Look Deeper Marketing

How to Cultivate a Flourishing Garden of Marketing Leads

Leanne Di Fazio — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 07:49:49 +0000

Our Story starts with Small Business Owner, Sarah, Struggling with her marketing leads...

Once upon a time, in a busy town, there was a marketing consultant named Alex. Armed with a deep understanding of the marketing landscape, Alex had seen countless businesses fall prey to the allure of false promises and misguided marketing tactics.

One day, Alex received a call from a hopeful small business owner named Sarah. She was determined to take her business to new heights and was desperate for more marketing leads. Keen to help, Alex agreed to meet with Sarah to discuss her marketing goals.

“I can get you a stack of leads,” Alex proclaimed confidently when they met.

But then, with a mischievous grin, Alex quickly added, “Did I say leads? I meant weeds.”

Puzzled, Sarah asked. “What do you mean by ‘weeds,’ Alex?”

I can get you a stack of Marketing leads!

Alex explained, “Sarah if you invest your marketing budget into the wrong type of marketing, you’ll end up generating the wrong type of leads. It’s like tending to a garden. You wouldn’t want your garden overrun by unwanted weeds, would you? The same goes for your leads. If they’re not carefully nurtured and cultivated, they can become a hindrance. These leads never turn into a sale and never meet your goals. You have weeds rather than the flowers you want in your garden.”

Sarah nodded, aware of other businesses wasting time and resources with the wrong type of leads.

“But how do I know which marketing channels to choose?”

Alex leaned back in her chair and replied, “There are over 150 different types of marketing channels available. It’s a jungle out there. Now, imagine if one single channel could magically solve all your problems. If that were the case, there wouldn’t be 150+ other marketing channels vying for your attention, would there?”

Sarah nodded in agreement, realising the fallacy of relying on a single channel to deliver all her marketing needs. Knowing what worked for one business might not work for another.

“I don’t want to wander aimlessly through the jungle of marketing channels,” Sarah confessed. “I want to find the path that leads to success for my business.”

“Sarah, we’ll navigate through this jungle of options together and find the right marketing strategy for you. We’ll analyse your business, your target audience, assess the opportunities and ultimately select the channels that align with your unique business goals.”

As they delved into Sarah’s business, Alex painted a picture of the marketing landscape. They discussed social media, content creation, digital marketing as well as more traditional marketing. Through this journey, Sarah understood that by nurturing the right kind of leads and marketing tactics, she could unlock the true potential of her business.

Armed with this knowledge, Sarah ventured forth, ready to conquer the marketing jungle. With Alex as her guide, she felt confident that she could avoid the weeds and cultivate a flourishing garden of leads.

Avoid the weeds and Cultivate a FLourishing Garden of Leads

“I don’t want to wander aimlessly through the jungle of marketing channels,” Sarah confessed. “I want to find the path that leads to success for my business.”

About Leanne Di Fazio

Leanne has over 25 years marketing experience in large corporates and small business in Australia and the United Kingdom. She is passionate about helping small business grow and thrive. Leanne is the founder of Look Deeper Marketing specialising in marketing, strategy and planning for small business. Look Deeper Marketing bring affordable marketing consultancy to small business in Sydney and surrounding areas, with packaged options so you know exactly what to expect. Leanne offers affordable packages for Marketing strategy, social media as well as SWOT and Competitor Analysis. Look Deeper Marketing can help you take a deeper look at your marketing.

The post How to Cultivate a Flourishing Garden of Marketing Leads first appeared on Look Deeper Marketing.

Integrating the 4Ps (or 8Ps) of Marketing Mix into a Traditional Marketing Strategy

Leanne Di Fazio — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 02:37:59 +0000

Integrating the 4Ps (or 8Ps) of Marketing Mix into a Traditional Marketing Strategy

Several years ago, I met a fellow marketer at one of those deep intellectual Marketing Conferences. Over lunch, the discussion was “What marketing tool can create the most effective marketing strategy for an organisation?”

Specifically, whether to use the 4Ps of marketing mix or a more traditional marketing strategy template. The fellow marketer was all for using the 4Ps and using the 4Ps in isolation. For me, I didn’t feel the 4Ps covered it and missed vital analysis if used on its own. Instead, I believed the 4Ps of marketing should be integrated into any good marketing strategy.

I still think back to this lunchtime discussion and whether other marketers only use the 4Ps (or the extended 8Ps). Is the theory of using the 4Ps over a more traditional marketing strategy all too much, even for marketers? And if this is the case, what about my clients who have limited marketing experience and are confused by the whole jargon – I have seen many glazed eyeballs talking 4Ps, 8Ps and sometimes even the term Marketing Strategy.

In this blog post, I will highlight how the 4Ps of Marketing Mix, and even the extended 8Ps, are integrated into a traditional marketing strategy. Additionally, I will show this by introducing a simplified 5-question marketing strategy model that encompasses these elements, where all bases are covered.

If you don’t care about the theory or the discussion but you want an effective marketing strategy guide to grow your business, skip reading the blog (I won’t be offended) and download the DIY 5 Question Marketing Strategy here.

Understanding the 4Ps of Marketing Mix

Before we delve into the integration of the 4Ps into a marketing strategy, let’s quickly recap what these 4Ps represent:

Product: is what you are selling. It could be a tangible, physical product or a service that is not tangible. A product or service needs to meet the demands or needs of the customer you are selling to.
Price: The amount customers are willing to pay for a product or service, which includes pricing strategies and considerations.
Place: The locations and channels through which customers can access and buy the product or service.
Promotion: refers to the specific marketing tactics or activities you use to let your target customers know about your products. This includes the timings of your communication.

Extending 4Ps to 8Ps.

Personally, I like to extend the 4Ps of marketing mix to 8Ps, which I find is more relevant to smaller or medium size business where there are fewer resources and staff tend to take on several tasks and roles within the organisation. So, what are these other Ps:

Physical Evidence: is everything your customers see/hear/touch/taste/feel when interacting with your business.
People: is a key factor of any business. Employing and keeping the right people with the right skills is vital for both the long and short-term success of your business.
Processes: refers to the ‘how’ your business goes about achieving a desired outcome. It is the actionable steps you put in place to minimise costs, save time or streamline tasks.
Performance: refers to how you are measuring learnings and success to assist improving your strategy and plans.

Integrating the 4Ps and Beyond

Whilst some businesses may solely use the 4Ps of marketing mix as their marketing strategy, a comprehensive marketing strategy goes beyond the 4Ps of marketing mix and ideally should incorporate more elements. Here are seven key elements typically found in a traditional marketing strategy:

Objectives and Vision: Clearly defined goals and a long-term vision provide direction and purpose to the marketing strategy.
Analysis and Assessment: Thorough examination of the internal and external environment, including factors such as the competition, industry trends, global influences, economic conditions, and political landscape.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Finding and highlighting the unique features and benefits that set your product or service apart from your competitors.
Prioritisation and Execution: Finding opportunities and developing strategies to capitalise on them, considering available resources, budget, and the team’s capabilities.
Target Market and Customer Experience: Understanding the target market and tailoring the marketing efforts to deliver a personalised and exceptional customer experience.
Communication Plan: This should be two-fold. Firstly, developing an internal communication plan to align employees with the marketing strategy and/or internal promotion to staff. Secondly, creating an external communication plan to reach and engage the target audience to effectively market your product.
Measurement and Evaluation: Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) and setting up metrics to measure the effectiveness of the marketing strategy, allowing for adjustments and improvements along the way.

The Simple 5-Question Marketing Strategy Model

At Look Deeper Marketing, we have developed a simplified 5-Question Marketing Strategy Model that incorporates the traditional elements of a marketing strategy as well as the 4P’s and the 8Ps of the Marketing Mix, ensuring a comprehensive approach to marketing strategy development.

The 5-Question Marketing Strategy Model is a flexible and easy to use model. The five questions enable learning about your target audience, sets up business and marketing goals, creates a plan for success, whilst creating new ideas, insights, and unpacking challenges to help your business grow and innovate.

Let’s explore how these 5-questions address different elements of the 4Ps and the 8Ps of Marketing:

Question 1: The What?

Essentially, this question determines what product or service you are selling, how you will deliver it to customers, the price you will charge, and analyses the market to identify opportunities and threats.

To be more specific, here is how some of the key points directly relate to the Ps of the Marketing Mix:

What product am I selling? (Product)
What price am I selling at? (Price)
What will be delivered to the market? (Place)
What analysis and assessment of the internal and external market do I need to perform? (Product, Price, Place)

Question 2: The Why?

This question aims to understand why you are selling this product, why you have chosen a specific price, and why you have decided on particular packaging or presentation.

Why am I selling this product? (Product)
Why am I selling at this price point? (Price)
Why will I package the product as planned? (Place, Physical Evidence)

Question 3: The How?

This question is about considering, creating, and building based on your research and evidence. Consider how much you will sell your product for, how you will get it to customers, how you will make it attractive through packaging and customer experience, and the skills and tools needed to succeed.

How much am I selling for? (Price)
How will I deliver the product to the market and the necessary processes to do this? (Place, Processes)
How will I position the product, considering packaging, look and feel, and customer experience? (Physical Evidence)
What skillset and tools are needed to deliver the marketing strategy effectively? (Place, People, Process)

Question 4: The Who?

