Market intelligence and strategy

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strategy marketing

Do we need a strategy? Do we need to have  a market intelligence competency?

Yes, it is really important nowadays:

  • strategy,
  • tactics,
  • detailed plan,
  • fast implementation,
  • fast reaction on changes
  • and most boring – process analysis, testing and optimisation, and once again implementation into real operations

Is it a something more difficult than commercial creation or any promotional gadget preparation?

The answer is YES.

Why is it so important?

Because it gives a short and long term strength for your company.

Why is it so unique and most marketing agencies don’t want to propose it to its clients?

Because they want to present fast solutions for marketing departments – a beautiful commercial on the first page in newspaper. But what about customers? What do they need?

Yesterday I read a great article about Generation Y born 1980-1996 and “Cool brands stay hot”

It looks that not only me and my friends are overloaded with information, the same marketing tactics and push sales.

Digideo’s marketing strategy process looks very fast:

1. questions and questions – Every industry has its own specifics. Every company has a different situation – internally and externally, its age and development potentials. It means every company is unique and needs unique solutions:

  • what you did previously? how?
  • what results did you achieve from specific actions?
  • how much is the new customer acquisition?
  • what is the retention?
  • how much does your client pay you in average?
  • what is the cost of serving this customer? – it is a very rare knowledge. Simply many companies don’t know this cost. I can analyse it as well.
  • what services you have?
  • what services did you customer use more often?
  • did you try to contact your previous customers that used your services?
  • who else is in your environment? contractors, subcontractors, the supply chain, etc?

2. meeting with key employees

3. clarifying the goal and the scope of strategy after interviews

4. analyzing the situation: including competitors, SWOT

5. building strategy for particular goal with measures and KPI for processes

6. creating the high level strategy implementation plan = like a project plan with measures

It will take 2-4 weeks for small companies. For huge multinational companies – 2-3 months.

Why is it important to spend a time for it?

1. it gives you a direction, vision and knowledge about yourself and competition, environment around you

2. it sets goals and plan how to achieve them

3. it can look at your processes from outside and help in better performance, cost cutting for example

4. it will help in analyzing you current activities – ROI, efficiency, quality and result for company

5. and many others

MINUSES:

1.  TIME – yes – you need to find a time for me, for this job

2. COST – yes – it costs

3. changing environment – yes – it has to be reviewed after a particular period of time – half a year or quarter.