What do you want to achieve with your marketing strategy? Your marketing objectives are the basis for all of your marketing activities and the foundation of your marketing strategy. This Microcast details what every entrepreneur should measure, where to target your customers, and how to evaluate the marketing methods of competitors. You will also learn how to decide what goals and measurements are right for your business—setting specific sales growth goals, landing partnerships, expanding distribution, and more.
What are the most effective ways to attract customers to your product or service? This video walks through three key steps in depth: Analyzing the marketing programs your competition is using, choosing a marketing mix for your business, and creating your marketing plan.
These days, entrepreneurs have more ways than ever to sell their products or services, including directly to consumers online. The trick is to identify which selling strategies will yield the right mix of profits and market share. While using direct sales methods enables you to pocket more of the margin and establish direct connections with your customers, indirect sales methods can spread your products far and wide quickly and help your brand gain a foothold fast. This learning stream delves into individual selling strategies, outlining the advantages and disadvantages of each, and provides a framework for evaluating which are most appropriate for your business. Tips for connecting your selling strategies to your marketing strategy and incorporating selling models into your company financials are also covered. Extensive worksheets and exercises enable you to identify the sales techniques that will win customers most profitably.
Sales is all about the hustle. This Microcast provides an overview of the framework used for choosing selling models; it begins with choosing your models, examining what the competition is up to, then examining your costs and checking for consistency between your business strategies and selling models, and solidifying the models you’ll use. These steps are covered in depth in the videos “Direct and Indirect Selling Models,” “Build Your Selling Strategy,” and “Create Your Selling Strategy Framework.”
When sizing your potential market, it's tempting to say the sky's the limit – but if your goal is an accurate projection, tighten the focus until you have a clear and specific picture. This course introduces the market funnel framework, a three-step process for defining your target audience and sizing segments in terms investors can use and you can apply to your financial plan.
You've staked out a vision, studied the competition, and run the numbers – now, how to get from point A to point B? Use an execution strategy as your go-to-launch playbook. Your execution strategy contains all the nuts-and-bolts plans you need to start the business and gives potential investors confidence that you know what it takes to get to launch. With this course, you will have everything you need to develop an execution strategy that sets out the steps along your path to success.
Who are you selling to? While entrepreneurial optimism might lead you to believe the entire world is your market, success depends on a focused definition of your core audience that aligns with the rest of your go-to-market strategy. This course outlines commonly used demographic and psychographic attributes for profiling your target market, in addition to tips for developing your own business-specific market characteristics.
Gain an understanding of how margins work so that you can choose the right price for your product or service. Having a justified pricing strategy will help you avoid common mistakes such as guessing at price-setting, skipping competitive pricing research, leaving money on the table with a too-low price, or misunderstanding the whole value of what you're offering. Learn how supply and demand for your product or service impact price, how to quantify the level of value you're delivering (don't under-value it!), and how market forces impact your pricing.
What problem does your company solve for customers? Your answer is the reason your business exists. The story of how your company addresses a specific customer need is an essential component of your business plan; not only does it validate your business strategy, but it convinces investors that your company solves a meaningful problem. This learning stream covers strategies for identifying and developing a compelling problem and solution statement, including how to identify customer pain points and highlight the tangible remedies your offering provides.
How are you going to create demand for your products and services? This two-part Learning Stream examines eleven marketing programs in depth, including email marketing, SEO, content marketing, and advertising, with examples of how you can apply the right ones to your business. Explored in this Learning Stream are tactics for deploying the marketing programs you choose, examples of their use, and their impact on your overall marketing budget.