This question asks you to find your target customers and tailor your marketing efforts to reach and attract them.

Who will buy my product? (Product, Place, Positioning)
Where do these people hang out? (Place, Promotion)

Question 5: The When?

This question is planning – when and how you will promote your product to your target audience, when you will review your performance, and what tools and technology you will use to manage the timing of your marketing activities.

When will I communicate to my target audience, through what marketing activities? What will be my timings? (Promotion)
When will I review and measure my Performance? (Process)
What are the tools and technology to deliver ‘the when’ (Process)

Creating Success with your Marketing Strategy

A successful marketing strategy involves integrating the 4Ps (and even the 8Ps) of Marketing Mix with other important strategic elements. By understanding and applying these principles, you can create a comprehensive marketing strategy that will help your business thrive.

Whether you choose to focus on the 4Ps, 8Ps or use a traditional marketing strategy template, knowing how these elements work together will give you a strong foundation for marketing success. If you use our DIY 5-Question Marketing Strategy guide you will know you have all bases covered. Download it free here.

About Leanne Di Fazio

Leanne has over 20 years marketing experience in large corporates and small business in Australia and the United Kingdom. She is passionate about helping small business grow and thrive. Leanne is the founder of Look Deeper Marketing: who specialise in marketing, strategy and planning for small business. Look Deeper Marketing bring affordable marketing help to small business in Sydney, across Australia and globally with packaged options so you know exactly what to expect. Look Deeper Marketing taking a deeper look at your marketing.

The post Integrating the 4Ps (or 8Ps) of Marketing Mix into a Traditional Marketing Strategy first appeared on Look Deeper Marketing.

Santa’s Magic 5-Step Marketing SWOT Analysis

Leanne Di Fazio — Sun, 04 Dec 2022 10:56:21 +0000

5-Step Marketing SWOT Analysis with Santa

How does Santa work out whether he needs to improve or grow his North Pole business marketing? What does Santa use to analyse his business marketing? Answer: Santa uses a basic analysis tool – the SWOT Analysis.

A SWOT analysis is a business analytics tool. With the right knowledge, it can be used across your entire business or to analyse specific areas of your business. It is often used when creating the marketing strategy in a business. It can be used quickly and effectively to understand what has been happening. Which means understanding what is going on now, and where you may want your business to head in the future. It helps you develop a new business or marketing strategy. It also helps to determine if your marketing strategy is on the correct path and in line with your business goals.

A SWOT analysis forms a major part of any business and marketing strategy and is beneficial for your business when used correctly.

What do the letters in SWOT stand for?

S – Strengths
W – Weaknesses
O – Opportunities
T – Threats

For Santa, that means working out the Strengths and Weaknesses INSIDE Santa’s business. Plus, the Opportunities and Threats OUTSIDE Santa’s business.

You can do a SWOT analysis for your business too. Why do a SWOT? To analyse where your business is at and to help you find new opportunities.

Your SWOT can form part of your marketing strategy. It will identify your businesses:

Strengths – that you want to keep, build on, grow.

Weaknesses – that you want to reduce, eliminate, outsource, adjust, or improve.

Opportunities – you want to build on, plan for and implement.

Threats – you want to be prepared for, to minimise disruption and impacts.

Once you have completed the SWOT analysis, you should be able to assess and prioritise several opportunities. These opportunities should align with your business and marketing goals.

A SWOT doesn’t need Christmas magic. It needs a non-biased viewpoint. You must be authentic when you analyse your business, otherwise it is a waste of time. For Santa this was easy.

Is Santa being Good or Bad? Naughty or Nice? Santa put on his thinking cap to create his business’ 5-Step SWOT analysis. Let’s see the outcome of Santa’s Step 1-4. What would you add to any of these SWOT factors?

SANTA'S SWOT IN ACTION

STEP 1: WHAT ARE SANTA’S STRENGTHS?

Forever Happy and Jolly
Strong elf workforce
Knows his target market
Skilled retail merchandiser
Adept communicator
Strong global brand presence
Fast delivery service
Excellent at hiding
Reindeer power – low emission user

STEP 2: WHAT ARE SANTA’S WEAKNESSES?

Cookies, milk, and beer
Can be scary for little kids
Leaves coal for naughty kids
Reindeer’s eat a lot
No succession or exit plan
High-cost business
Zero revenue stream
Kids sit on Santa’s knee for a gift
Confused messaging about what Santa can actually do.

STEP 3: WHAT ARE SANTA’S OPPORTUNITIES?

Develop income streams
Reduce operational costs
Inclusive: target non-Christmas celebrating families
Collaborate with child psychologists for ‘naughty’ kids
Click and collect from retailers
Outsource to Amazon Prime for free international delivery
Expansion: South Pole, Equator

STEP 4: WHAT ARE SANTA’S THREATS?

Everyone who locks their doors
CCTV
Older siblings/friends talking
North Pole: hazardous storms
Elf on the Shelf: Potential hostile takeover
Inflation: Santa may need to make cutbacks
Social Media trolls spreading misinformation about Santa
Negativity eg “The Year Without Santa Claus” (Rankin Bass)

GET YOUR Marketing SWOT ANALYSIS SMART

After Step 1-4, Santa needed to know what to do with the results. He needed to avoid the ‘Now what?’ situation.

STEP 5: Santa assessed each line of the SWOT Analysis. Santa then prioritised the opportunities and improvement changes he wanted to make.

What were Santa’s prioritised growth opportunities, you ask!….That’s all part of Santa’s Magic Secret!

Hint: When you are completing this step, use a structured assessment criteria such as SMART Criteria. This will help you prioritise the growth opportunities.

SMART:
Is it Specific?
Is it Measurable?
Is it Achievable?
Is it Relevant?
Is it Timebound?

Why did Santa do a SWOT Analysis?

It is important for Santa to regularly undertake a SWOT Analysis for his business marketing. (We’d suggest at least once a year). Here are ten reasons why Santa did a SWOT Analysis:

Helps Santa understand the business strengths and competencies to continue to grow his business.
Highlights the weaknesses and what may be lacking in Santa’s business
Highlights where Santa needs to remove or improve inefficiencies.
Improves the chances of strategic success by creating short and long-term opportunities for growth. Santa has been successful for many, many years. He wants to maintain this.
Keeps Santa industry and business aware. How do you think he gets to know everything going on with his target market?
Identifies new growth opportunities and keeps Santa focused on existing opportunities.
Helps Santa remain objective, listening to his customers, elves and suppliers.
Highlights problems for Santa that can be removed/solved. Problems that Santa may not have been aware of.
Makes Santa aware of potential threats in the market. Could those Elves on the Shelves be plotting a hostile takeover bid?
Santa likes to plan. He plans all year to ensure a seamless Christmas delivery. A SWOT analysis keeps Santa aware and prepared.

Now you have seen how Santa SWOTs, what would you add? Get creative! Thinking of other SWOT factors for Santa’s business will make it easier when analysing your own business.

Got any questions about a SWOT Analysis? Look Deeper Marketing provide a free 15-minute marketing chat. Book in using our Calendly link here

About Leanne Di Fazio

Leanne has over 25 years marketing experience in large corporates and small business in Australia and the United Kingdom. She is passionate about helping small business grow and thrive. Leanne is the founder of Look Deeper Marketing specialising in marketing, strategy and planning for small business. Look Deeper Marketing bring affordable marketing consultancy to small business. Based in Sydney, Leanne works with local and international clients. Leanne offers a range of packaged options so you know exactly what to expect. Packages are available for Marketing strategy, social media, SWOT and Competitor Analysis and 1-to-1 Marketing. Look Deeper Marketing will help you take a deeper look at your marketing.

The post Santa’s Magic 5-Step Marketing SWOT Analysis first appeared on Look Deeper Marketing.

10 Christmas marketing ideas to Try in Your Small BUSINESS

Leanne Di Fazio — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 22:44:06 +0000

CHristmas MArketing Ideas for Your Small Business

If you are like me, it feels like Christmas has snuck up this year. Marketing planning for Christmas has taken a back seat especially after the weeks of lockdown, preparing covid safe return and implementing new covid rules. It’s not too late to quickly plan and prepare your Christmas marketing. Make your Christmas marketing easy, with these Christmas marketing ideas for your business, plus some essential planning ideas you will need to get your business geared up for the New Year.

1. Do you prepare a pre-holiday checklist?

Before you go off on your annual January holidays or even before you shut down for a few public holidays think about all the business and marketing things you need to do. Create a simple checklist to check back against your marketing strategy and plan.

Think about what was due for this quarter or month? Is everything up to date?

PRE-HOLIDAY MARKETING IDEA MUST HAVES:

If you are taking holidays, post your holiday operation hours, your holiday closing dates, contact details for urgent enquiries etc. Post at least three times over December/January. Update your website, social media and search engines.
If you are not taking holidays, posting “we are open” is also important.

Customers want to know specifics and want certainty. Customers who are unsure look elsewhere.

