitable market position.

Particularly useful to managers newly appointed to the marketing department, or those wishing to liaise more closely with it, this book will also prove invaluable to owner-managers wishing to adopt a more structured approach to business development.

Content

CHAPTER ONE: The power of marketing

PART 1: The power of marketing – effectiveness is more important than efficiency

• Strategic focus
• Introducing the product life cycle (PLC)
• Strategic focus and the product life cycle
• Relative potency
• The effectiveness/efficiency grid
  Activity No. 1
  PART 2: The power of marketing – the law of supply and demand
• The basic link in the chain
• Hard/sellers markets
• Surviving oversupply
• The marketing concept introduced

CHAPTER TWO: How marketing works

• Specific group of customers
• Dialogue over time
• Customer’s needs, understood in depth
  Activity No. 2
• The competitive differential advantage
• How to develop competitive advantage
  Activity No. 3
• Marketing planning

CHAPTER THREE: Introducing the new marketing mix: the marketing tools (the four or five P’s)

• Segmentation
• Segment strategy approaches
• How to segment
• The process
• Segmenting for services
• Segmenting for an IT related market
• Segmentation principles
• Market selection (i.e. ‘targeting’)
• How competitive will the company be in the new market?
  Activity No. 4
• Competitive product positioning
  Activity No. 5
• Exercise – your positioning

CHAPTER FOUR: The marketing mix

PART 1: The marketing mix – the ‘product’

• What ‘products’ are
• The total product concept
  Activity No. 6
  PART 2: The marketing mix – distribution – ‘Your route to market’
• Background
• The environmental dimension
• The structural dimension
• Functions of the ‘route to market’
• Using intermediaries: advantages and disadvantages
• Managing the distribution channel
• Power in the chain
• Exercise
  PART 3: The marketing mix – marketing communications and promotion (marcomms)
• Understanding marketing communications
• Public relations and editorial publicity (PR & EP)
• The role of advertising and promotion
  Activity No. 7
• The campaign design process
• Creative execution/treatment
• Testing the execution
  PART 4: The marketing mix – marketing pricing
• Internal accounting based pricing
• Product life cycle and price
• ‘Value based’ pricing
• Some useful marketing

CHAPTER FIVE: The marketing plan

• The plan as a working document
• The plan as a learning process
• The marketing programme
• The plan’s main headings
• The marketing audit
• The action plan
• The marketing programme
• The control mechanisms
• Building the budget
• Action checklist

CHAPTER SEVEN: Getting the feedback

• Types of information
• Secondary data via desk research
• Primary information via field research
• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Market/customer information systems
• The MIS/CIS tools
• Market/ing research (some critical issues)
• The research budget
• The research brief
• The proposal

CHAPTER SIX: The marketing audit-deriving foundations for a marketing strategy

• The shock of change
• Geography
• Technological innovation – (the ‘T’ in G.p.l.e.e.s.t)
• The structure of society – (the ‘S’ in G.P.l.e.e.s.t)
• Political issues = government and legislation
• The implications of cycles and change
• Format for recording the macro analysis
  Activity No. 8
• Identifying the competition
• Analyzing sales and marketing competency
• Marketing assets and liabilities
  Activity No. 9
• A competitor’s company analysis checklist
• Our company analysis checklist
• Specific to the competition
• Activity No. 11
• ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ competitors

Author

Ian Ruskin-Brown

Ian Ruskin-Brown has more than 35 years’ marketing experience. He worked in the operational field and planning functions for J Lyons, Reed, Trebor, Esso and Goodyear before establishing his own marketing consultancy specialising in market research services and training in marketing and sales skills.