The first rule of successful business is that you have to be better than your competitors at letting your customers know what you do and how they can buy from you. It is not even necessary to actually have the best products or to offer a better service, just to be the better communicator.
It’s an old story, but VHS Vs Betamax was won by VHS purely down to better marketing. More recently, can you name me the second biggest selling MP3 player? …….probably not; there are just too many also-rans left in the slipstream of the all powerful and highly marketed iPod.
Obviously you need to offer good products and services, but your potential customers need to know that you offer them, how much they cost and where they can buy them. If you don’t do that, you may as well not bother with the rest because you won’t have a business.
The biggest opportunities lie in embracing and taking advantage of changes in the market, but that can’t happen if you are unclear where those opportunities may lie and what you would do to deliver against them when they happen.
A well planned and researched marketing plan will help you to define the aims and objectives of your business and predict what trends and opportunities might present themselves in the coming months and years. It will analyse potential markets, customers and products, helping you to target the right customers with the right products and services just when they want them and at the right price to make them happy to buy and you happy to sell. It helps you to set out processes and forecast costs, revenues and likely timelines so that you will be ready to take advantage of every opportunity well before your competitors.