Competitive SME – Building Competitive Advantage Through Marketing Excellence for Small to Medium Sized Enterprises
Autor David James Hooden Limba Engleză Paperback – 3 feb 2013
The majority of the challenges to small- and medium-sized enterprises (or SMBs in the US) relate directly to marketing and the lack of the SMBs means to do it. However, despite not having the resources of a big corporation, SMBs can still out perform larger organizations when it comes to marketing.
Hood outlines how small- and medium-sized businesses can harness and exploit their competitiveness, agility, performance and resilience to effectively increase their growth. Competitive SME explains how to create and manage simple yet effective marketing and branding processes, better engage with markets while maximizing limited marketing resources, adopt a brand new approach to what it provides, use word of mouth marketing effectively, and change to the "currency of the customer."
Including tips on decision-making, investments and marketing on a budget, Competitive SME is a practical guide to understanding SMBs advantages and to staying viable in a competitive marketplace.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780749468507
ISBN-10: 0749468505
Pagini: 232
Ilustrații: black & white illustrations, black & white tables, diagrams, figures
Dimensiuni: 155 x 235 x 12 mm
Greutate: 0.36 kg
Editura: Kogan Page
ISBN-10: 0749468505
Pagini: 232
Ilustrații: black & white illustrations, black & white tables, diagrams, figures
Dimensiuni: 155 x 235 x 12 mm
Greutate: 0.36 kg
Editura: Kogan Page
Cuprins
List of figures
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Foreword
01 Introduction
Why you should read this book
How to use this book and what you will get from it
A straightforward seven-stage path to competitiveness through enhanced marketing
Practical book and tools
Clear defi nitions and direction for the SME
Why should I care about marketing? I want to know more about being exceptionally competitive!
Marketing: what it is; and just as important, what it is not
A short and essential history
Using the book in conjunction with the futureSME initiative
02 The reality: addressing stress for the SME owner, manager or executive
Achieving a sound sleep at night...
The reality for SMEs and turning things to your advantage
Reducing personal stress
Changing ‘cannot’ to ‘can’
03 Competitiveness and the SME: we want it; but how do we get it?
Forget ‘Pareto’s principle’?
What are competitiveness and creativity, in terms of their use to me?
What SMEs think about competitiveness
What marketing does for SME competitiveness
FutureSME and marketing
OK, so where do we start? – using the tools in this book
The marketing mix
The marketing audit
Quick marketing audit
Note
04 Increasing your confidence: leveraging what you have
Affordability
The power of ‘FREE’
Communicate, communicate, communicate
Piggyback
‘I just don’t have anything to say’
So what makes a great story?
How you can actually use feedback to be a major differentiator
05 Maximizing SME management: making better decisions: investments and predictions
What is ‘success’ in managing an SME?
Knowing your direction, goals and objectives
Making decisions that matter
Strategy
Creating new markets
Self-creating markets and the new reality
Social media communities
Strategy and measurements for decision-making
Cost-plus and cost-accounting are the enemy of the SME
Purpose
Decision-making and improving judgement
Growth v growth
Do not neglect marketing when concentrating on sales!
Customer relationship management (CRM)
Incoming or ‘in-bound’ conversations
06 Your unique selling proposition: agility, the ‘adaptive organization’, profit and revenue improvement
Advantage and ‘the product’
Resourcing to create advantage
SWOT analysis
It is a knowledge economy now!
07 Real market presence: marketing on a budget; branding, positioning and the SME
Power and your market
Assessing your market: marketing and market research
Market/marketing research template
Sources of information
The ‘value proposition’
The total product concept
Looking at your proposition from the OUTSIDE IN
The value matrix
Notes on using the value matrix
Statements and ‘stories’ supporting the value proposition
Testing the ‘force’ of the proposition
Steps to checking your value proposition
‘Branding’ and ‘imagineering’
What can branding do for me?
SME branding: perceptions, positioning and segmentation
Getting branding right
Important evolution of modern segmentation
Perceptual maps
A simple brand management cycle template
Social networking and ‘the new reverse customer convergence and segmentation’
Managing the ‘social’ media: engagement
08 What do we really need to do? Planning to win
Investment in sales and marketing capabilities
Marketing plan and planning: it is not just writing a document for the shelf in your office
When writing your marketing plan
Components of a great marketing plan
Positioning and perceptual maps
The core challenge and conflict for your customer
Developing your proposition and propelling it into the market
Results
Action plan and schedule
09 Grasping the opportunity 1 (MARKETING): ‘changing the currency’
What is the primary pain for your customer?
Moving to a ‘change in currency’
‘Moving from margin myopia’
10 Grasping the opportunity 2 (SALES): ‘changing to managing the INCOME (revenue) PIPELINE’
Reconstructing the sale
Move from anticipating loosely-predicted targets based on sales
transactions to focusing on ‘a crafted pull from the market’
Changing sales targeting and management
Changing the way we look at sales
Improve post-sale service to existing customers
Stop thinking about sales as ‘units of delivery’ or transactions
11 Quick wins (rather than quick fixes)
Change 1: What you think of marketing and its role as the means to competitiveness
Change 2: Sensing your market
Change 3: Less of an obsession with our competition
Change 4: Review what success means and our strategy to achieve it
Always ask for testimonials
Cautioning about ‘quick fixes’...
Tackling your immediate concerns and improving now
12 Optimizing your proposition and making more money: bringing it all together!
A cyclical planning process for the SME
The competitive marketing triangle
Using the competitive marketing triangle as the strategic dashboard for your organization
Proposal development
Improving communication
Lastly, and most importantly – how to measure word of mouth and optimize it
The whole futureSME competitive marketing process
Appendices
Index
Notă biografică
David Hood specializes in marketing strategy and enhanced competitiveness at Aqua Energy Scotland Ltd. A professional member the Global Marketing Network, he was previously CEO of the marketing communications and digital strategies company Marketing Sans Frontières and former chair of the Chartered Institute of Marketing's Technology group. He was an early innovator in modern digital and technology led marketing and is a Guest Lecturer at the University of Glasgow.