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.
Time to put pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard. Take a look inside the Prep Worksheet that prepares you to write the pricing strategy section of your business plan. The key to success is taking the time necessary to deeply understand your business and be prepared to run it—use this workshop and Prep Worksheet to do just that.
Pricing influencers have a dramatic impact on your ability to set pricing. The more flexibility you have the higher price you can charge and the more margin you can get. In this course, Ken will walk you through each of the eight pricing influencers and give you strategies to help improve your position giving you more flexibility in your overall pricing strategy. Ken will also explore tactics that you can apply to your business, supporting you in setting the most appropriate price for your product or service—without leaving money on the table.
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.
Customers as well as investors want to know that you’re going to be offering new and different products, services, and enhancements going forward. That’s what your product roadmap communicates. This walk-through details the 1-to-2 year plan that documents short term and long term product goals, taking you from product launch to the future incarnation of your product or service. Learn why your product roadmap is both a business planning tool and your rollout blueprint and why it’s so important to focus on benefits to the customer (not features!)
How and why customers perceive the unique value of your product or service is something integrated into all aspects of your customer communication—from your website to marketing and social media to packaging. This lesson explains how that works by looking at a few top brands and how they communicate their unique value propositions.
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.
The competitive matrix is a graphic that highlights your unique strengths vis a vis other players in the space. The visual snapshot is easy for investors to parse — but it’s more than a pretty picture. As you identify your most relevant strengths and how you stack up against competitors, the process of developing a competitive matrix gives you a greater understanding of your market and your business, and a valuable marketing tool. This learning stream will cover how to identify the most relevant strengths to plot on your graph, how to identify and evaluate competitors on the matrix, and how to position your business as a market leader.
A nascent trend can be wind in the sails of your company. Identifying trends that are relevant to your business, while steering clear of fads, convinces investors that you’ve done your research. And for your business, catching a trend on its upward swing can speed time to profitability. This learning stream not only identifies specific trends to watch, but points you to definitive sources for uncovering the up-cand-coming trends that are most relevant to your business.
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.