How much advance notice you need to give your customers depends on your business. For example, a massage therapist might need to tell their customers weeks in advance depending on how regular their clients repeat book. As a general rule of thumb, give at least twice as long as the time period you are taking off. If you are taking four weeks holiday, then give at least two weeks advance notice.

If you tend to plan and schedule social media content last minute to the point that you rarely post, then consider outsourcing. Organic posting is important for a whole bunch of reasons. And, over the Christmas period it’s vital so that your customers know you are open for business or on holidays

REmind me, WHy should I post organically?

Here’s a few quick reminders why you should post organically

Builds trust and authenticity
Regular connection and engagement
Ongoing, free branding
If you don’t post, you leave the door open for your competition

2. Decorate your marketing plan!

I don’t mean add some holly to your excel spreadsheet, I mean sprinkle some sparkle into your marketing by adding a few Christmas graphics and decorations. Decorate your website and social media posts, your office/shop or your home office. If you are in a Face-to-face setting, add some Christmas props to your Christmas tree for your customers to take some pics, Tik Toks or reels. Remember to get them to add your branded hashtag and get that user-generated content happening.

3. National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day

Speaking of decorating and props, we are all familiar with cheesy Christmas sweaters. Why not dress up and celebrate the so-called ugly occasion on National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day on Friday, 17th December 2021. In Australia, swap the ugly sweater for a cool t-shirt or pyjamas. Alternatively, don some reindeer antlers or Santa hat for the day.

4. Dwindling Christmas sales?

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become huge buying events in the lead up to Christmas. If you don’t want to see your December sales dwindle, you need to apply new promos to your marketing plan and ensure it fits into your marketing strategy. Ever tried a ‘Belated Black Friday’ sale, one Friday in December, or a ‘Cyber Monday Mark II’? Ensure your social media and marketing plan builds up to these December events.

GET CUSTOMER CENTRIC

5. Loyal Customers

Your loyal customers have supported you through a tough year. Your business may not be able to afford extra Christmassy discounts, especially if your marketing plan has been full of promos throughout the year, however there are always other low-cost ways to say, ‘thank you’. A simple phone or Zoom call with a smile, a traditional Christmas card in the mail. Think about doing some research with your customers while you are chatting at the Christmas party. You could also ask your customers to ‘Leave a review’ with a bonus New Year offer or competition for everyone that does leave a review.

6. Christmas Video

Get the staff together (or customers) and post a behind the scenes Christmas video on your website and social media. Staff could share a fun or unknown fact about themselves. There are plenty of Christmas marketing ideas for video. Staff are a great place to start asking for ideas. Prepare a 12 days of Christmas video countdown with your team with or without a promo offer each day.

7. Christmas products

Show off your Christmas products or services. Collaborate with other local businesses and develop a Christmas buying guide that can be marketed online or offline. Not only is collaboration a great way of helping and supporting local business, it’s also a way of introducing new clients to each other. There are plenty of benefits in collaboration- its all about maintaining customers by offering value added services that will benefit your customers. Christmas is all about value add!

8. Holiday Posts

Plan and schedule some holiday posts to set and forget even though you won’t be in the office. If you haven’t done so, there’s still time. Design your posts to have minimal engagement with your customers during this time. Here’s some simple post ideas:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year posts on each relevant day.
Holiday hours post.
Back up staff or support staff contact details.
A list of Q&A’s – answer your top queries and post them on your socials and website too.
Holiday snaps – showcase those regional Aussie areas that you are planning to visit, the local beach or café, even your backyard pool.
Food pics – every holiday has those iconic summer lunches and BBQ’s filled with too much food.

9. Doing it tough?

Many people and businesses have faced crushing financial, physical and mental challenges in 2021. 2022 could continue to be a challenge. Consider donating this Christmas to a local charity toy drive or hamper for those who are having a difficult time. Many churches, schools and shops are collection points for these worthy causes, or make your business an easy collection point.

10. Rest and recuperation

It’s getting to that quiet time of the year and well-deserved holidays. Who hasn’t lost their mojo in 2021? It’s time to destress, unwind, take a break and breathe. During the quiet time is also a great time to reevaluate your business and marketing objectives and goals:

What worked well this year?
Did we meet our business and marketing objectives?
Did the business grow?
Did we enhance our strengths and reduce our weaknesses?
How did we track against our competition?
How can we improve?
Are our target customers still the right fit for our products and services?
Are we communicating to our customers through the right channels?
Are we getting a return on our marketing investment?

Successful businesses have short and long-term marketing strategies and plans in place. Last minute planning does not exist in a highly productive, organised business. These businesses have a never- ending list of marketing growth opportunities. What are yours for 2022?

If you are not sure what to do for 2022 or where your business is heading, it is time to work on your marketing strategy and marketing plan. Make 2022 the lucrative success you want it to be. Start planning now!

December Marketing Ideas Checklist

Here’s a summary December Marketing Ideas Checklist

Prepare a pre-holiday checklist (early December)
Decorate (Dec 1)
Ugly Sweater Day (Dec 17^th)
Loyal customer gifts (organise now)
Christmas sales promos (organise now)
Christmas videos (organise now)
Show case Christmas products and collaborations (organise now)
Schedule Holiday marketing social media posts (plan across December)
Charity (many accept up donations until Christmas Eve)
2021 Planning: December and Jan

WE ARE OPEN: Look Deeper Marketing are open over December and January. December and January are our busiest times of the year because it is when most businesses plan. We have limited availability. Contact us for more detail.

About Leanne Di Fazio

The post 10 Christmas marketing ideas to Try in Your Small BUSINESS first appeared on Look Deeper Marketing.

15 Important Benefits of a SWOT Analysis for Small Business

Leanne Di Fazio — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 23:13:37 +0000

What is a SWOT Analysis?

A SWOT analysis is a business analytics tool. With the right knowledge, it can be used across your entire business or to analyse specific areas of your business. It can be used quickly and effectively to understand what has been happening, what is going on now and where you may want your business to head in the future. It helps you develop a new strategy or to determine if your strategy is on the correct path and in line with your business goals.

A SWOT analysis forms a major part of any business and marketing strategy and is beneficial for your business when used correctly. This article focuses on SWOT use in a marketing strategy for small and medium sized business.

What do the letters in SWOT stand for?

S – Strengths
W – Weaknesses
O – Opportunities
T – Threats

Whilst a SWOT can be used on its own, it is important to know that your SWOT feeds into your marketing strategy which should feed directly into the goals and objectives of your business. If you find your marketing strategy does not fit the goals and objectives of your business, then you should not be doing it – you need to take another look. A SWOT can help you take a deeper look at your business. You can conduct a SWOT analysis at any time but it’s a good idea to at least do so annually.

A SWOT analysis should be used to analyse each of these four points of your business. Your SWOT and ultimately your marketing strategy will identify your businesses:

Strengths – that you want to keep, build on, grow.
Weaknesses – that you want to reduce, eliminate, outsource, pivot, or improve.
Opportunities – you want to build on, plan for and implement.
Threats – you want to be prepared for, to minimise disruption and impacts.

I always use a SWOT analysis to understand the strategic marketing of a business. When I use a marketing SWOT analysis, I often take into consideration other areas of the business such as customer service or processes as these can all impact your business marketing.

Typically, the Strengths and the Weaknesses represent the internal factors of your business. The Opportunities and the Threats are external factors that may impact your business. These can be positive or negative factors.

Once you have completed the SWOT analysis, you should be able to assess and prioritise several opportunities that will align with your business goals.

DO YOU HAVE TOOLS OF TRADE?

Do you have tools you use in your business? Tools that you could not do without. Think of a SWOT analysis as a tool of trade, like a hammer for a carpenter, a computer for an IT specialist or a lancet for a surgeon.

When I was five my dad taught me how to use a hammer. Without his careful instruction I would not have been able to use the hammer properly. I would always be hitting my thumb or bending the nail. If I didn’t listen and learn how to use a hammer my piece of timber would never join to another piece and my little project would have failed.

If you want to build a house, fix a computer glitch, or operate on a patient you need to know how to use the tools.

Conducting a marketing or business analysis is all about knowing how to use the tools properly. If you don’t know how to use business analytic tools, whether that be conducting a SWOT analysis, using data insights or competitor research, you can end up with analysis paralysis or a ‘now what?’ scenario.

Let’s learn how to use and how to apply SWOT as a business tool.

HOW TO USE A SWOT ANALYSIS

You may have seen the typical SWOT analysis as a four squared box (image above). I personally like to use two columns. My first column is the analysis of each area of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. The second column begins the assessment. It is the ideas, thoughts, potential strategies or opportunities that come from each point in your analysis. This column can be called Mitigating Ideas but you can call it potential opportunities or whatever fits your business.

STEP 1: In the left column, start with a brainstorm and collation of all the feedback, research and data to complete each S, W, O, T section. Depending on the size of your business, do your own brain dump of information, first. Then brainstorm with your team, other colleagues in other departments, with your family, your friends, your customers, suppliers and perhaps even your competitors.

STEP 2: Add to your brain dump factual information. You will need to pull in data from several sources to assist you, such as: web analytics, social media insights and comments, reviews, qualitative and quantitative research, competitor websites, publicly available industry information, economic research and data. Work with data you readily understand to avoid analysis paralysis.

