Marketing planning aims and objectives

Behind the corporate objectives, which in themselves offer the main context for the marketing plan, will lay the ‘corporate mission’; which in turn provides the context for these corporate objectives. This `corporate mission’ can be thought of as a definition of what the organization is; of what it does: ‘Our business is …’.

This definition should not be too narrow, or it will constrict the development of the organization; a too rigorous concentration on the view that `We are in the business of making meat-scales’, as IBM was during the early 1900s, might have limited its subsequent development into other areas. On the other hand, it should not be too wide or it will become meaningless; `We want to make a profit’ is not too helpful in developing specific plans.

Abell suggested that the definition should cover three dimensions: ‘customer groups’ to be served, ‘customer needs’ to be served, and ‘technologies’ to be utilized [1]. Thus, the definition of IBM’s `corporate mission’ in the 1940s might well have been: `We are in the business of handling accounting information [customer need] for the larger US organizations [customer group] by means of punched cards [technology].’ Perhaps the most important factor in successful marketing is the `corporate vision’. Surprisingly, it is largely neglected by marketing textbooks; although not by the popular exponents of corporate strategy – indeed, it was perhaps the main theme of the book by Peters and Waterman, in the form of their `Superordinate Goals’. ‘In Search of Excellence’ said: “Nothing drives progress like the imagination. The idea precedes the deed.” [2] If the organization in general, and its chief executive in particular, has a strong vision of where its future lies, then there is a good chance that the organization will achieve a strong position in its markets (and attain that future). This will be not least because its strategies will be consistent; and will be supported by its staff at all levels. In this context, all of IBM’s marketing activities were underpinned by its philosophy of `customer service’; a vision originally promoted by the charismatic Watson dynasty.

The emphasis at this stage is on obtaining a complete and accurate picture. In a single organization, however, it is likely that only a few aspects will be sufficiently important to have any significant impact on the marketing plan; but all may need to be reviewed to determine just which ‘are’ the few.

In this context some factors related to the customer, which should be included in the material collected for the audit, may be:

* Who are the customers?

* What are their key characteristics?

* What differentiates them from other members of the population?

* What are their needs and wants?

* What do they expect the `product’ to do?

* What are their special requirements and perceptions?

* What do they think of the organization and its products or services?

* What are their attitudes?

* What are their buying intentions?

Requirements of good packaging

* Functional – effectively contain and protect the contents
* Provide convenience during distribution, sale, opening, use, reuse, etc.
* Be environmentally responsible
* Be cost effective
* Appropriately designed for target market
* Eye-catching (particularly for retail/consumer sales)
* Communicate attributes and recommended use of the product and package
* Compliant with retailers’ requirements
* Promotes image of enterprise
* Distinguishable from competitors’ products
* Meet legal requirements for product and packaging
* Point of difference in service and supply of product.
* For a perfect product, perfect colour.

Steps in product design

* Design and development of product ideas.
* Selection of and sifting through product ideas.
* Design and testing of product concept.
* Analysis of business instead of product concept.
* Design and testing of emotional product.

Top Ten Small Business Web Site Marketing Tips

#Content
Content is key
Almost all the search engines scan a sites content now – almost ignoring things like meta tags. The more content you have on your site the more the search engines can scan – but there is more to it then that: people like content too. Many people measure a web site’s success by the number of visitors it gets – so ask yourself – why would people come to your web site? do you offer them interesting and informative information that relates to your product or service? if not, why would they come?

Relevant content and lots of it is a key for a successful web site. There is always room for more content on a web site, and you can never have too much.

Take this article for example, while it’s fairly useful information for many of our visitors, it’s also additional content for our web site – and will serve to help our site do better. Writing articles about aspects of your industry is a great way to generate content.

Set asside an hour a day (or at least an hour a week) to devote to adding new content to your web site.
#2 Freshness
Keep it current
Having lots of content is great – but if it is all three years old it’s not going to look like your site is much of a priority. The search engines actually track this. They monitor how frequently your site changes as they visit it for indexing. The more often it changes the better your rank in the freshness category.

