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Competitive SME – Building Competitive Advantage Through Marketing Excellence for Small to Medium Sized Enterprises

Autor David James Hood
en 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

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.