Questions About SKU Count – Reduce or Not?

  • In your portfolio of brands, which ones are candidates for SKU reduction and which are not? In each case, you must use market analysis to make sure you understand the nature of the category and the motives of the consumer.
  • What drives complexity and costs in your product line? It may be SKU proliferation, and it may be trade deals or manufacturing and logistical

[ Read more ]

Product Adoption Questions

Use these six questions to gauge the speed of adoption of your product or service:

  • Does the target perceive that the product/service adds value?
  • Is the product compatible with current practices and processes?
  • Is the product/service easy to understand and use?
  • Can the product/service be sampled and/or trialed?
  • What is the risk factor in buying/using the product? (Tip: lower is better.)
  • Is it easy to communicate the advantages of

[ Read more ]

Positioning Questions

  • What business are we in?
  • What market(s) do we serve?
  • What are our customers’ special needs?
  • Who is our competition?
  • What makes us different from our competitors?
  • What benefits do clients derive from our services?
  • How can we get everyone in our company to tell the same story?

Source:
A Road Map to Advertising Results
by Jeff Propper
MarketingProfs.com

Miscellaneous Marketing Questions

  • How will marketing in cyberspace change your distribution channels and internal business systems, and how rapidly and effectively you can manage those changes?
  • What are all of the ways that one of our customers or potential customers can form an impression of our brand, our company or our products/services?
  • How much does it cost to acquire a new customer?
  • How does your business determine the true

[ Read more ]

Scorecard for evaluating research

  • What were the key findings of the research?
  • What were the key implications of the findings?
  • What new insights did the research produce?
  • How were the research results disseminated?
  • Who actually ended up using the research?
  • What decisions did the research impact?
  • What was the estimated business value of the research?
  • What did you learn from this research about doing future research projects differently or better?

Source:
From Market[ Read more ]

Checklist for research projects

  • How does this project fit into the global business priorities of our business?
  • How does this project relate to other research projects?
  • Is there something new or creative about the problem, the methods, or the anticipated learning?
  • What do we already know about the problem?
  • What stakeholders will benefit from this research?
  • What is the “business case” for this research?
  • Are we using the right research methods for the problem?
  • Should

[ Read more ]

Measuring the Value of Research

Decision value: What decisions did the research cause to be:

  • Different
  • Not taken
  • Improved

Learning value: What new understanding did the research provide us about our customers and markets that:

  • We did not know before
  • Customers could not have told us
  • We would have guessed differently

Business value: What implications does the research have for:

  • Identifying new opportunities
  • Developing new products
  • Differentiating us from competitors
  • Seeing the market differently


[ Read more ]

Marketing Event Planning Questions

The continuum begins with the development of a detailed plan. The plan should answer the following questions: 

  • Who will manage the various aspects of the event?
  • What are its objectives (qualitative and quantitative)?
  • Who is/are the target audience(s)?
  • What is the theme?
  • Which marketing messages do you want the audience(s) to walk away with?
  • In which cities will you hold the event (you will

[ Read more ]

Market-Driving Checklist

Market-Driving Mind-Set

  • Does our top management continuously reinforce the need for market-driving ideas?
  • Do we actively seek to cannibalize our own products?
  • Is the pursuit of competing emerging technologies permitted?
  • Are new ideas routinely imported from the outside?
  • Are time and resources allocated for curiosity-driven explorations?

Market-Driving Culture

  • Do we tolerate failures when people are attempting something really new?
  • Are processes in

[ Read more ]

Lead Management Questions

  • Is there a consensus from sales and marketing to what a “qualified” lead is?
  • Does Sales complain about (or neglect) the leads it receives?
  • Can you confirm that Sales has followed up with each lead it has received?
  • Is there a process in place for Sales to provide feedback to Marketing?
  • Can you differentiate between what type of leads close the fastest, and for the highest amount of

[ Read more ]