Should Marketing Matter To You?
We all know what sales is, but what is marketing, really? Marketing is a broad, challenging and often misunderstood function. To many, it’s a logo and brochures, television commercials or a website. But marketing is much more than these individual elements; it’s an investment that generates demand and drives sales, profits and growth.
“No management discipline is more important for the small manufacturer than marketing. Companies that are successful today have defined how to differentiate themselves and figured out how to bring what is different to the market in a more appealing, user-friendly way with superior customer service. It’s easy for a small manufacturer to get caught up in day-to-day operations and not devote enough time and energy to marketing. A company needs to market and brand itself. We urge the MEP centers to spend more time teaching small manufacturers how to market themselves.”
*Source: Interview with Albert A. Frink, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Manufacturing and Services, The Future Success of Small and Medium Manufacturers: Challenges and Policy Issues, by The Manufacturing Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers and RSM McGladrey, Inc., 2006
MARKETING:
SCMEP’s Marketing Top-Line Growth services help companies:
- Align goals and capabilities with market opportunities, and develop a roadmap outlining marketing strategies, tactics and activities
- Design a customized strategic approach to improve market penetration and increase customer diversification by boosting the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing and sales
- Improve sales capabilities, execution and accountability through monitoring, measuring and rewarding the effective performance of activities key to account development and management
- Create a positioning and branded identity and develop communications assets (website, brochures, etc.) that convey the company’s key marketing messages
- Take full advantage of online opportunities (website design/redesign, search engine marketing, e-mail, etc.) to inform, persuade and interact with target customers
STRATEGIC MARKETING RESEARCH AND PLANNING:
Strategic Marketing Research and Planning is developing 1) a vision of where you want to get to, and 2) a roadmap of how to get there. SCMEP assists you with the three key phases in the process of building the marketing strategy:
1. Assessment (Where are we now?) 2. Objectives (Where do we want to go?) 3. Strategies and Tactics (How do we get there?)
SCMEP’s marketing consultants help companies to better understand the key aspects of their business – the marketplace, competition and the key drivers that influence customer interest, purchase and loyalty – and that, if improved, will increase revenues and profits. They use these insights to assist in developing a marketing strategy that defines:
- Your overall value offering
- A differentiated positioning for you in the marketplace
- Messages that will resonate with customers
- Expectations for the customer's overall experience with your company
In situations where it is valuable to gather additional information about market trends and competitors for deeper insight, SCMEP provides the necessary marketing research resources. Developing a marketing strategy gives otehr important benefits:
- Aligning organizational resources with the performance of value-added responsibilities
- Establishing a clear, agreed upon direction
- Setting the foundation for all marketing and sales activities
- Shifting you from a reactive to a proactive mode
- Keeping you on track even while “putting out fires”
- Pre-empting the chaos that can arise from conflicting goals, uncertain priorities and personal agendas
MARKET DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
Sales
Lines between sales & mktg blurred in small companies
Marketing Communications
Your brand is the entire experience your prospects and customers have with your company. It’s what you stand for, a promise you make, and the personality you convey.
- The images you convey
- The messages you deliver on your website, proposals and sales materials
- The way your employees interact with customers
- A customer’s opinion of you versus your competition
It helps you stand out from your competition. It brings your competitive position and value proposition to life; it positions you in the mind of your prospects and customers. Your brand consistently and repeatedly tells your prospects and customers why they should buy from you.
GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING:
SCMEP assists in the development and implementation of global trade strategies. With customized solutions to help companies compete successfully in the global marketplace, we provide in-depth market research and competitive analysis to identify export opportunities for a company’s products or services. Whether you’re looking for new markets for an existing product, or you’re marketing an innovative new product, we help you with international business development efforts.
NEW PRODUCT INNOVATION:
SCMEP’s New Product Innovation Top-Line Growth services help companies:- Create and develop breakthrough ideas
- Measure ideas for market success potential
- Focus on developing winners instead of costly losers
- Dramatically reduce time to market
- Optimize customer value
The four New Product Innovation programs are profiled below along dimensions of company size and timeline to illustrate how, individually, they are positioned differently, but together, offer an approach for any type of project.
EUREKA! WINNING WAYS:
NIST MEP has aligned with the nation’s premier innovation expert to offer the first disciplined growth system adapted for the needs of small and mid-size manufacturers. Eureka! Winning Ways, available exclusively through SCMEP in South Carolina, helps smaller companies to ignite new ideas and take action to drive top-line growth.
Click here for more information on Eureka! Winning Ways.
NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT SERVICES:
If your company has limited or no product development resources, SCMEP stands ready to help engineer and launch your new product or service. Experienced project managers assemble support teams that provide idea filtering and feasibility analysis, continuing through to industrial and product design and initial product launch. We provide assistance with activities such as rapid prototyping, sourcing and procurement, testing and validation, packaging, and labeling.
LEAN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT:
For larger enterprises with internal product and market development capabilities, SCMEP offers Lean Product Development tools and techniques – many inspired by Toyota’s Lean Product Development Methodology - to maximize customer value, manage the idea portfolio, improve resource efficiency, and radically reduce time to market.
SYSTEMATIC INVENTIVE THINKING:
SCMEP offers larger organizations a method for developing sustainable innovation and driving meaningful change through its Systematic Inventive Thinking toolbox. The method is an evolution of the powerful TRIZ creation pattern methodology in a format that’s streamlined so it’s quicker and easier to learn and apply, more versatile, user focused, and market-oriented. As a result, it’s effective not just in new product development applications, but for improving strategic and marketing innovation as well.