STEP 3: Use numbered bullet points to keep track of each piece of analysis. The numbering will help organise your thoughts during the ideas and assessment phase of potential opportunities.

Remember: BE HONEST or this exercise is pointless, and you will not maximise the potential of a SWOT Analysis.

How to Complete A SWOT ANALYSIS?

Ask Questions? As you look at your data and research you will find many questions. The following questions will help you get started:

How to Complete the Strengths section?

What do we do well and are good at?
What do we enjoy doing? Why?
Are our core values adding value? Are they strengths or weaknesses?
What tools do we have in place to reach our goals?
What skills and resources, etc do we have to achieve our goals?
What makes us stand out in the marketplace?
What has made us succeed in the past?
Why do our staff and customers like us?
What makes us profitable? (Are we profitable?)
What is unique about us?
Is our why (we are in business) working?
What are our customers saying are our strengths?
Why do our customers come to us?
Are we attracting quality, valuable customers?

How to complete the Weaknesses section?

Where can we improve?
What are we not doing so well? Why?
Are we getting quality leads, sales?
Are we retaining our customers? Are they going to our competitors?
Are people staying on our website or going elsewhere?
How do we believe we could do better?
Where are the bottlenecks in our business (whether that be cashflow, staffing etc)?
Ask your customers questions and actively listen to their feedback. (This will help you determine how you can improve on those areas or remove those areas completely).
You may want to break your weaknesses down into areas of your business eg your location, your physical evidence, your product, your people, your processes, your IT infrastructure.
A strength can also be a weakness – consider the opposing impacts.

How to complete the Opportunities section?

What have we seen that works well externally with competitors?
What differentiates our small competitors to some of our global competitors or global aspirations?
What are the industry trends locally and globally?
Are we working smart or working harder?
What have we seen in other industries that might be useful in ours?
Talking with your customers, suppliers etc may give you a new insight that you may have not considered in the past.

How to complete the Threats section?

What is happening in the economy that threatens us from achieving our goals.
What is happening with our competitors that we may also be doing and is not working so well?
What regulation issues or legal issues maybe on the horizon?
What contingency plans are in place in the business?
What threats may affect our suppliers or customers? (We have all seen with the effects of bushfires and Covid lockdowns globally).
Create a list of the issues that impacted your business during the pandemic. What are ways to mitigate these issues/obstacles in the future?

NOW What? Avoid Analysis Paralysis

You have completed the analysis. Now it is time to start assessing each numbered bullet point. Use a structured assessment criteria such as SMART Criteria. SMART can be used for goal setting as well as assessment. (To find out more about how to use SMART look at this article from Business Australia).

The purpose of the second column is to create potential mitigating ideas or opportunities to correspond with each numbered bullet point from Column One. Ultimately, you should be able to have a mitigating idea to match every point from the analysis work of Column One.

Think, ‘what can we do to improve or remove this issue?’ A brainstorm with others, your suppliers or customers may help (reward them/thank them for helping you).

With your long list of potential mitigating ideas and opportunities, you need to look for similar opportunities, as some of your mitigating ideas may be the same as others. Group similar numbered points to avoid duplication. You may find that these duplicate points are significant areas across your business and a regular pattern appears. I find it easy to print out the list, cut out each bullet point and start to form comparable piles.

Once I have formed the piles, I begin to prioritise them for further assessment as a High, Medium or Low priority. To do this, first determine your prioritisation criteria. Ask how specific the opportunity is? Can we measure these opportunities? Are they realistic? Do they fit our business goals? How long will they take to implement?

At some point you may need to undertake further detailed impact analysis on cost, resource, customer service, processes etc. All businesses have limits with their cashflow, operations, systems, etc.

I recall one particular strategy meeting, in a corporate organisation, where the business SWOT analysis generated over 200 ideas to generate new growth. Many ideas could be quickly dismissed using basic assessment criteria and sitting in a room of departmental experts from IT, Finance and all areas of Operations. We even set a 3-minute timeframe for each idea so that we moved through the list efficiently and prevent people going off on tangents. Anything that required more detail went for further impact review at a later time.

Ultimately, I would suggest picking 3 to 5 strategic opportunities – some for the short-term, others medium-term or longer term (5 to 10 years). Remember you can always come back to your SWOT analysis and reassess it in six or twelve months to determine if you’re on the correct path.

I want to emphasise that you ensure your marketing SWOT output marries up with your business goals. You may need to consider tweaking these goals and objectives. Marketing strategies that do not align with your business objectives can cause a few problems including procrastination, a waste of resource and ineffective marketing

All of which cost your small business valuable time and money!

What should not change, is your core values. Your core values typically give your business its unique selling proposition and often these are the values that drive you in your small business. That is, what makes your business unique and why someone will buy from you rather than your competitor.

Do I need to use a SWOT ANALYSIS?

I know some people doubt the ability of a SWOT analysis and its relevance today. If you are not convinced as to why you should be using a SWOT, here are 15 important benefits that may come from using this tool:

Helps you understand your business strengths and competencies to continue to grow your business.
Highlights your weaknesses and what may be lacking.
Highlights where you need to remove or improve inefficiencies.
Improves the chances of strategic success by creating short and long-term opportunities for growth.
Keeps you industry and business aware.
Identifies new opportunities and provides focus on existing opportunities.
Objectively, you can actively listen to your customers and suppliers.
Reduces your chance of business failure. Research suggests businesses with a strategic plan are more successful than a business without a plan.
Can highlight and remove problems that you may not have been aware.
Can highlight potential threats in the market.
Separates you from your competitors by identifying your unique selling position.
Creates opportunities and strategies that will grow your business today and in the future.
Aligns and adjusts your business goals and objectives.
If you inclusively involve your staff, your customers and suppliers it can increase loyalty, trust and dependability to your business.
You are prepared! Which may give you an edge over your competitors.

Finally, it is important to:

Stay objective during your analysis or the tool will be ineffective, and you may be missing out on opportunities.
Be cautious of analysis paralysis or the ‘Now What’? scenario.
Follow your SWOT Analysis with an assessment against your business criteria.
Keep your core values, business goals and objectives in mind.

About Leanne Di Fazio

Leanne has over 25 years marketing experience in large corporates and small business in Australia and the United Kingdom. She is passionate about helping small business grow and thrive. Leanne is the founder of Look Deeper Marketing specialising in marketing, strategy and planning for small business. Look Deeper Marketing bring affordable marketing consultancy to small business in Sydney and surrounding areas, with packaged options so you know exactly what to expect. Leanne offers affordable packages for SWOT and Competitor Analysis. Look Deeper Marketing can help you take a deeper look at your marketing.

The post 15 Important Benefits of a SWOT Analysis for Small Business first appeared on Look Deeper Marketing.

The Definitive Guide to the 8Ps of Marketing Mix for SME’s

Leanne Di Fazio — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 11:17:26 +0000

The Confusing Marketing Mix

Marketing is one of the top three struggles small and medium sized businesses face. The struggle of how to find customers, how to build brand awareness, how much to spend on marketing, how to select the right marketing channels…. The list goes on. It doesn’t need to be a struggle with the right instruction and guidance of how to use the Marketing Mix.

Many business owners undertake some form of marketing training, though it might be a short course in one area of marketing, such as social media. Marketing is a much, much bigger field. It is no wonder that soon small and medium enterprises (SME’s) are struggling.

Marketers confuse SME’s even more with jargon like:

4Ps of Marketing Mix
5Ps of Marketing Mix
7Ps of Marketing Mix
8Ps of Marketing Mix
44Ps of Marketing Mix

Are you a business owner thinking? “Take your P’s and P— off!”

If you are finding yourself in that position, keep reading.

As a marketer, I feel your pain (no P pun intended). The marketing jargon and theory can become overwhelming. That is why I have written a guide to the marketing mix P’s to help all business owners, whatever your industry.

Before we get to the guide, I need to be clear. In marketing, there is no single magic formula (though many tell you there is). There are many variable factors that ultimately create sales and drive profit. To start:

You need quality products and services,
That meet (or exceed) your customer’s needs,
At a value-based, market driven price.
You need to understand your customers,
Speak their language and
You need to target those customers where they hang out.

Even then, the customer needs to be in the right mindset. Personal issues, a sick toddler, job worries will all impact the customer’s buying journey.

What I have outlined, in the bullet points above, is basically the 4P’s of Marketing Mix: Product, Price, Place, Promotion. There is a bit more to getting sales and retaining customers. However, if you define the 4P’s of marketing for your business, you will have built a marketing strategy to driving growth and profitable sales.

A bit of background: The 4P's of marketing Mix

The 4P’s of Marketing Mix was the original theory. It has been around since the 60’s and suggested by Jerome McCarthy*. The 4P’s are:

Product
Price
Place
Promotion

McCarthy suggested that these are the most common variables that can be used to ultimately build your marketing strategy and plan.

These 4P’s are intrinsically linked and together they form a large part of any business and marketing strategy. In a large business, marketing, along with other key factors of a business (e.g. leadership, direction, planning, personnel, operations etc) can become siloed in departments. However, most small businesses are a one- or two-person business where there are no siloed departments.

