Start Your Marketing Plan on the Right Foot

Posted on October 28th, 2010 by Keith Ferrazzi

No one can give you clearer advice about how to run a great company than Mark Thompson and Brian Tracy. Now, Build a Great Business! is the perfect prescription for a much more profitable and personally rewarding business.  Here, for example, is a checklist from the book on how to develop a great marketing plan.

1. What exactly do you sell, defined in terms of what your product or service actually does to improve the life or work of your customer?

2. What is your competitive advantage? What are the core competencies that make your product or service superior to anything else available?

3. Describe your ideal customer. Who wants, needs, and is most willing to pay for the benefits provided by your product or service?

4. What are your most effective marketing methods? How do you attract the greatest number of qualified customers?

5. Who or what are your biggest competitors in the sale of your products or services, and how do you differentiate your products or services from those of your competitors?

6. How can you encourage your customers to participate and contribute more to your company's marketing and product development? How can you create a community for your customers to share ideas, enthusiasm, and challenges in your market?

7. What changes could you make in your products, prices, promotions, places, positioning, packaging, or people - the seven P's of your marketing mix - to make your offerings more desirable to your target market?

Brian Tracy and Mark Thompson focus on SIX other areas of business including Leadership, Business Planning, Hiring, Offering a Great Product or Service, and Designing a Great Sales Process. For more information and for thousands in bonuses, click here.

What one action are you going to take immediately as the result of your answers to the previous seven questions?

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2 Responses so far | Have Your Say!

  1. Great post - I'd add at the beginning: How can I help my clients? What value can I offer them first without expectation of something in return? The same core message of Never Eat Alone...

  2. Good stuff here - I have been reading and watching Simon Sinek and his "Start with Why" message ... It focuses me and daily revives my passion ... Within his message, Sinek basically repeats the concept, "people don't buy what you do, but why you do it" ... With the steps in this post and this message coursing through each step of building a business, each meeting, each conversation, each thought ... That's powerful.

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