What constitutes change? pretty much anything – which is why keeping a BLOG or adding frequent news articles to your web site usually produces such good results. It is also the reason why having something as simple as rotating content and the current date on every page has been shown to make a difference (although the search engines have been getting wise to this kind of tactic)
#3 No Tricks
Don’t try to outsmart the Search Engines – Eventually you’ll loose
Many design firms promise success through the use of tricks, backdoors, and special tactics designed to sneak a web site into a top position rapidly. Something, of course, that the search engines are constantly battling to defeat. Why play the game? as the search engines find the cheaters they will plug the holes and a rank (that usually costs a pretty penny to achieve) will immediately be lost.
Rather, follow the recommendations of the search engines – most set out rules for web masters that outline what they would like to see in a web site (incidentally these rules are the main source of research for this document) By following the rules the engines are actually battling all the cheating web sites and working to promote the sites that follow the rules – they are fighting FOR you!
#4 Links
Links both in and our must be relevent
There has been a lot of talk about link exchanges – people linking to others merely to gain a higher rank (hmmm this smacks of breaking tip #3) if you are going to link to someone and/or ask them to link to you – ask yourself: is it relevant?
Any old link is not going to help you much – search engines will look at who is linking to you – they are also starting to pay very close attention to how many links you have off your web site on a page. This is being done to try and drop sites with pages of links (do you have a links page on your web site?)
It is far better to have relevant links places throughout your web site – on only those pages that specifically the topic that relates to the page being linked to.
Unfortunately you can’t exert too much control over the way that other sites link to yours but it is worth looking at how a site usually links to others before to specifically go requesting a link from them.
#5 Structure
Organize your web site and everyone will thank you.
Both the search engines and your web visitors prefer a web site that is well structured. The search engines due to their very nature (being computer programs) must break down all web sites into elements based on the structure of the pages. People, so frequently rushing to find the specific information they are looking for, rarely read through web pages but rather scan headings and bullied lists to find the detailed sections of interest. In both cases a well structured site will be far better received then one that is a mish-mosh of information haphazardly thrown together.
This is simple to do – but all too often missed. Make headings, use the correct coding tags for them, organize sections of content into groups, and use bold and bullied lists to present key points.
Keep in mind when writing paragraphs of text that most humans will not read them unless they are specifically titled with a headline that matches what they are looking for.
#6 Accessibility
A web site that speaks to all is better then a site that only speaks to some.
Tips #6 and #7 are closely related: The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) provides a list of guidelines for how to create web sites that are accessible to as many people (and systems) as possible. Think about your web site – can someone with a visual disability (perhaps even something as simple as colour-blindness) still get information about your product or service? If not, how do you feel knowing that you have just excluded a vast segment of the population from accessing your web site?
There are many simple ways that you can ensure your web site is accessible to people with special needs. A group of simple tests for the sites content and design that ensure your product or service is presented to the widest possible audience. The specifics are beyond the scope of this document – but be sure that you check with your designer to ensure that your site design and code is following accessibility guidelines.
#7 Quality Code
Well coded web sites perform better.
Many small business owners don’t have too much control over the code used to create their web site – but it is still important to know how important it may be. Standard compliant code that has been checked for errors is easier for the search engines to assimilate. It is more widely visible across varied platforms (computer types) and in different browsers.
Ensure your web designer is writing standard compliant code that is validated for errors. You can also check your own web site using free on-line tools from the W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium – the standards body that administers Internet technologies)
#8 URLs
Prudent choice of URLs will impact your web site’s performance
Professional web designers should already know this – but if you are using a content management system to build your web site, or portions of it, it is important to understand the significance of the URL used to access pages on your web site.
Search engines look at the address of every page on your web site and try to extract key-words from the content of the url. For example, you may have a page about “Widgets” on your web site called “somewhere.com” creating the page with a filename of wigits.html will give a better keyword rank then page6.html this is also true of sub-directories on the site somewhere.com/widgets/… being better then somewhere.com/files/…
This is a fairly subtle point but makes a significant difference for most search engines. It can also make it much easier for people that are typing in a URL to access a specific page of your web site. Notice the URL for this web page – it’s called http://www.pawprint.net/internet-marketing/small-business-web-site.php for a reason!
#9 Style
Looks do matter – but perhaps not the way you think…
In the grand scheme of things the “looks” of a web site in the classic sense are not really that important – honestly! once people have looked at a web site for a few minutes they will quickly discard their first impression (based on looks) and move immediately to asking – is this site giving me the information I need – and can I find it quickly (going back to tips #1 – content and #5 – structure)
So what are we on about with style? simple – ensure the style of your site makes it easy to read. Avoid things like black backgrounds with white text (inverse text is harder to read) ALL CAPS (humans read by identifying word shapes – writing in all caps forces people to read every letter and quickly becomes annoying – plus on the net it is used as an typographic method of indicating you are screaming) You should also check your web site using a colour blind test to ensure that visitors with the various types of colour-blindness can still actually read your navigation.
#10 Images
Selling a product – better make sure it looks good
If you are selling something that has a visual representation – then professional looking photography is key. Even a multi-million dollar resort will not look good if the photographs are amateurish. If you care about what you have to sell, then it’s worth investing in some professional photographs to show people what you have. Remember, on-line people can’t get a hold of your product – so you need to give them some really good photographs so that they can feel confident that it meets their needs.

Small Business Market Research

Market research is an essential area for small businesses to make sure that they understand what is happening in their market and what their customers want and need.

Unfortunately when you think “market research” you can fall into the trap of thinking of big, formal market research projects conducted by market research agencies and which need a massive budget.

It doesn’t have to be like that and I am offering a free eight page report Small Business Market Research for you to download. I’m not even making you submit your email address because I don’t want to put any obstacles in your way – that’s how important I believe market research is.

There are three aspects of market research:

1. What is happening to the overall market? How is it being affected by the wider economic forces.

2. What do customers want and need? What are the problems they want to solve? What are the consequences and the experiences they want from your product or service?

3. Who are the competitors? What are they offering? Where are you stronger or weaker? How can you emphasise your competitive advantages?