Therefore, the 4P’s only cover some areas of the small business’ overall strategy and may not provide the level of understanding small business owners need in building their business and marketing strategy.

That is where the 8P’s of marketing mix can help. You probably do much of the 8P’s now and are unaware of it. The 8P’s begin to dissect the 4P’s in more detail and stretch across other facets of your business to provide a more encompassing business strategy, plus a marketing strategy. These are the 8P’s:

Product
Price
Place
Promotion
Physical Evidence
People
Processes
Performance.

I have written a basic guide to help you through the 8P’s. Use it when reviewing your business and marketing strategy.

*Jerome McCarthy Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, 1964

Instructions

Save a copy of this article or download a copy.
Set aside a minimum of two-three hours to review your business and marketing strategy using this guide as your aid. Your business and marketing strategy is an investment in your business. This is time well invested.
You choose, whether to use all the 8P’s, whether you only want to use 4P’s (or any other number of P’s). However, I would suggest you follow the structure of at least the 4P’s of Marketing Mix. With this, you will be well on your way to constant sales, a loyal customer base and profitable growth.

As a side, using 5P’s 7P’s, or 8P’s goes against the marketing theory (and goes against all my marketing learnings) but I believe theory is useless if you can’t apply it to both your business and marketing strategy. The marketing mix P’s need to work for you and your business.

One more point: In a small and medium business you will want to review your P’s on at least an annual basis. If you are a larger business review every six to twelve months.

The Definitive GUide to the 8Ps marketing MIX for SME's

1. Product in the Marketing Mix

Product: is what you are selling. It could be a tangible, physical product or a service that is not tangible. A product/service needs to meet the demands of the customer you are selling to. It should have a clearly defined purpose and features. According to Philip Kotler **(the father of marketing) there are five levels of product development:

Core benefit: the customer’s basic need or want. (Does your product meet the customer’s need?)
Generic benefit: the basic features of the product/service for it to function. (What are these basic features in your product? Can these be improved or refined?)
Expected Product: additional features the customer might expect. (What else could you offer to exceed customer’s needs or to delight the customer?)
Augmented Product: tailoring of the product to enable differentiation. (What makes your product different to your competition? Why would a customer buy your product over the competition?)
Potential product: future product improvements. (Are there future developments or changes you can make to your product in the short or long term?)

Many small or medium sized businesses do not have the time to think about these 5 levels of a product, which can lead to product failure.

It is important to remember the product:

Should be the solution to the problem that the customer has.
Should meet or exceed the customer needs/expectations.

If your product is failing to do so, it may be a good idea to take the time to reconsider your products.

Product Action:

Think about what you are selling and why. Who is your target audience?
Think about how your business considers product development. How do you know if your products meet the needs of your customers? What do you currently do to track this?
Review your product or service against the five (5) levels of product development and the questions, listed above. Undertake customer and competitor research if required, some online polls or surveys can help.
After doing this ask yourself a) is the product the solution to the customer problem and b) does it meet or exceed the customer needs and expectations? Be honest! Your business needs raw honesty when reviewing your marketing mix.

**Philip Kotler, Kevin Keller Marketing Management (15^th Edition), 2015 https://www.pkotler.org/

2. Price in the Marketing Mix

Setting the price of your products/services is not always easy to do.

You need to consider a range of factors including all your business expenses (and add a profit margin) before calculating a per unit cost. Sounds easy but how many small businesses do this?

The price of your product has a direct impact on your customer’s perception of your brand. Products too cheap can appear like a scam or poor quality. Too expensive will be out of reach of your target customer. Is your product of high quality? Is this enough to meet customer expectations? Not sure? Ask your customers.

The price where your product is positioned in the market is always reflected against your competition. It is easy to quickly do online research on products and to compare against the market.

Importantly, the price you set should reflect your customer’s perceived value of your product and should correlate with your budget.

Set your price either too high or too low you will very quickly see your business struggling.

Price Action:

Have you considered all your costs? When was the last time you reviewed your pricing?
Consider all your costs – make a list (it could be very long). From electricity to maintenance, daily stationery consumables to legal costs. Add a labour cost to your service and your marketing including networking and travel time e.g. if you are a Physiotherapist and every six months you have a lunch meet and greet with local doctors you need to account for the luncheon, your time, marketing material etc. into your overall costs.
Consider your costs to your competitors. If you offer a superior product, price accordingly. Make sure it meets and exceeds the customer expectation. If you need help on Pricing, Jane Tweedy Consulting can help. Jane is passionate about pricing for small business.

3. Place in the Marketing Mix

Place – is the base where you sell your product or service. This could be a retail presence in a shopping district, an industrial warehouse distribution centre, a commercial office unit, working virtually from your place of residence (or the growing trend to work nomadically from a campervan).

It is important to determine the ideal place to sell your products because you need to be able to meet your customer’s needs and requirements. The customer needs to be able to find you and reach you without it being an inconvenience for them. The same can be said for hiring good staff.

Where you locate your premises is more than a marketing requirement. It is crucial to your business operations and logistics.

Some factors to consider:

The type of location where you want your business to be i.e. warehouse, shop front etc.
Future expansion consideration – moving is costly, as can be empty space.
Whether the location fits your brand
Customer requirements e.g., convenience to retailers, transport links etc
Budget and contractual agreements – consider floor space and fit out expenses, length of term.
Staff, suppliers etc
Logistics – e.g. parking, accessibility, transport access, IT/NBN network accessibility.
Virtual vs non-virtual shopfront.

As business owners, there are times, we all have varying thoughts about our current location e.g. it is not convenient, it is not big enough, it is in a dodgy location, etc. I am aware of a local business owner that starts his backup procedure at midday to finish before midnight because network quality in the area is poor. It is imperative to consider a range of factors in choosing location.

Place Action:

When reviewing your location think about some lessons you have learnt from choosing your existing location. Write a list.
What are the crucial criteria – must haves vs nice to have?
Talk to Commercial agents, your network and other business owners about their experiences and learnings to add to your list.
Importantly, consider your customers and staff. Ask them for their thoughts.

4. Promotion in the Marketing Mix

Promotion refers to the specific marketing tactics or the marketing channels you use to let your customers (and potential customers) know about your products. There are over 100 different types of marketing channels encompassing traditional advertising (e.g. newspapers, TV, face to face marketing) through to digital and social media channels.

Promotion Action:

Could you list over 100 different forms of marketing channels?
Which marketing channels are the right ones to use to meet your marketing objectives – for your brand, for your target customers, your target geographic location?
Consider the cost effectiveness of each channel against your marketing budget, and anticipated return on investment (ROI).
Understand how to track and measure each channel your business uses to determine the effectiveness of each channel.
Mix up your marketing. Using the same offer, message, channel etc can become boring to your customers. Just because campaign ‘A’ met your success criteria does not mean this will happen again and again. (And you should have success criteria for every marketing campaign, otherwise you are wasting precious time and budget).

Every channel will produce different results and can vary significantly depending on the offer, the key message, collateral, copy, day/time, and the current mindset of the customer. Need help with selecting what channels to use? “The Look” package. We will cater a plan to suit your customer requirements

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“The Definitive Guide to the 8Ps of Marketing Mix for SME’s”

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5. Physical evidence in the marketing mix

Physical Evidence is everything your customers see/hear/touch/taste/feel when interacting with your business. It includes:

The packaging and branding.
The layout of the physical location, it is fixtures and fittings, the environment and ambience.
Your staff, their uniforms, their behaviour, etc.

Your physical evidence can provide a strong point of differentiation and set you apart from your competitors, especially in a physical location such as a restaurant or office because these locations are so visible.

Physical Evidence Action:

Think of some examples of physical evidence e.g. how two local cafes set themselves apart. This helps highlights the differences. What does Café A do well, compared to Café B?
Research your own market – overseas and local competitors. What do they do well, or not – you do not want to copy. Look Deeper Marketing’s SWOT package can do a competitor analysis
Look at ways to be innovative and visionary in your approach. Many marketing consultants, brand specialists or business advisors can help.
Always be clear and specific when briefing your agency. If you are not sure how to write a marketing or brand brief, ask your agency for their template or look online for resources.

6. People in the marketing mix

People is a key factor of any business. Employing and retaining the right people is imperative in both the long- and short-term success of your business. The right people will help you design, build, sell and manage your product. People will take your business to new levels that would not be achievable on your own.

Some key factors to consider with the people in your business:

Skill set and personality mix.
Enabling staff to understand their role, place, and impact in the business,
Ongoing training and upskilling,
Ways to ensure staff feel appreciated, respected, and safe.
External outsourcing of tasks and having back-up staffing plans.

People are an asset to your business – whether you employ or outsource. The wrong people can be detrimental for your business. The right people will enable your business and brand to grow.

People Action:

Think about the skillsets you may lack and what skills you need in both the short and medium term. As your business grows start thinking what skill sets are required for the long term. A business advisor or HR professional should be able to offer guidance here.
Before you are ready to expand your business, what tasks e.g. admin, marketing, bookkeeping, operations could be outsourced to free up your time and enable you to focus on what you do best.
If you need further help finding the right people collaborations and opportunities, chat with Business Advisor, Debbie Roberts Consulting.

