All posts in Business Strategy

Key Marketing Indicators And Tracking Your Marketing Strategy

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A great way to look at your key marketing indicators to understand whether your marketing strategy is working or not is to look at your sales revenue in relation to your key marketing indicators listed below. If your sales are up-it is working. If your sales are down-it is not.

However, this is not enough. Sales revenue alone gives you no feeling for your marketing dynamics and provides no way to focus on the key elements of your marketing operation. Try creating a marketing funnel by looking at the following starting at the top and working your way down the funnel:

1. The size of your market as a whole.
2. What part of the market you cover with your marketing activities.
3. How much of your market coverage can be converted into interested potential buying customers?
4. Measure how many of those potential buying customers actually convert into customers.

This funnel narrows at each step of the process. You can quantify each level of the funnel with key marketing indicators and track how well your strategy is really working or not working and how to correct it.

The key marketing indicators are

Market Size:Your Target Market Population.
Market Growth:Target Market Changes
Market Potential:Business Available from your Target Market with a
Maximum Dollar Value
Market Coverage:Effective Marketing Activities that Reach Your Target
Market
Lead Generation:Quantity of Motivated Potential Buying Customers and
% of Target Market
Lead Conversion:Quantity & % of Leads Converted to Sales
Market Share:Market Share of Business in Your Target Market
Average Sale:The Dollar Amount of Each Average Sale.

To be effective in your marketing strategy, you should measure this information monthly and be consistent in the measurement of this information. To do this more often, the information may be skewed in that there are too many daily variances to get a clear picture and understanding of the underlying dynamics of your market and business practices if you look at the information on a daily or weekly basis.

Monitoring the above information will tell you what is and what is not working in your marketing strategy. You will know if your market is growing or decreasing, in addition to how much business is out there for you and your competitors. You will know if your advertising and other integrated marketing communications are bringing in sufficient numbers of qualified leads for potential buying customers. You will also be able to determine if your market coverage needs to be increased or not and if your sales people are converting leads into customers effectively. You will understand the trends of your business and will be able to spot areas that need more attention than others.

Using this information will allow you to have a complete understanding of your competitive analysis that will give you a solid feel for ways to increase your share of the target market.

When compiling data for your market size, it should consist of the number of people in your target market who meet your demographic study discussed earlier. This information would be updated annually rather than monthly, as it is a demographic comprehensive study of your potential probable customer.

To gather the data for your market growth, consider the average frequency of purchase for your type of product or service. Unless you have great market research at the tips of your fingers, you will have to estimate this one based on your knowledge of your markets and common sense at the same time. In the exhibit industry, I would want to know how often my customer purchases an exhibit item and what they purchase to determine this demographic information.

The next step is gathering Market Potential based on the first three steps in looking at your marketing exposure. Does your marketing reach someone in your target market? If so, the potential buying customer is exposed to your marketing message. A great example is a direct mail piece that has been mailed to 5,000 people and you would have created 5,000 exposures if all the addresses were known and correct. If you do this twice a year, you would be creating 10,000 exposures. Additionally, if you run an advertisement in the local business paper or magazine that reaches 15,000 of your target market customer, then you have created a total of 20,000 total exposures by this time. If you continue to circulate 2,500 newspaper inserts per week for four weeks, then that would be another 10,000 exposures for a grand total of 30,000 exposures to your target market potential customers.

In generating leads, it can be done in many different ways for your company. A lead would be any person who has expressed interest in your business or its products and/or services by walking into your store or showroom, submitting an email, responding to your direct mail or viral marketing piece, making a telephone inquiry indicating interest in your product and/or service, or filling out a call to action form on your web site responding to a product and/or service inquiry. This person would be considered more than someone in your target market because they exhibited a motiivation to buy and an interest in your product. Leads are a process of someone having already begun to work their way through the Purchase Decision Buying Cycle and have made an expressed interest in working with your company.

