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Description:
Competitive SME is a comprehensive guide to grasping the competitive and marketing opportunities facing small to medium sized enterprises today. Inspired and driven by the EU initiative futureSMETM, it gives essential advice on how, by implementing a clear and focused strategy and using simple tools, you can survive, thrive and compete. It outlines a groundbreaking model that will allow you to:
• create and manage effective marketing and branding processes
• better engage with your market, creating and projecting real value
• increase your worth to the market with corresponding increase in revenue
• maximize your resources, however limited
• ensure that your competitive edge and USP are amplified and sustained
Packed with simple but effective tools, Competitive SME is an essential, practical handbook for any manager or owner of an SME/SMB who wants to outperform their competitors.
Contents:
Chapter 1: Introduction • Why you should read this book • How to use this book and what you will get from it • A straightforward seven-stage path to competitiveness through enhanced marketing • Practical book and tools • Clear definitions and direction for the SME • Why should I care about marketing? I want to know more about being exceptionally competitive! • Marketing: what it is; and just as important, what it is not • A short and essential history • Using the book in conjunction with the futureSME initiative
Chapter 2: The reality: addressing stress for the SME owner, manager or executive • Achieving a sound sleep at night... • The reality for SMEs and turning things to your advantage • Reducing personal stress • Changing ‘cannot’ to ‘can’
Chapter 3: Competitiveness and the SME: we want it; but how do we get it? • Forget ‘Pareto’s principle’? • What are competitiveness and creativity, in terms of their use to me? • What SMEs think about competitiveness • What marketing does for SME competitiveness • Competitive SME and marketing • OK, so where do we start? - using the tools in this book • The marketing mix • The marketing audit
Chapter 4: Increasing your confidence: leveraging what you have • Affordability • The power of ‘FREE’ • Communicate, communicate, communicate • Piggyback • ‘I just don’t have anything to say’ • So what makes a great story? • How you can actually use feedback to be a major differentiator
Chapter 5: Maximizing SME management: making better decisions: investments and predictions • What is ‘success’ in managing an SME? • Knowing your direction, goals and objectives • Making decisions that matter • Strategy • Creating new markets • Self-creating markets and the new reality • Social media communities • Strategy and measurements for decision-making • Cost-plus and cost-accounting are the enemy of the SME • Purpose • Decision-making and improving judgement • Growth v growth • Do not neglect marketing when concentrating on sales! • Customer relationship management (CRM) • Incoming or ‘in-bound’ conversations
Chapter 6: Your unique selling proposition: agility, the ‘adaptive organization’, profit and revenue improvement • Advantage and ‘the product’ • Resourcing to create advantage • SWOT analysis • It is a knowledge economy now!
Chapter 7: Real market presence: marketing on a budget; branding, positioning and the SME • Power and your market • Assessing your market: marketing and market research • Market/ marketing research template • Sources of information • The ‘value proposition’ • The total product concept • Looking at your proposition from the OUTSIDE IN • The value matrix • Notes on using the value matrix • Statements and ‘stories’ supporting the value proposition • Testing the ‘force’ of the proposition • Steps to checking your value proposition • ‘Branding’ and ‘imagineering’ • What can branding do for me? • SME branding: perceptions, positioning and segmentation • Getting branding right • Important evolution of modern segmentation • Perceptual maps • A simple brand management cycle template • Social networking and ‘the new reverse customer convergence and segmentation’ • Managing the ‘social’ media: engagement
Chapter 8: What do we really need to do? Planning to win • Investment in sales and marketing capabilities • Marketing plan and planning: it is not just writing a document for the shelf in your office • When writing your marketing plan • Components of a great marketing plan • Positioning and perceptual maps • The core challenge and conflict for your customer • Developing your proposition and propelling it into the market • Results • Action plan and schedule
Chapter 9: Grasping the opportunity 1 (MARKETING): ‘changing the currency’ • What is the primary pain for your customer? • Moving to a ‘change in currency’ • ‘Moving from margin myopia’
Chapter 10: Grasping the opportunity 2 (SALES): ‘changing to managing the INCOME (revenue) PIPELINE’ • Reconstructing the sale • Move from anticipating loosely-predicted targets based on sales transactions to focusing on ‘a crafted pull from the market’ • Changing sales targeting and management • Changing the way we look at sales • Improve post-sale service to existing customers • Stop thinking about sales as ‘units of delivery’ or transactions
Chapter 11: Quick wins (rather than quick fixes) • Change 1: What you think of marketing and its role as the means to competitiveness • Change 2: Sensing your market • Change 3: Less of an obsession with our competition • Change 4: Review what success means and our strategy to achieve it • Always ask for testimonials • Cautioning about ‘quick fixes’... • Tackling your immediate concerns and improving now
Chapter 12: Optimizing your proposition and making more money: bringing it all together! • A cyclical planning process for the SME • The competitive marketing triangle • Using the competitive marketing triangle as the strategic dashboard for your organization • Proposal development • Improving communication • Lastly, and most importantly - how to measure word of mouth and optimize it • The whole Competitive SME process
Appendices
Index ISBN - 9780749468507
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Pages : 232
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