7. Process in the marketing mix

Process is the how your business goes about achieving a desired outcome. It is the actionable steps. Every business has processes. How you process your tax, your admin, your billing, your quoting, your sales funnel.

The aim of putting processes in place is to minimise costs, streamline and reduce mundane tasks, save time, remain current and to optimise value for your customer and the business. You probably have processes in place in your personal life too. Do you have processes that make your work life easier?

Process Action:

Think about what you want to achieve with creating or improving a process. Consider processes with customers, staff and external suppliers.
Analyse current processes and break these down into steps.
Research related processes. What are the key priorities for your business? Can you adapt or use an existing process or application, such as automated software for your business?
Avoid locking into any contracts early. Trial the processes or software first. Test it and be ready to adjust to suit your business requirements.

8. Performance in the marketing mix

Understanding performance (across all aspects of your business) is essential in your business and marketing strategy to gain new insights and growth.

Performance Action:

Consider how your business measures its performance.
Set objectives and then put in place tracking and measuring tools. Allocate the time needed to do this, ultimately you will want to determine the Return on Investment (ROI).
Is the marketing or the activity producing a profitable return? Many small businesses do not look at the individual activity and may only look at overall quarterly or annual profits. Focusing on the individual activity ensures greater budget efficiency and financial control.
Try testing and learning, especially before investing a larger budget.
Ensure you are reviewing staff and product productivity regularly. Adapt, change or outsource key jobs and tasks as needed.

Understanding performance enables you to learn from past efforts, where to allocate resource, budget and to improve product lines. Performance is typically data driven – whether that be hard numbers or through qualitative and quantitative research and feedback. Measuring performance is essential for moving forward and driving business growth.

About Leanne Di Fazio

Leanne has over 20 years marketing experience in large corporates and small business in Australia and the United Kingdom. She is passionate about helping small business grow and thrive. Leanne is the founder of Look Deeper Marketing: who specialise in marketing, strategy and planning for small business. Look Deeper Marketing bring affordable marketing consultancy to small business in Sydney and surrounding areas, with packaged options so you know exactly what to expect. Leanne offers affordable packages for helping your business with Marketing Strategy, The 8Ps of Marketing Mix, Competitor Analysis. Look Deeper Marketing taking a deeper look at your marketing.

The post The Definitive Guide to the 8Ps of Marketing Mix for SME’s first appeared on Look Deeper Marketing.

11 Reasons why you should do a Competitor Analysis for your business

Leanne Di Fazio — Fri, 12 Mar 2021 07:41:42 +0000

What is a Competitor Analysis?

When was the last time you reviewed your competitors? No matter what size your business – from solopreneurs to large corporates – it’s important to understand your key competition. Before we delve into why it is so important to understand your competition, what is a competitor analysis?

A competitor analysis compares your business to several other businesses in your industry – your rivals. Rivals who are focused on a similar geographic location, that may also target similar customers, that may have similar products, services and marketing strategy to your own business – anywhere that you and they are competing for marketing share.

Here’s why you should do a competitor analysis.

1. Understanding your competitors helps you understand your business better. By understanding your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses you begin to understand what works and what doesn’t work, how to make better decisions and avoid mistakes. As a result, you also learn your own businesses strengths and weaknesses.

2. A competitor analysis will help you grow your industry knowledge – knowledge that you can share. You become an expert and an authority that you use to build trust with your customers. You can also use this knowledge to share with your staff, which helps build their learning and appreciation for your business.

3. A competitor analysis helps you understand and identify gaps in the market whether that be in a specific geographic location, in product offerings or in pricing or selling to a particular target market. For example, a competitor may be targeting younger generations whereas none of your competitors are tweaking the product to target an older demographic.

4. A competitor analysis identifies your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – by analysing and assessing your competitors (and yourself) you can identify what is different about what you offer vs what your competition offers. It begins to answer the customer question “Why should I buy from you rather than your competition?”

5. Understanding your competition is not only about looking at the businesses that are the same size as yours. If your busines objectives are to grow you may want to observe larger competitors to emulate their wins or to avoid their costly errors. You can identify opportunities for growth and areas of internal or external development. Likewise, this works for smaller businesess – those businesses that you think are too small to be a threat. You may want to keep an eye on businesses smaller than your own as they are wanting to climb the same tree, to get the same fruit, that you are after.

6. A competitor analysis can help structure your marketing. Do you know what keywords or marketing channels your competitors are using? By understanding where the competition is spending, you can begin to understand the cost of their marketing and how much they spend to acquire new customers. For example, you can determine whether you should directly compete or use more affordable keyword alternatives. You may identify a marketing channel gap, enabling you to target a totally different market and in a different way.

7. Apart from understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, it gives you the opportunity to learn what not to do. I recently did a competitor analysis for a residential builder. Looking at customer reviews, this particular competitor received a few poor ratings and negative feedback. The competitor did not take the customer offline to discuss and rectify the problem, instead having a very public tit-for-tat debate about what was correct/not correct with the build and who was to blame.

Whilst the competitor may have been in the right (and who knows) the visible slanging match did not project a great image as to why the builder was in that negative position in the first place. The arguing can create negative assumptions about trust and transparency.

8. With further competitor analysis you may unearth a new competitor plan or strategy – eg a news stories of expansion, changes of location, staff recruitment, redevelopment etc., This aids you to prepare your marketing plan to offset any of their marketing tactics.

9. A thorough competitor analysis can identify industry trends. It is important to understand where your competition and industry is heading. Look at the Threats and Opportunities that can present and what you (and your competitors) are doing about these trends. You will be considered forward thinking and agile, a market leader and an authority rather than an industry laggard.

10. Can a competitor analysis provide cost savings? Definitely! If you are looking at penetrating a new market, doing a competitor analysis is essential. It provides a wealth of key data as to how crowded the market is, the market size and potential for profit or loss. Ultimately saving you time and money.

11. Going a step further, a very detailed competitor analysis can include customer feedback and customer research. It is possible to do an online survey or undertake focus groups of your competition’s direct customers. You can look at the most loyal and steadfast to the more disloyal and irresolute customers and cover a range of questions around customer satisfaction including what they like/don’t like with the product offering, service levels etc. Detailed research can identify consumer trends and changes across brands and industry.

In a recent competitor analysis, my client had been conducting detailed research over a few years that included a competitor benchmark. The detailed research focused on a few larger competitors who were well established brands. The results showed a trend that one of the competitor’s customers were increasingly disgruntled by that particular brand’s arrogance, seemingly stemming from a lack of customer service.

Some of these customers (of the well-established brand) had been loyal supporters and customers for years, their lives were intertwined with this brand but the lack of service had seen a shift in attitude and shift in feet – they were walking straight to the door of their competitors…which potentially was an opportunity for my client.

How to do a competitor analysis?

To undertake a competitor analysis, it doesn’t need to get too complicated. You can do a basic SWOT analysis of each competitor as well as your own business. Most of the analysis is understanding each rival’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Research and review such areas as their product lines, target customers, branding and advertising, company size and geographic location.

There are plenty of places to gain publicly available competitor information. Here’s a starting list of where to look: website and social media pages, customer reviews, company reports, articles and posts published, PR, sponsorships, marketing, job ads, industry news, Australian Bureau of Statistics and various media tools such as Owler to gain further industry and competitor information. You may find industry specific reports from associations, or research firms.

Steps in a competitor analysis?

Who will you analyse? Carefully consider who to choose and select 3-5 potential rivals. To choose, consider:
- A rival with a similar company size,
- Their location/s,
- Their products offerings,
- The customers they target.
- Choosing one smaller and one larger competitor than yourselves – perhaps those you admire, or feel may be an upcoming threat.
Analyse the good and bad of your competitors. Undertake a SWOT analysis for each competitor.
Assess the comparisons and gaps against your own business and marketing objectives.
Assess impacts of adding any new opportunities to your own business plans.
Update your business and marketing strategy.
Develop future plans and timings.

With this outline you will be well equipped to undertake a competitor analysis for your business. You can undertake an analysis at any time and should keep it updated regularly. Larger businesses may do so weekly or monthly and smaller business six monthly to an annual basis.

About Leanne Di Fazio

Leanne has over 20 years marketing experience in large corporates and small business in Australia and the United Kingdom. She is passionate about helping small business grow and thrive. Leanne is the founder of Look Deeper Marketing: who specialise in marketing, strategy and planning for small business. Look Deeper Marketing bring affordable marketing consultancy to small business in Sydney and surrounding areas, with packaged options so you know exactly what to expect. Leanne offers affordable packages for Competitor Analysis. Look Deeper Marketing taking a deeper look at your marketing.

The post 11 Reasons why you should do a Competitor Analysis for your business first appeared on Look Deeper Marketing.

Want a thriving small business? Look out for the Santa fail

Leanne Di Fazio — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 11:05:58 +0000

Ever had a Santa fail? Where the kids see you putting the presents under the Christmas tree? A Santa fail happened in our house last year and we thought we had done all the necessary planning and preparation.

We had thought of a couple of scenarios in our planning, but did we really put enough deep thought into the entire Santa process?

