Marketing - It's as Easy as 1-2-3!

Written by Daniel King @ Business Interactive Group

In the time it took for you to open this document, the business world changed.

• New products were introduced
• New alliances were formed
• Global markets expanded
• Competition got tougher

Your Marketing Plan needs to be specific and tailored for your organization.

1 – Design it for your Industry
2 – Scale it to your Business
3 – Time to Execute
To keep pace, you need marketing solutions that deliver your compelling message to the marketplace.
You don’t run a generic business. So why use generic solutions?
Now it’s time to begin working on your future. A future that sees your organization exceed your customers expectations, superior market understanding and consistently stay ahead of your competition. Once the plan is set, it’s time to execute. As your plan takes shape, ensure your business stays aligned with your values, vision and goals. Please remember that alignment and execution is critical for financial, market & cultural success.
Now Go!

Marketing Is the Tool You Must Use To Bridge the Confidence Gap. Marketing needs to be concise, well articulated, and powerfully stated. It is low or no pressure.  You need to strategize, develop and implement an Interactive Marketing Plan that helps businesses overcome the Confidence Gap. It accomplishes this by addressing two points: the Inside Reality and the Outside Perception.

The inside reality is everything your business does that makes you valuable to your customers. It is what gives you a competitive edge in the marketplace. It is all of your skills, your passion, your systems, the way you conduct your business. The outside perception is how customers and prospects perceive your business. It is the ideas and impressions consumers gain from your direct and indirect communication with them.

The Outside Perception of Your Business Should Match the Inside Reality

To be successful in business and to continue that success, you’re inside reality and outside perception should match. If you spend all your resources developing the inside reality and neglect the outside perception, you will be frustrated wondering why you are having minimal results with your superior product or service. On the flip side, if you focus solely on the outside perception and neglect the inside reality, prospects will soon find there is little value in the product or service and you will get little, if any, return business.


How we can help:
At BIG, our philosophy is simple; the fusion of strategy, design and marketing is the future of business communications. Strategy is the mind of our firm, design is the soul and marketing is its heart. We are BIG thinkers, enthusiastic listeners, highly organized information handlers, and more than anything else, are a dynamic group of people who care passionately about your work.


Clients look to us for market analysis and strategic planning, cooperative marketing campaigns, branding and collateral materials, financial reporting, corporate communications, print advertising, point-of-sale (POS) materials, interactive media, event promotions, product packaging and branded merchandise. Whether in business-to-business or in consumer communications, our careful research, sound strategy, and on-target executions create a powerful voice for your company.
"First, have something good to say. Second, say it well and third, say it often."

What's in your marketing plan for 2011?

What goals do you have for your company? How are you planning on putting your great ideas into action? What’s your marketing strategy? Fail to create a plan of execution and you’ll find yourself running after everything, with no destination in mind. 

The bigger your company gets, and the faster it’s growing, the harder it is to get everybody on the same page. The challenge, of course, is that there isn’t a single page around which to align. Instead, there are likely several pages, actual and imaginary, along with memos and emails, each purporting to describe your company’s vision, mission, and strategy.
Further, many of these messages may be riddled with unclear and even contradictory statements about who your company is, what is does, and how. This step will introduce you to the One-Page Strategic Marketing Plan, a simple yet powerful tool that helps you edit your vision, brand and strategy down to a single, action-oriented page.
This step increases sales by:
• Identifying your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats – the SWOT analysis let’s you take stock of where you are today

• Determine your company’s values & vision – once communicated to your organization, everyone knows what you stand for and helps set your direction

• Identify your long term & short term goals & priorities

• Establish your critical numbers or targets to ensure you staff focused on progress & results


Equally important is sticking to that plan and following through on what you set forth. If you don’t execute on the plan, you can say goodbye to any results you hoped to achieve.

What do I do now?


Develop or update your 2011 Marketing Plan ASAP and create some simple tools to help execute that plan. If you’re missing some key advisors or an understanding of the tools you need to build the plan, please contact us at BIG.

Think Big, Execute Big….Putting great ideas into Action!