Strategies & Tactics for Successful Marketing
Overview
The central theme of InnovoMark training and consulting can
be concisely described by the formulation of “Strategies”
and execution of the appropriate “Tactics”. Many companies
do not achieve their full potential because they do not
follow such a rubric. Some companies formulate strategies
without the corresponding tactics to achieve them, such as
"this year we plan to increase our market share by 10%".
Without the specific tactics, such as, a target market
plan, detailed recruitment requirements, investment budget,
training of sales people etc., this strategic goal will not
be realized. On the flip side of the coin many companies do
not achieve their full potential because they are highly
tactical with little or no strategy. In this mode,
companies react to the demands of their marketplace without
any regard to a long-term plan. The common denominator
among all the successful companies is that they have clear,
well defined and well communicated strategies in addition
to the tactics that are specifically chosen to achieve the
strategic goals.
This
methodology forms the backbone of the highly acclaimed
“Strategies & Tactics for Successful Bidding” training
seminar. In an extensive review of existing literature on
marketing it became clear that this approach could assist
companies in extracting the maximum benefit from their
expenditure on marketing. As a result the current course
entitled “Strategies & Tactics for Successful
Marketing” has been developed.
If any employee in a company is asked the question: “Why
are we in business?” the answer is usually unanimously “to
make money”. It is clear that with such a well understood
objective of business management among the employees, there
is a very good chance that the company will actually make
money!
If the same employees are asked “What is the objective of
marketing?” the variety of answers is truly astonishing!
Even if we consult the dictionary we obtain a variety of
definitions. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the
following definition:
“the promotion and selling of products or services”
The Encarta English dictionary describes marketing as:
“selling of products or services: the business activity
of presenting products or services in such a way as to make
them desirable”
From such bland dictionary definitions we would be led to
believe that “marketing” is almost synonymous with
“selling”, with perhaps a bit of “promotion” thrown in.
Wikipedia tells us that
“Marketing is one of the terms in academia that does
not have one commonly agreed upon definition. Even after a
better part of a century the debate continues”
I have spent over 25 years in commercial functions and it
has troubled me for sometime that even among the gurus
there has been a failure to define and agree upon what
marketing really is. Yet these same gurus have written
hundreds of books telling how to do what they are unable to
define!
I have spent a long time pondering this issue. Having
analyzed a lot of what has been written in the literature I
came to the conclusion that many of the definitions of
marketing have been developed almost arbitrarily and so it
is not surprising that no one agrees because everyone wants
to defend his own definition. In this training we will take
a different approach. We will analyze market dynamics to
formulate a working definition of marketing and in
particular its over-riding goal. We will “stress test” it
to see if it is robust enough to explain some of the long
standing “conundrums” of marketing. We will develop an
holistic approach to marketing that will make a science out
of what has long been viewed as an art. By taking a
pragmatic approach that is based on a “reverse engineering”
of market dynamics we can formulate a definition of
marketing and its overall goal which can be universally
acceptable. Furthermore, the approach to marketing and the
process developed in this training has been constructed
with specific relevance to Oilfield Services. The clarity
that will flow from a thoroughly practical approach to
marketing will render your marketing expenditure more
effective and impact your sales and negotiating process,
resulting in higher profitability.