3 Keys to David's Marketing Projects
Plan from a blank slate
Marketing is a complicated process. Successful marketing involves taking an existing process and modifying it. Rarely does an organization exist without marketing and sales infrastructure. However, planning requires a blank slate—David takes a fresh look at the marketing landscape for your company to reveal how your company wins sales. This is followed by a roadmap to move marketing from where it is today to where it needs to be to reach those sales.
Many companies don’t take the blank slate approach. The classic learning experience in my career was watching Oracle successfully compete against Sybase and Informix. Why did Oracle so consistently beat Sybase and Informix in the marketplace? Because Oracle got Sybase and Informix to compete by imitating Larry Ellison’s aggressive, some would say “in your face,” tactics.
Oracle predicted future success where it had already been. Sybase and Informix spent millions to quickly chase Oracle’s markets. This allowed them to reach the same customers–shortly after Oracle closed the deal. Big mistake. They didn’t start with a blank slate. They didn’t analyze the market and sell to their strengths. They didn’t focus on the fundamentals.
Focus on the fundamentals
There are basic fundamentals at the core of every marketing process. They are:
· Competitive analysis
· Market analysis
· Product/corporate positioning
David develops these tools as working documents for many companies. A thorough understanding of these tools leads to success in the following areas:
· Product strategy/planning
· Go-to-market strategy/launch
· Segmentation
· PR and analyst programs
· Sales tools
· Lead generation
· Channel programs
In this way, analysis results in positioning which results in the solid execution documented by David’s career.
Look at the whole picture
Every company engages in marketing to at least three constituents: investors, employees and customers. Because of this, every company must engage in organization marketing (for investors), experience marketing (for employees) and product or service marketing (for customers). The astute CEO will realize that first they market their organization to investors, second they market their organization to employees and third they market their product.
This is how to start a company. Many of these activities have the same processes (corporate messaging, competitive analysis, product messaging, market operations) but you have to raise the money, hire the people and then create and sell the product. True, as money gets harder to find, this process gets out of order but you must look at the whole picture.
David often works with CEOs to sell products as well as present companies and experience. Successful companies realize the importance around planning all three types of events.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.