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Building a Powerful Bootstrap Marketing Plan - Coggle Diagram
Building a Powerful Bootstrap Marketing Plan
Building a Bootstrap Marketing Plan
Marketing
The process of creating and delivering desired goods and services to customers.
Involves all of the activities associated with winning and retaining loyal customers.
A solid business plan needs to contain both a financial plan and a marketing plan.
Bootstrap Marketing Strategies
Do not require large amounts of money to be effective – just creativity.
Example: Roxxane Pettipas and Buddy: Class Art Production Inc.
https://buddy-belts.com/about/our-story/
Are unconventional, low-cost, and creative marketing techniques that allow a small company to realize a greater return from its marketing investment than do larger rivals.
Expo, Facebook Page, YouTube
Three Objectives
Pinpoint the specific target markets the company will serve.
Determine customer needs and wants through market research.
Analyze a firm’s competitive advantages and create a marketing strategy to communicate its value proposition to the target market.
Pinpointing the Target Market
Target customer must permeate the entire business – merchandise sold, background music, layout, décor, and other features.
Without a clear image of its target market, a small company tries to reach almost everyone and ends up appealing to few.
Target Market: the specific group of customers at whom the company aims its products or services.
Marketing strategy must be built on a clear definition of a company’s target customers.
Example: Black Rapid
Example: Levi Strauss – women’s jeans
Example: Megan and Mike: Hot Mama
Market Research
Demographics: the study of important population characteristics, such as age, income, race, and education.
Market Research: the vehicle for gathering the information that serves as the foundation for the marketing plan.
Never assume that a market exists for your company’s product or service; prove it!
Market research does not have to be time consuming, complex, or expensive to be useful.
Online surveys, social media, etc.
Tracking Trends
Read many diverse current publications
Watch the top 10 TV shows
See the top 10 movies
Talk to at least 150 customers a year
Talk with the 10 smartest people you know
Listen to your children and their friends
How to Conduct Market Research
Collect the data
Individualized (one-to-one) marketing: A system based on gathering data on individual customers and developing a marketing program designed to appeal specifically to their needs, tastes and preferences.
Secondary Research
Business directories
Direct mail lists
Demographic data
Census data
Forecast
Market research
Articles
Local data
The Internet
Primary Research
Customer survey and questionnaires.
Focus group
Social media conversation
Test market
Daily transactions
Other ideas.
Data mining: A process in which computer software that uses statistical analysis, database technology, and artificial intelligence finds hidden patterns, trends, and connections in data so that business owners can make better marketing decisions and predictions about customers’ behaviour
Analyze and interpret the data
There are no hard and fast rules for interpreting market research result; entrepreneur must use judgement and common sense to determine result from research.
Define the objective
Draw conclusions and act
The owner then decide how to use information in the business.
Building a Competitive Edge
Bootstrap marketing principles
Find a niche and fill it.
Use the power of publicity.
Don’t just sell; entertain!
Strive to be unique.
Build a community with customers.
Connect with customers on an emotional level.
Build trust.
Define a unique selling proposition (USP).
A key customer benefit of a product or service that sets it apart from its competition.
Create an identity for your business through branding
Branding: communicating a USP to the target market in a consistent and integrated manner.
Embrance social marketing
Social networks sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, allow entrepreneurs to connect with potential and existing customers at little or no cost.
90% of entrepreneurs use social media to connect with existing and potential customers.
Start a blog
Create online videos
Host a special event
Be dedicated to service and customer satisfaction
Examine your company’s service cycle.
Set standards and measure performance.
See customer complaints as a mechanism for improving customer service.
Listen to customers.
Define superior service.
When you create a negative customer experience, apologize and fix it – fast.
Empower employees to offer superior service.
Train employees to deliver superior service.
Hire the right employees.
Get top managers’ support.
Treat employees with respect and show them how valuable they are.
Use technology to provide improved experience.
View customer service as an investment, not an expense.
Reward superior service.
Give customers an unexpected surprise.
Retaining existing customers
Customer experience management
Be devoted to quality
Total quality management (TQM)
Quality in every aspect of the business and its relationship with the customer.
Continuous improvement in quality
Quality in the product or service itself
Attend to convenience
Make it easy to do business with you
Concentrate on innovation
Emphasize speed
Use principles of time compression management (TCM)
Speed new products to market.
Shorten customer response time in manufacturing and delivery.
Reduce the administrative time required to fill an order.
Re-engineer the process rather than try to do the same thing - only faster.
Create cross-functional teams of workers and empower them to attack and solve problems.
Set aggressive goals for production and stick to the schedule.
Rethink the supply chain.
Instill speed in the company culture.
Use technology to find shortcuts wherever possible.
Put the Internet to work for you.