Understanding marketing and making it work on a tight budge

Objectives

Markets seem ever more competitive and customers ever more fickle. Thus marketing is not an option – it is essential. Even small businesses must understand how to use marketing and how to make it work on a scale that is manageable and cost-effective, yet works effectively. This practical two-day seminar reviews the marketing process and shows how to proceed on a systematic basis so as to plan and implement appropriate marketing action.

It is particularly directed at smaller businesses, including those that have no formal marketing department and must budget carefully. It reviews marketing as a process and focuses individually on the techniques of marketing (from pricing to promotion) to show how it can be made effective on a manageable scale.

Who Should Attend?

All those in smaller businesses who need to understand marketing, which must take responsibility for marketing (albeit amongst other tasks) and initiate marketing action and make it work – cost-effectively.

Introduction

• Current competitive pressures and the need for marketing

• Marketing demystified: the concept, the function and the process

• Practical implications for action

Course Outline!

Planning issues

• The business/marketing plan: is it useful/necessary?

• Exploring the market (market research)

• Product/service strategies

• Product life cycles and the product development and promotional implications

• Setting and using the right price and pricing policy

• Distributive options

Promotional techniques

• The nature of the mix and options for action

• The nature and use of the various techniques:
  - Press and public relations
  - Advertising and direct mail
  - Sales Promotion

• Selecting the right mix for the size and nature of the business

• Planning and implementing appropriate action

• Making what is done creative: to create distinction and differentiate from competitors

• Focus on cost-effective solutions

The role of personal selling

• The link between promotion and sales activity

• The role of personal selling and its power to differentiate and secure business

• Techniques of persuasion

• The link to customer service

Coordinating activity into a cohesive strategy

• The need for planned, continuous and coordinated action

• Maximizing effectiveness

• Making the whole process work

Summary

• Key issues and action for the future

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