When you convert these leads to sales, you have already most likely collected sales information by this time. For the purpose of tracking your marketing strategy, you will need the exact number of each sales transaction and the number of each lead generated to calculate your true lead conversion rate.

When compiling your sales dollar totals, you can find this on your business financial statements or in your sales reports in your accounting program. This information represents one type of marketing data most people can find fairly well.

Now that you have created your key marketing indicators, it is time to use metrics and evaluate this information to keep you informed of what your quantification efforts are and will give you accurate, objective and an ownership point of view of your business rather than the usual collection of random numbers with personal impressions most small business owners rely on. You will know what your business is doing and what to do about it. You will be able to constantly adapt to change by being in the know of your business strategies and using metrics for quantifying your data.

This is the last section of What is Marketing Strategy and Why is it Important? I hope you found each of the six components to your marketing strategy of value and will use this information to grow and strengthen your business by using metrics along the way.

Cascading Strategy Map The Better Method To Attain Results

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The strategy map has been a typical part of the business framework and this is all because it really has the ability to motivate the employees. When the workers know what they will achieve and what will be the outcome of those achievements, they will learn that they need to cooperate with the whole company so that they can attain success. However, there is a more effective way for the business to flourish and this is through cascading strategy map. This is a method that enables a strategy focused organization to achieve better results easily.

When you would like to start cascading strategy map, you will first know about strategic planning. This way, you will be able to manage the plans and initiatives of the organizations properly. There is a great chance that your business strategy will fail but when you cascade the strategy map, you will be able to improve strategy management and eventually obtain triumph. Strategic planning may not be quite easy to understand especially for the newbies but there is a great need for everyone who is in the world of business to fully grasp the meaning of this. This is one off the best techniques that will allow them to comprehend why there is a need for the strategy map as well as the balanced scorecard.

When you look at the businesses that have succeeded in the industry, most of them make use of the traditional way of mapping out their strategies. Nevertheless, those that remain in the most prominent state are those that are able to cascade their map from the highest level of the organization up to the lowest. There are a lot of executives that neglect the necessity of cascading strategy map because they think that those that are running the business are only the ones that should know about the strategy of the company and how to implement such to achieve the goals. This is a typical problem but now it has a solution. To put the strategy map in front of your employees is the answer. They will be constantly reminded of their duties and responsibilities. In addition, they can also see the cause and effect relationship between the plans and the objectives of the company.

In order to successfully cascade the map for strategy there is a need to know the components of it and apart from that one should also become aware that there should be themes in the strategic objectives of the company. If the right pieces of information have been acquired by those who are in charge of the strategy map, it will be easy to cascade this throughout the organization.

When you start cascading strategy map, you will be able to bring to life the cause and effect relationships between the strategies and objectives. You will need to determine first the right strategy map framework for your company and you should also define the core values of your organization. The mission and vision should also be specified as well as the strategic objectives of each of the departments in the company.

Business Strategist & Blue Ocean Strategy Expert

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Can you think of a business that doesnt want to innovate and grow? The success and/or failure of an organization depend entirely upon the strategy formulation and the ability to execute that strategy. How do you decide upon a strategy?

Dr. Zunaira Munir (Founder and Managing Director of Strategize Blue) is a business strategist who focuses on innovative business growth strategies to help companies break out of competition and achieve profitable growth. With a client list that reads like a Who’s Who in Business, Dr. Munir addresses companies eager to grow and willing to innovate from organizations, large and small. Recent clients include Hewlett Packard, Coca Cola, T-Mobile, Center for Non-Profit Management, Ohio State University Medical Center, Technologico de Monterrey, American Advertising Federation, Banco Colombia, RJ Reynolds and California Chamber of Commerce to name a few.

Dr. Munirs specialized topic is Blue Ocean Strategy, a systematic approach to innovate and achieve profitable growth. It originates from the best selling book Blue Ocean Strategy (authored by Professors Kim and Mauborgne of INSEAD in 2005) that is known to have revolutionized business strategy worldwide.

