Download Marketing Tools for Plastech Fabrication Ltd

Marketing Tools
Marketing Tools/Processes
1. SWOT Analysis
This looks at your Strengths, Weaknesses (internal) and Opportunities and
Threats (external).
2. Marketing Audit
Social
Technological
Economic
Environmental
Political
Legal
Education
The Marketing audit will help you to focus on the external influential factors that
affect your business activities on a daily basis.
3. The Marketing Mix
The 4 P’s of Marketing: Price, Product, Place and Promotion. These 4 elements
of the mix need to be looked at carefully. How does your price compare in the
market place, how does the price reflect on the business? How does the product
fir in the market place against our competitors? The distribution of the product
and the placement of the product for our customers and the promotion that is
currently used to promotion our products and business.
4. The Competitor Audit
The Competitor Audit will help you to gain more of an understanding of where
your competitors are against yourselves. The audit will enable you to see what
products they have, what market share they have, who are their customers, what
are their strengths and weaknesses.
5. Segmentation
Segmentation is important as it helps you to prioritise and helps you to target the
better customer for you business, allowing you to reject the less attractive
customer. This enables you to be more focused, allowing you to tailor the
marketing mix to have a greater impact. This process can be used for analysing
customers, costs and competition in order to decide where and how to compete.
Helps you to consider the weaknesses and development opportunities for your
product through the eyes of the segment.
6. Product Portfolio – Boston Consulting Group Matrix
This tool allows you to analyse and review your product portfolio and allows you
to see where wise investments would lie.
7. Once you have gone through the diagnosis process and analysed your findings,
you would then need to consider your marketing objectives, which would need to
be in line with your overall corporate objectives. When setting objectives you
need to make them SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and
Targeted/Time).
8. Once you have established your marketing objectives, you can then consider the
types of marketing strategies that are available to you. You will need to focus on
one particular strategy. This can be done through the use of Ansoff’s matrix.
9. Once you have decided on your strategy, you will need to consider the best
tactics to use in order to implement your chosen strategy effectively and
efficiently.
10. A big consideration will be your budget which needs to be in line with the tactics
that you have chosen to implement your Marketing plan.
1. SWOT Analysis
Consider the strengths and weaknesses of your business, then look externally at the
opportunities that are available to the business and the threats that could also affect
the business.
Strengths
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Weaknesses
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Opportunities
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Threats
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2. The Marketing Audit
Going through this process will enable you to focus on the external influential factors
that may affect your business. Go through each category, listing the factors under
the heading that will affect your business.
Social
Technological
Economic
Environmental
Political
Legal
Education
3. The Marketing Mix
The 7 P’s of Marketing:
Price
Product
Place
Promotion
Physical Evidence
Process
People
4. Competitor Audit
Consider the following for each of your main competitors.
5. Segmentation
This tool is for analysing customers, costs and competition in order to decide where
and how to compete - it is the root of any firm's business strategy
1) set up the hypothesis that market X is separate from market Y.
2) Check if the business segments have different characteristics
3) Consider what the future segments will be
4) Try to think of new ways of segmenting or merging segments together
6. Product Portfolio – Boston Consulting Group Matrix
For every product in the company's portfolio,
(1) calculate its market share
(2) calculate the market share of your closest and biggest rival
(3) divide your share by your competitor's share this is your Relative Market Share
(RMS) - 1.0 is the dividing line
(4) calculate the market growth rate (midpoint is usually 10% pa)
(5) plot the products on the matrix
(6) expect to adapt it to suit your circumstances
Strategic Marketing Plan
Your strategic marketing planning should comprise of the following and should be
conducted in the following sequence:
Mission Statement
Corporate Objectives
Marketing Audit
SWOT Analysis,
Segmentation etc
Marketing Objectives
Marketing Strategies
Marketing Tactics
Methods
Product plan, promotion plan,
price plan, distribution plan
Budgets
Marketing Implementation
Control
Detailed 12 month work
programme
Monitoring, correctiveness
Marketing Strategies
There are various strategies that can be adopted. Looking at Michael Porter’s model,
he came up three generic competitive strategies:
Overall Cost Leadership
Focus
Differentiation
In practice there is no best strategy for any particular industry. The choice for your
strategy should come from your competitive strengths, the current market climate
and from your competitors’ successes and failures.
Strategies:
Overall Cost Leadership:
The achievement of the lowest cost base within the industry. Although this would
typically then be reflected in a low price strategy, this is not always the case and you
may opt instead for higher levels of investment in areas such as R & D,
manufacturing, or marketing.
Focus:
The concentration of the marketing effort upon one or more narrow market segments
Differentiation:
An emphasis upon the one or more elements of the marketing mix which are
perceived by customers to be important and which, if performed particularly well and
distinctively, offer scope for distancing yourself from your competitors and creating a
competitive advantage.
The table below highlights the ways in which each the these strategies might be
achieved, together with the possible benefits and problems that are associated with
each strategy:
Type of strategy
Cost Leadership
Focus
Ways to achieve the strategy

