Formulating a Marketing Strategy

Here are a few of the questions Susan Hewitt, the founder of Blythe Hewitt Associates in San Francisco, tells her startups they must be prepared to answer when they are formulating a marketing strategy:

  • How far are you along in product development?
  • What’s your category? Is it a new category, or a crowded category?
  • What are your current marketing goals? Introducing the product? Adding the product

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Subject: Marketing Questions

Evaluating a New Distribution Channel

The following six questions are helpful in evaluating the opportunity presented by the new distribution channel:

  • How attractive is the value proposition that the new distribution channel gives our target segments?
  • Is the proportion of our target segment attracted to the new channel large enough to demand our attention?
  • Do we have a differentiated value proposition or an operational advantage in serving customers through

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Subject: Marketing Questions

Discounting Questions

To cultivate discount awareness and discipline, managers should start by asking themselves the following questions:

  • Are discount dollars being invested in the customer segments and product categories that provide the greatest strategic value to the company? For that to be so, discount guidelines for each segment and category need to be established in advance of negotiations.
  • Do discount levels associated with a particular customer segment

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Subject: Marketing Questions

Conversational Marketing

Many companies are not ready for the changes conversational marketing brings. They face three critical issues.

  • What types of dialogues and other customer interactions must be created to support true customer conversations?
  • How can the company determine and implement a conversational style that is aligned with the customer’s needs and based on a cost-effective set of new technologies?
  • Who inside and outside the company

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Subject: Marketing Questions

What You Should Learn by Conducting Brand Research

  • Why do customers choose you over competing brands?
    Knowing this enables you to focus on the skills that help you make and keep your promise to the customer.
  • Are you competing in the right category?
    To be clear, an example of a category is laptop computers. A brand in that category is Dell. Knowing in which category you compete in the mind of

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Subject: Brand Questions

How Strong Is Your Brand?

Do you have a strong brand? Here are some revealing questions that we put our own clients through as we work to understand who they are, and who their customers are, before building a direct marketing strategy.

  • If you masked your logo, would customers be able to tell you from the competition by the experience you, your product or your service creates? Could

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Subject: Brand Questions

Advertising and Promotions Questions

  • How large are the differences in our company’s A&P investments, as a percentage of sales, for each brand, market segment, and region or country?
  • Is there a clearly defined strategic rationale for these differences (or for the lack of differences)?
  • Are the differences in intensity and sensitivity of advertising and promotions among the various market segments and countries adequately acknowledged?
  • Are the differences in our competitive

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Subject: Advertising Questions

Task Management Questions

  • What if I don’t do this now?
  • What if I don’t do this at all?
  • Is this my project or priority or is it someone else’s?
  • Is this activity critical to get me from where I am to where I want to be?
  • Can anyone accomplish this task other than me?

Source:
Winners’ Wisdom
by Jim Stovall
The CEO Refresher

Subject: Management Questions