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Tim Berry

Understand Your Competition

To understand the strengths of your own business, you must understand your competition and your positioning. Who competes with you for your customers’ time and money? Are they directly selling competitive products and services, substitutes, or possible substitutes? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How are they positioned in the market?
Your competitive analysis
A good competitive [...]

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Marketing Your Web Business

A website does nothing for your business or organization by itself. Its use depends on traffic, and traffic depends on marketing. A website without a marketing plan is as useful as a toll free telephone number that nobody knows about.
One of the biggest and most widespread fallacies of the late 20th century Internet boom in [...]

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Not Everybody is Your Customer

This is hard to write about, and hard for business owners to accept. It seems so negative. Still, it seems like we all need a fresh reminder. Bill Cosby said it well: “I don’t know the secret to success, but I do know that the secret to failure is trying to please everybody.”
This reminds me, [...]

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Marketing Plan Tables

Even though we agree that marketing plans will vary depending on the exact nature of your plan, it is hard to imagine a plan that doesn’t contain, at the very least, these four essential tables. Usually you’ll have these plus several others.
Market forecast
Analyze your market by segments and project market growth for five years.

Sales forecast
Forecast [...]

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The Essential Contents of a Marketing Plan

Every marketing plan has to fit the needs and situation. Even so, there are standard components you just can’t do without. A marketing plan should always have a situation analysis, marketing strategy, sales forecast, and expense budget.

Situation Analysis: Normally this will include a market analysis, a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats), and a [...]

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Create a Market Forecast for Your Marketing Plan

A market forecast is a core component of a market analysis. It projects the future numbers, characteristics, and trends in your target market. A standard analysis shows the projected number of potential customers divided into segments.
Market Forecast – Example
The AMT computer store has a simple market forecast. The plan defines two target market segments, and [...]

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Choosing your Sales Channels

Channel marketing proves to be a “fit” if the process better responds to the desires of the target market than the organization could do alone. An organization must answer the question, “Will our customers or clients be better served by channel members rather than having us perform these functions?”
Lot size
How many “units” does the end [...]

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Channel marketing moves goods from producers to consumers

How do you most efficiently get your product or service to the people that need it and are willing to pay for it? Using a marketing channel may be a solution. Channel marketing describes the organizations that work together to get your product or service to the end user.
Extending Your Reach
Many producers of products and [...]

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Strategies for direct marketing

Are you getting the most from your direct marketing? Make sure your direct marketing campaigns are target, measurable, and ethical.
About Direct Marketing
As we discussed in Direct Marketing Fudamentals, direct marketing includes various approaches in which the producer of goods or services directly contacts the end-user. Direct marketing encompasses face-to-face selling, direct mail, catalogs, kiosks, telemarketing, [...]

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Direct marketing fundamentals

Direct marketing occurs when the “producer” connects with the end user. The end user may be a consumer or a business.
Direct marketing applies to product and service-oriented businesses, and to nonprofit organizations. In all situations, there is no intermediary involved. Direct marketing describes this interactive communication with the end user.
Direct marketing is not synonymous with [...]

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