Size & economies of scale

Globalisation of operations
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Relocating to low cost parts of the
world
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Modification/simplification of designs

Greater labour effectiveness

Greater operating effectiveness

Strategic alliances

New sources of supply

Concentration upon one or a small
number of segments

The creation of a strong specialist
reputation
Benefits
The ability to:
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Out-perform rivals

Erect barriers to
entry

Resist the five
forces
Possible problems

Vulnerability to even lower
cost

Possible price wars

The difficulty of sustaining it
in the long term
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Differentiation
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The creation of strong brand identities
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A more details
understanding of
particular segments
The creation of
barriers to entry
A reputation for
specialsation
The ability to
concentrate efforts
A distancing from
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Limited opportunities for
sector growth
The possibility of out-growing
the market
The decline of the sector
A reputation for specialising
which ultimately inhibits
growth and development into
other sectors
The difficulties of sustaining
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The consistent pursuit of those factors
which customers perceive to be
important
High performance in one or more of a
spectrum of activities
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others in the
market
The creation of a
major competitive
advantage
Flexibility
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the bases for differentiation
Possibly higher costs
The difficulty of achieving true
and meaningful differentiation
Your Marketing Strategy should be influenced by your market position. Through
completing the marketing analysis process. The market positions are:
Market leaders are typically, but not invariably, have the largest market share and, by virtue of their
position are able to determine the nature, base and intensity of the competition.
To retain your market leadership you need to focus upon these three areas;
1. The various ways in which the total market might possibly be expanded.
2. Ensuring that the firm’s current market share is protected.
3. Identifying how, if at all, the firm’s market share might possibly be increased.
Market challengers have a rather smaller share of the market and adopt an aggressive position by
attacking the market leader or others in the industry in an attempt to strengthen their
position and perhaps become a market leader.
For companies that decide to challenge for leadership, there are several ways in
which a challenge can be mounted. They can challenge by:
 A direct attack on the current market leader.
 An attack upon firms of a similar size to itself but which for a variety of possible
reasons such as a lack of finance or a weak management team are vulnerable.
 An attack upon smaller firms
A challenger must have sustainable and meaningful competitive advantage, without
this any attack, regardless of whether it is upon a market leader or simply another
player in the market, is likely to prove of little value.
An attack can be launched through 10 possible strategies:
1. Price discounting
2. A different price-quality combination
3. Product innovation
4. Improved service levels
5. Distribution innovation
6. Intensive advertising
7. Market development
8. A more prestigious image
9. Product proliferation
10. Cost reduction
Market followers –
pursue less aggressive strategies, avoid direct confrontation and are generally willing
to accept current market structures and the status quo.
There are three distinct positions for being a follower:
1. Following the leader or challenger closely – by offering a similar mix and by
operating in broadly the same market segments, but taking care not to pose any
real threat or challenge to the leader.
2. Following at a distance – so whilst there are obvious similarities, there are also
areas of difference.
3. Following selectively – so that in some instances, there is little to chose between
the leader and the follower, whilst in others there is a major gap.
For a follower to succeed, they require a distinct strategy on their part reflecting:
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Careful market segmentation
The efficient use of R&D budgets
An emphasis upon profitability rather than sales growth or market share
expansion
A willingness to challenge conventional wisdom’s
A distinct competitive strategy rather than a set of largely implicit actions
Market nichers –
concentrate their efforts upon smaller and often specialised parts of the market and
in this way avoid head-on fights and develop a detailed but specific market
knowledge.
The criteria for niching is straightforward:
 The niche must be sufficiently large to be profitable
 It must have growth potential
 It must be of little interest to larger competitors
 The firm must have the skills needed to serve the niche effectively
 The firm must be able to defend itself, at least initially, against competitive
inroads
The basis of niching can be identified in seven different ways:
1. Geographically
2. By the type of end user
3. By product or product line
4. On a quality/price spectrum
5. Service (e.g. after sales care)
6. Type of customer
7. Product feature
Your decision to pursue a specific strategy (both domestically and internationally)
depends on three factors:
1. whether the product or the need satisfied, is the same or different in a new
market.
2. Whether particular conditions surrounding the product use, can affect company
strategy
3. Whether target market conditions are financially able to buy the product.