Blue Ocean Strategy stresses businesses to make their competition irrelevant instead of continuously striving to beat it. As a senior member of the Global Blue Ocean Strategy Network, she works directly with Kim Chan and Renee Mauborgne.

Blue Ocean Strategy suggests that the traditional strategies are not sufficient to achieve or sustain profitable growth in the present day markets marked by cut-throat competition. Instead of striving to do better than the competitors for grabbing a bigger share of the market, it focuses on value innovating for creating uncontested market spaces where competition becomes irrelevant. It is about creating new wealth in the market instead of fighting over and distributing existing wealth in the market.

Additionally, whereas all other traditional approaches consider innovation to be a trial-and-error process that depends on an entrepreneurs creativity and risk-taking, Blue Ocean Strategy comes with a complete set of tools, frameworks and methodologies that make the innovation process systematic and replicable that anybody can learn and apply to achieve profitable growth. Challenging the traditional assumption that opportunities and risks always come together, Dr. Munir focuses on minimizing risks while maximizing opportunities to achieve business success.

The system is quite generalizable and scalable and has been applied for formulating national strategies; for achieving corporate success; for generating growth in small businesses as well as for an individuals success in career.

With a PhD in Innovation Management from Wuhan University of Technology in China and dynamic training and presenting experience in Asia, Europe, South America, as well as the U.S Dr. Munir continue to help companies develop concrete ideas and practical steps to create new market space

Brendan Murphy is the Marketing Manager for Strategize Blue http://www.strategizeblue.com, a Blue Ocean Strategy Training and Consulting company based in San Diego. He works under Dr. Zunaira Munir, the internationally exclaimed expert and keynote speaker on Blue Ocean Strategy.

Lenders To Avoid – Business Loan And Commercial Mortgage

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I have published many articles which are designed to assist commercial borrowers in avoiding commercial loan problems. One of the most serious commercial mortgage business loan situations is a commercial lender that causes problems for their commercial borrowers on a recurring basis. It is particularly this type of commercial lender which prudent commercial borrowers should be prepared to avoid unless viable alternative business financing options do not realistically exist.

As a direct result of my commercial loan experiences advising business owners for over 25 years and regular conversations with other business financing professionals, I do in fact believe that there are a number of commercial lenders that should be avoided. This conclusion is based on a recurring pattern of lending abuses by some business lenders.

This article will not name specific lenders to avoid, but specific examples will be provided to show why informed commercial borrowers should be ready to avoid a variety of business lenders in their search for viable commercial loan solutions. This business financing strategy article will illustrate the significant benefits of avoiding “problem lenders”.

Meaningless Pre-approvals for a Commercial Mortgage Business Loan

An early commercial mortgage pre-approval is often sought by commercial borrowers. The expected advantage to this initial commercial loan approval is that the business borrower can make other business arrangements which are based on the business financing being completed.

An ethical commercial lender will treat any form of business financing approval very seriously. Commercial borrowers should expect that a meaningful version of such an approval will not be realistically possible in just two or three days.

However, there are lenders who prepare a misleading and questionable version of a pre-approval shortly after receiving minimal application data. Because this approach often produces surprises for the borrower as the commercial mortgage process moves forward, borrowers should be wary of any lenders that do this.

Why do some commercial lenders provide such meaningless pre-approvals for a commercial mortgage? There are two likely reasons. (1) To motivate the commercial borrower to stop considering other potential commercial lenders. (2) To provide a business loan pre-approval that is similar to a structure prevalent with residential loans.

Because many commercial loan situations are facilitated by residential mortgage brokers who are typically unfamiliar with normal business financing requirements, this reason will be especially relevant with business lenders that primarily work with residential mortgage brokerage firms. Such a lender should be avoided for most commercial mortgage circumstances.

Commercial Mortgage Loan – Yes or No?

I have published an article which discusses the tendency of many banks to say “yes” when they mean “no”. Such banks will typically attach onerous business financing conditions to commercial loans instead of simply declining the loan. Business owners should explore other commercial mortgage alternatives before accepting commercial financing terms that put them at a competitive disadvantage.