I’m sure no-one wants a Santa fail so why didn’t we prepare more? Why didn’t we really think about what mattered? Our Customers!…and we were blindsided by our little customers: the thinking power of two young Generation Alpha’s.

In many ways our family’s Santa fail is relatable to a small business failing. A small business can fail for several reasons. One of the top reasons a small business fails is when a business neglects to keep on top of their marketing strategy and their marketing planning.

As business owners we all want a thriving small business and we know we need to plan to ensure our business and marketing objectives are being met. But how many small business owners have the time to plan – maintaining that strategy focus and momentum – when it all gets a little busy? I’ll come back to business failure in a minute.

First, our Santa fail, and before I tell you what my Gen Alpha kids did, here is an overview of our planning checklist:

Presents bought in advance when kids still at school and not on holidays.
Presents well-hidden and not discovered (despite much hunting).
Presents moved to several different locations because of the ‘much hunting’.
Allowing kids to stay up late in the lead up to Christmas Eve so they would be tired and fall asleep easily on the big night.
Watching Polar Express for the ‘nth time to reinforce the magic of believing.
Giving kids warm milk to help them fall asleep and stay asleep.
Prepping milk and cookies for Santa.
Waiting over an hour after the kids were in bed before making our first move (just in case all those late nights and warm milk didn’t do the trick).
Not wearing any shoes, in case the shoes made too much noise when walking.
Lights off.
Santa 1 moving presents in stages – from hiding spot to Location A.
Checking with Santa 2 that there was no movement in the house. Check kids were still in bed.
Santa 1 moving presents from Location A to Location B.
Checking with Santa 2 that there was still no movement in the house. Yep! Kids were still in bed, breathing heavily and fast asleep.
Final stage – moving of presents from Location B to under the Christmas tree.
Santa 1 and Santa 2 drinking milk and eating cookies.

Unfortunately, the kids were one step ahead. They secretly planted their tablets and a laptop in prime locations, hitting the video record button before (VERY willingly) going to bed. Despite the lights being off when Santa 1 and Santa 2 made their move, there was sufficient evidence to see it wasn’t Santa but rather mum and dad. Fail 1.

Our voices were also very distinct. We had failed to do a jolly “Ho, Ho, Ho” or a “Merry Christmas to all and to all a
goodnight!” Fail 2!

The kids had done even better planning. They had done their research and due diligence. In previous years, the children simply believed. Little did I realise these little Gen Alpha customers were changing. The kids were in effect ‘purchasing’ a product/service. In this case it was a Santa service: whereby Santa delivers the presents and places them under the Christmas tree. They were on a product lifecycle.

the product lifecycle - Stages: 1. Introduction, 2. Growth, 3. Maturity, 4. Decline

Using the Santa service as my product, I want to discuss how this product tracks along the product lifecycle.

Introduction Phase: From a very early age, the target audience (two little children) had quickly become loyal customers of the service due to heavy promotion of the Santa service by mum, dad, relatives and broader society.

Growth Phase: The customer retention rate was high: annual Santa photos, numerous shopping trips to visit Santa and take in all the Christmas sights, etc. There was 100% loyalty in the product and repeat purchasing year on year.

Product maturity and Product Extension: The kids were reaching points of doubt and disbelief in Santa’s existence, however a few words of wisdom (or watching The Polar Express) were simply required to continue the repeat purchase and a boost in Santa product sales. With this we were able to continue the product extension.

At this point, the effort to retain these two loyal customers was still minimal. Business overheads were low: no special bonuses, no discounted offers, no special videos. It was easy. You could say the returns (and profit) came easily.

Decline: The kids were reaching a point in their customer journey where their loyalty was wavering significantly. I had underestimated my customers and where they were on the product lifecycle. Sure, I knew at some point the lifecycle would end. I had expected that I would need to have that difficult conversation where I had to communicate with my customers that the Santa service was ending. Instead, I had neglected to totally stay at the forefront of understanding my customers. This is the point where my Santa business had finally failed.

Where did the Santa Service fail?

· I hadn’t done enough pre-Christmas research and had neglected my customer buyer journey.

· I didn’t ask sufficient Santa related questions.

· I didn’t enquire whether the whole Santa thing was puzzling to the kids.

· There had been very little questioning from the children as to whether Santa was real or not. (I assumed that was a good thing because I didn’t need to have any difficult conversations about Santa).

· I assumed my customers hadn’t changed.

· I assumed the market hadn’t changed.

· I didn’t listen to my customers. Importantly, I didn’t listen to their silence.

· I failed to consult, research or ask for feedback.

· I failed to keep up with the desires, needs or problems of my customers,

· I failed to see the changes in my customers or the competition.

It is not up to my customers to tell me that they are not happy with my product or service. It is up to me to be proactive and ensure my customers continue to be happy.

My target audience had changed their attitudes and behaviours and my Santa service had not kept up.

As my kids grew so did their approach to the entire Santa service offering. They were no longer a captive audience and they were old enough to do their own market research – to explore the market and see what other information, products and services were on offer. Who knew offering the service of Santa was so difficult?

How do you keep up with your customers on the buyer journey?

Failing to adapt and grow as the market and your customers change is a common error in business growth. Many small businesses fail to update their marketing strategy (or never had a strategy to begin with). If you want a thriving small business, it is important to do regular assessments of your target customers and your competition. A few things you need to consider:

· Do a SWOT Analysis – look at your Strengths, your Weaknesses, your Opportunities, and your Threats.

· Review your key competitors and see if what they are doing has changed. How do you track against them?

· Look for opportunities or gaps in the market – where can you improve? Where can your business grow?

· Then assess these potential opportunities or gaps.

· A simple and easy way of assessing potential opportunities is using the SMART criteria. Is the opportunity Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound? These criteria will help you make key decisions and help in your planning.

· Are your target customers still the right fit for your products and services? Do you need to change your offering to suit your target customer? Can you extend the life of your product?

· Is there a gap in the product market for a new option?

· Are you still communicating to your customers through the right channels? Are you asking the right questions and giving them the solutions to their problems?

· Are you getting a return on your marketing investment? Is the product or service still profitable?

· Are you meeting the business and marketing objectives?

For all the planning and effort of being Santa last year, not only did I fail to fully understand my customers it meant my return on the time and effort of the whole Santa experience produced a zero return – there was no customer surprise and delight, no enchantment when the presents were magically there in the morning and no joy that the cookies had been eaten. The gratitude had shifted from Santa to mum and dad and it certainly lost much of the magical childhood innocence along the way.

Could I have extended the Santa service another year if I had done more research and planning? I believe so – we could have dressed as Santa as a start (Fail 3). In hindsight, I saw the secretive plotting and planning. But, I had become distracted and busy and missed the golden customer moment – the moment when I could have saved the Santa Service for one more year.

In your business don’t underestimate the need to keep the lines of communication open with your customers, to understand their needs or problems and how your product or service will adapt or grow to solve those problems.

The big picture - The marketing strategy

It is easy to become busy or distracted in our small businesses. We lose sight of the big picture and get stuck in the daily, tactical tasks. We run out of time to think about how our big picture, marketing strategy will look in one, two, three years’ time and then our business fails to grow and thrive. Worse still, our business goes backward and eventually fails.

Small business owners: take a look at the big picture on an annual basis, know your business and marketing objectives, review your marketing strategy: your customers, your products and services.

The annual visit from Santa is a good way to remember when to review your business and marketing strategy. The Christmas holiday period is typically a quiet time and the perfect opportunity to review your business goals and marketing strategy. Planning keeps your business momentum going. Hit the ground running for 2021. Avoid the Santa fail! It’s not too late to start your marketing planning now.

outsourcing your marketing strategy and marketing planninG

Have you ever considered outsourcing your big picture planning? Look Deeper Marketing has limited availability over the December and January period to undertake your small business marketing strategy and planning. We can help you develop and review your big picture objectives, understand your target customers, your competition and more.

DO YOU THINK YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS Help with your MARKETING PLANning?

CAll US on M: 0420 300 110 to find out more

SHARE THIS BLOG IF YOU THINK IT MAY HELP A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER.

About Leanne Di Fazio

Leanne has over 20 years marketing experience in large corporates and small business in Australia and the United Kingdom. She is passionate about helping small business grow and thrive. Leanne is the founder of Look Deeper Marketing: who specialise in marketing, strategy and planning for small business. Look Deeper Marketing bring affordable marketing consultancy to small business in Macarthur, Sydney and surrounding areas, with packaged options so you know exactly what to expect. Look Deeper Marketing: take a deeper look at your marketing.

The post Want a thriving small business? Look out for the Santa fail first appeared on Look Deeper Marketing.

11 last minute Must Do Marketing Ideas for Small Business

Leanne Di Fazio — Mon, 30 Nov 2020 12:13:03 +0000

Must do Christmas Marketing Planning Ideas

With Christmas just around the corner is your marketing plan ready and ramped up for the busy period? There is plenty of marketing that you need to be thinking about in the lead up to Christmas and if you are super organised your marketing plan was probably prepped months ago.

But, for many busy small business owners it’s difficult to always be organised and focused on all parts of your business. Often, the marketing strategy and marketing planning get overlooked. To help you this December here are 11 easy, must do marketing ideas if you have left your Christmas marketing planning a little last minute.

