Marshall Place Associates Live More of Your Life

Networking.

The most important and often most difficult path to market for the
person with an idea for a new product involves building a network of
people. These supporters have to help shape the growing business and
give honest feedback to the founder.

To get these supporters on board the business owner needs to clearly identify the
purpose and direction of the company, communicate its goals and
objectives succinctly and enjoy telling everyone why they should join
the circle of admirers, advocates and ambassadors.

The tools at this stage include trade shows, exchanging business cards at
industry events, setting up alliance partners and associates in
word-of-mouth networks.

A crucial communications faux pas often made at this stage is to try and sell to your network.
Instead, identify network partners and include people in the same
industry and distribution structure. Target specialist experts that
help your customers and include them in the network, offering to
support them if they support you. The support includes shared
functions, links on websites and cross-referring potential customers.

As the enterprise develops an organisational structure, a concise business
and marketing plan and financial stability to justify advertising and
communication budgets, it moves beyond personal selling, internet
presence and customer orientation to market focus and internal
marketing communications.

Personal selling.

This is crucial when the new business wants to build sales. It includes
being able to “sell” the benefit proposition to customers, colleagues
or commercial suppliers – all the people who must be convinced that
there are real and abiding benefits to be obtained by “buying” into the
business.

The key to success at this stage lies in the ability to tell a story and the measure of that success is the extent
that customers are persuaded to try, buy and become loyal customers.

A lot depends on directly communicating with potential customers through
emails, functions, door-to-door selling by reps, blogs … anything
through which you can build your story and sell the benefits.

Internal and external brand development.

Now  it is time to communicate the brand. As soon as you have a range of
satisfied customers it is time to seek testimonials that are sent to
potential customers and displayed through print or online.

Every time there is a successful sale communicate this with three-core messages:

• Some form of appreciation to the customer for coming onboard.
• A clear and concise communication of why customers are satisfied to all
  those who have been involved in the production and distribution of the
  offer.
• A message to the market that shows others how they can be involved in the growth of the business.

This combination of communication strategies is the essence of brand
development that takes the business from selling to marketing and to
brand leadership. By this stage the company should have a very strong
web presence, be advertising strongly online, have brochures and have
excellent external communications such as newsletters for staff and the
network.

Publicity and promotions.

The company is now ready to go public with its story through press releases, CD Roms,
videos and emails. And the good news is the public has a vested
interest in the business opportunity and is keen to listen.

Entrepreneurs also need to be actively promoting their new product, service or
experience. Building brand presence and sales volume relies on free and
paid trial promotions that give people to try and buy.

Public relations.

Whereas sole traders and home based business units tend to rely on
well-written press releases and local media, larger firms take on
public relations advisers produce newsletters, develop websites and
establish customer relations databases.

PR is also used by IPOs for the launch of a dash for cash and by mature companies for
damage control when there has been a breach of ethical or appropriate
marketing behaviour. Relationship marketing and corporate culture must
be tightly linked to processes of brand development and ongoing change
management.

Direct marketing.

In the days before the internet, list marketing and letter box drops were often used by
growing companies to establish new products and services into
local-area markets.

Now business owners can reach a global market via Google, eBay and Yahoo Search that creates equivalent
niche market objectives for business-to-customer (B-C) direct sales.

At this stage lean on others’ reputations. Recruit celebrities and form strategic alliances with large firms.

Trade marketing.

When the company has reached sufficient production capacity to sell to
a mass market or seek trade partners, professional managers move
towards channel marketing and to build extended value chains that
create volume sales.

Industrial marketing and business-to-business marketing relies on creating incentives for third
parties to take up the retail effort and build scale and often take up
the critical task of export and global trade relationships.

Advertising search engine optimisation.

Buying space for mass media advertising is an inevitable stage of
development for firms that have outgrown their local market and need to
generate large-scale consumer awareness, but it is always expensive,
risky and less focused than any of the other marketing communications
discussed above. The main goal is to support the sales objectives that
have been set out in a well prepared marketing plan and is measured in
reduced costs per sale and increased volume of sales from the targeted
market segments.

Venture capital attraction.

By this time the sales and marketing strategies must be so appealing
that people want to put money into the business. The most common
reasons start-ups and small business units fail to grow beyond sole
trader status or lack the resources to expand their business into new
markets, comes from an inability to communicate a credible sense of
vision, mission and the capacity to manage the growth of the business.
Early attention to venture capital attraction requires outstanding
financial and accounting communication within the growing company, and
professional budget and forecasting communications to bankers, business
angels, venture capital sources and ultimately stockbrokers and
business analysts.

Market focused communications.

Create market spaces for product. At every stage in the development of
the firm there is one substantive imperative: to have sufficient cash
flow and capital to maintain both the growth of the business and to pay
rewards for time and effort of shareholders and wider stakeholders. The
bigger the business, and the wider the range of products, services and
experiences that are offered to the market, the greater the need for an
effective marketing and selling communications program.

CONTACT: Dr Colin Benjamin, Marshall Place Associates