Think Outside the Bank for a Commercial Mortgage

In some non-competitive business markets, it is unfortunately common for a lender to employ business loan terms that would typically not be seen in a more competitive commercial loan environment. Such business lenders can repeatedly take advantage of a non-competitive commercial lending imbalance.

An appropriate response by commercial borrowers is to seek out non-bank commercial loan options. It is neither necessary nor wise for commercial borrowers to depend only upon local traditional banks for commercial mortgage solutions. For most business loan situations, a non-local and non-bank commercial lender is likely to provide improved business financing terms because they are accustomed to competing aggressively with other commercial lenders.

Commercial Property Commercial Loan Appraisals

For commercial mortgage loans, commercial appraisals are an unavoidable part of the commercial loan underwriting process. The commercial appraisal process is lengthy and expensive, so avoiding commercial lenders which have displayed a pattern of problems and abuses in this area will benefit the commercial borrower by saving them both time and money.

Copyright 1995-2007 AEX Commercial Financing Group and Stephen Bush. All Rights Reserved.

How To Stop Affiliate Link Hijacking

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Last week I went over my sales statistics for one of my profitable affiliate marketing campaigns and was stunned to discover my conversion rate had fallen to under 4%. Upon learning the results I was a little irritated because the sales funnel for this particular campaign had been tested and demonstrated conversions at over 38%. The faux pas made was thinking this was a small glitch that would correct itself shortly but a week passed and still no increase in my conversion rate. The conversion rate continued to remain under 4% for some unknown reason. The sales funnel was examined to see what had caused this crisis and then to find a solution. It was a mystery for me to see a high converting affiliate offer quickly take a plunge without any obvious reasons as to why it occurred. I then sought help from an Internet marketing buddy and asked him, how could this have happened? He reviewed my statistics and with a smile said, “Its apparent why your sales have fallen, your affiliate link got hijacked!” He asked me, “Are you doing anything to cloak your links?” My answer to his question was a big-fat NO.

Cloak an affiliate link I thought, what the heck is that? The thought had never entered my head that my links were being hijacked. I had no idea how to go about cloaking my own affiliate links within my campaigns. My buddy then proceeded to give me the reasons why I have to protect my links. This information enlightened me about the financial risk each of my campaigns was in due to link hijacking. There are people and programs out there that will steal your commissions by changing your affiliate links. In addition, there is a software program that can automatically replace your link whether from an advertisement or website and substitute your own referrer ID to the hijacker’s ID. It hit me like a bolt of lightning, all the work I had put into creating a sales funnel for each campaign was at risk because of link hijacking. A full weeks worth of revenue was already in jeopardy because of this. Its as though thieves were picking my pockets clean and I was unaware for a while a crime had been committed until my buddy gave me the facts.

Again, if your sales funnel has been tested and proven to convert and later you notice a severe decline in conversions then you are most likely the victim of commission thieves. There is loads of information on the Internet about link cloaking, some good and some bad. Some of these recommended solutions do not take affiliate marketing into account. (FYI) Please note there are different ways to cloak an affiliate link. The bad ones on the market will most often break the tracking cookie and others may mess up a redirect. Don’t expect to sell anything with a faulty link cloaker.

The good news is with the right link cloaking software you can sabotage any attempt made by thieves to steal your commissions. By using a link cloaking software program produced by an experienced software company, you can plug this profit loosing leaky hole forever within a matter of a few minutes. There are lots of link cloaking software programs on the market. Simply do a search on your most popular search engine will bring up a list. Next, your important decision will be selecting the best one, which will work as advertised. The link cloaker that works best is the one that gets you more sales.

In conclusion, you can construct the most brilliant sale funnel and test it all kinds of ways until you are blue-in-the-face but it won’t earn you a dime if commission thieves rob you blind. My advice for you is to close this unintended backdoor into your profits by installing a link cloaker as security for your overall online business strategy.