Strategy is an overused and often abused word in the business community. People use the word strategy when they are in trouble or desperately need to change or need do something new. Losing market share and profits falling? Most people will tell you to get a new strategy. Strategy is a process that is about…
When I was kid I had an aquarium in my bedroom that housed dozens, make that hundreds of guppies and neon tetras. They seemed to multiply almost daily and I was quite proud of them. While I enjoyed watching the pretty little fish, I did not enjoy cleaning the aquarium (much to my mother’s chagrin).…
There are many books written about strategic marketing and the authors seem to delight in making it look really sophisticated and complex. In actuality, strategic marketing is really pretty simple. Strategic Marketing is about analyzing opportunities while answering three basic questions: – What might we do? – What do we do best? – What must…
“Different isn’t always better, but better is always different.” – Marshall Thurber, entrepreneur I like this quote because it sums up my thinking about how customers will buy an offering because of its differences not because it is like another offering. This is true even if the offering is a commodity or is nearly the…
“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” – George Patton, US General during WW II Please extend my apologies in advance to James Surowiecki, the author of “The Wisdom of Crowds”. His best selling book suggests that groups make better decisions than any made by a single member of the group. To this…
Green marketing. What is it really? The best definition that I have found reads as follows—green marketing is the marketing of products and services described as being “environmentally safe”. Still this is a pretty vague definition. To be green denotes that the offering is good for the environment or at least does not harm it.…
Every successful firm needs a Unique Value Proposition (UVP) which is fancy marketing talk for the reason a customer will choose to buy your offering. If you don’t have a UVP it means that your offering is a pure commodity and you should not be reading this blog—I cannot help you. A UVP states your…
Franchises fail at an alarming rate. Yet, your likelihood of start up success increases when you buy a franchise, but franchise failure rates are higher than you’d think. Research on franchising in the US by Timothy Bates, a Wayne State University Economist, suggests that a franchise is not a safer haven over raw business start…
Months ago I wrote an article called “The New Millennium Marketing Mega Trends”. It described how the retirement of the “Baby Boomers” (people born in the US from 1946-1964) will change our landscape and will create new opportunities for marketers. Little did I know that this trend would impact the available space at cemeteries (and…
So, what is marketing strategy? Marketing strategy is all about analyzing business opportunities and attempts to answer the following basic questions for a business: what might we do, what do we do best, and what must we do? Thus, marketing strategy is the commitment and the plan for what you must do given the definition…