1. Decorate your marketing planning

After a depressing 2020, sprinkle some sparkle into your marketing planning by adding a few Christmas graphics and decorations. Decorate your website and social media posts, your small business or your home office. Don’t forget to decorate your zoom background with a Santa Christmas grotto. There are plenty of choices online, being mindful of copyright.

2. NATIONAL UGLY CHRISTMAS SWEATER DAY

Speaking of decorating, we are all familiar with cheesy Christmas sweaters. Why not dress up and celebrate the so-called ugly occasion on National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day on Friday, 18th December 2020. In Australia, you may want to swap the sweater for a cool t-shirt or pyjamas – unless you work under an air con vent that blasts chilly Artic air. Alternatively, don some reindeer antlers or Santa hat for the day.

3. LOYAL CUSTOMERS

Your loyal customers have supported your small business through a tough year, which could continue to be tough into 2021. Your business may not be able to afford extra Christmassy discounts, especially if your marketing plan has been full of promos throughout the year, however there are always other low-cost ways to say, ‘thank you’.

A simple phone or Zoom call with a smile, a traditional Christmas card in the mail. You could consider holding a virtual Zoom party. If you can afford a small gift, why not deliver a special hamper pack of goodies to your customers to celebrate and toast together at the Zoom party. Here’s to a brighter 2021! You could also offer a giveaway for attendees to encourage them to get online and mingling for the event

4. Taking time off?

Whether it is taking time off for the public holidays or a longer summer break. Don’t forget to post your holiday trading hours on your website, social media and search engines. How much advance notice to give your customers depends on your business. For example, a hairdresser might need to tell their customers eight weeks in advance depending on how regular their clients repeat book. As a general rule of thumb, give at least twice as long as the time period you are taking off. If you are taking four weeks holiday, then give at least two weeks advance notice with your changed trading hours.

5. Dwindling Christmas sales?

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become major buying events in many small business marketing plans. Both events are now tending to dominate sales in the lead up to Christmas. If you don’t want to see your December sales dwindle, you need to apply fresh, new promos to your marketing planning and ensure it fits into your marketing strategy. Ever tried a ‘Belated Black Friday’ sale, one Friday in December, or a ‘Cyber Monday Mark II’? Ensure your social media and marketing plan builds up to these December events.

6. Christmas Video

Get the staff together (or customers) and post a Christmas video on your website and social media. Staff could share a fun or unknown fact about themselves. Perhaps a 12 days of Christmas countdown with or without a marketing promo offer each day. You could collaborate with other small business in the local area.

7. Christmas products

Does your marketing plan show case your Christmas products or services? These products need to drive your December marketing planning. Try some local event marketing and team up with other local small business to enhance each other’s offers. Consider developing a Christmas buying guide that can be marketed online or offline.

8. Holiday POsts

Going away for January and shutting shop for a week or two? Plan your marketing posts and schedule them to set and forget. You may have already scheduled yours in (well done!) If not, there’s still time. Design your posts to have minimal engagement with your customers during this time, to ensure you get a break away from customer queries. Some ideas to post:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year posts on each relevant day.
Holiday hours.
Back up staff or support staff contact details.
A list of Q&A’s – answer your top queries and post them on your socials and website too.
Holiday snaps – showcase those regional Aussie areas that you are planning to visit, the local beach or café, even your backyard pool.
Food pics – every holiday has those iconic summer lunches and BBQ’s filled with #toomuchfood

9. the small business list

Not the naughty or nice list but a list of what you must do before the holidays. You need a small business checklist to check back against your marketing strategy and marketing plan. What was due for this quarter or month? Are we up to date? And what must be done before we close-up for Christmas?

10. DOing it tough

Many people and small business have faced crushing financial, physical and mental challenges in 2020. Unfortunately, at the stroke of midnight December 31, the world won’t magically turn into the previous normality. 2021 will continue to be a challenge. Consider donating this Christmas to a local charity toy drive or hamper drive for those who are having a difficult time. Many churches, schools and shops are collection points for these worthy causes.

11. Rest and recuperation

It’s getting to that quiet time of the year and well-deserved holidays. Who hasn’t lost their mojo in 2020? It’s time to destress, unwind, take a break and breathe. During the quiet time it is also a great time to reevaluate your small business marketing objectives and goals:

What worked well this year?
Did we meet our business and marketing objectives?
Did the business grow?
Did we enhance our strengths and reduce our weaknesses?
How did we track against our competition?
How can we improve?
Are our products and services still the right fit for our target customers?
Are we communicating to our customers through the right channels?
Are we getting a return on our marketing investment?

Successful businesses have short and long-term marketing strategies and plans in place. Last minute marketing planning does not exist in a highly productive, organised business. These businesses have a never-ending list of marketing growth opportunities. What are yours for 2021?

If you are not sure what to do for 2021 or where your business is heading, it is time to work on your marketing strategy and marketing plan. We are all happy to see the back of 2020. Make 2021 the lucrative success you want it to be. Start planning now! Follow the December Checklist below to help keep your December marketing planning on track.

DO YOU THINK YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS Help with your MARKETING PLANning?

CAll US on M: 0420 300 110 to find out more

SHARE THIS BLOG IF YOU THINK IT MAY HELP A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER.

About Leanne Di Fazio

Leanne has over 20 years marketing experience in large corporates and small business in Australia and the United Kingdom. She is passionate about helping small business grow and thrive. Leanne is the founder of Look Deeper Marketing: who specialise in marketing, strategy and planning for small business. Look Deeper Marketing bring affordable marketing consultancy to small business in Macarthur, Sydney and surrounding areas, with packaged options so you know exactly what to expect. Look Deeper Marketing: take a deeper look at your marketing.

The post 11 last minute Must Do Marketing Ideas for Small Business first appeared on Look Deeper Marketing.

A quick 5 Tip Summary on how to improve your decision making

Leanne Di Fazio — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 22:00:00 +0000

Decision making 5 Tips - summary

Here is a short summary of how to improve your decision making skills using these expert tips from Trent Moy, Director of Halide Pty Ltd. As a strategic marketing specialist, these tips have definitely helped me fine tune my strategic decision making ability. Let us know how you are getting along applying these skills in your decision making. If you need a more detailed refresher on each decision making tip, we have the entire 5 week series on the News page. Or click on the link for each week below.

Week One – Tip 1: Recognise your Gut Feel then put it aside

Week Two – Tip 2: Separate the facts from the assumptions

Week Three – Top 3: Is it a problem or a conflict?

Week Four – Tip 4: Develop more than one solution

Week Five – Tip 5: test your decision before taking action

5 Top tips to improve your decision making in ONE short summary!

Tip 1 – Recognise your gut-feel… then put it aside for the moment. Gut-feel or intuition is an important part of how we operate but it can be so powerful that it prevents us from thinking clearly.

Tip 2 – Separate the facts from the assumptions. You can’t run a business or get through life without making some assumptions but make sure you ‘label’ those assumptions correctly and don’t confuse them with ‘facts’. Be open to changing your assumptions when new or better information comes along.

Tip 3 – Is it a problem or a conflict? Problems can be solved with logic but often what we face in business are emotional conflicts. Acknowledge and ‘speak to their values’ before their logical brain. When emotions are driven by ‘values’ and people use words like ‘honesty’, ‘trust’, ‘loyalty’, ‘fairness’, don’t be surprised if your attempts at logical problem-solving and ultimately decision making get rejected.

Tip 4 – Develop more than one solution. Avoid the temptation to stop thinking when you get to the first acceptable solution in decision making. Keep thinking until you generate several different options and ask how each of them can be turned into the ‘best’ solution.

Tip 5 – Test your decision before taking action. See if you can test your best and second-best options before locking them in.

Want more info on decision making in your business, email Trent trent.moy@halide.com.au or comment below. Next week we’ll provide a short summary. Let us know how you are getting along applying these skills for better decision making.ONE

About Trent Moy

Trent Moy, the founding Principal of Halide is a business consultant that specialises in decision making and leadership skills. He is an independent adviser on ethics and on how businesses can achieve better social and environmental outcomes. Trent has over 25 years of expertise in senior management roles, ethics and building motivating cultures.

The post A quick 5 Tip Summary on how to improve your decision making first appeared on Look Deeper Marketing.

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3. Place in the Marketing Mix

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Want a thriving small business? Look out for the Santa fail

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outsourcing your marketing strategy and marketing planninG

DO YOU THINK YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS Help with your MARKETING PLANning? CAll US on M: 0420 300 110 to find out moreSHARE THIS BLOG IF YOU THINK IT MAY HELP A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER.

About Leanne Di Fazio

11 last minute Must Do Marketing Ideas for Small Business

Must do Christmas Marketing Planning Ideas

1. Decorate your marketing planning

DO YOU THINK YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS Help with your MARKETING PLANning?

CAll US on M: 0420 300 110 to find out more

SHARE THIS BLOG IF YOU THINK IT MAY HELP A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER.

DO YOU THINK YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS Help with your MARKETING PLANning?

CAll US on M: 0420 300 110 to find out more

SHARE THIS BLOG IF YOU THINK IT MAY HELP A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER.