Marketing Plan: Assessing Self, Competition & Industry
Industry analysis provides sufficient knowledge of the local, national and international markets that affect marketing strategic decision making process. The industry evaluation often provides valuable insight into the competition and how to position products and services for any company.
Competition analysis can be done by various means. Newspapers, articles, websites, catalogs, interviews, etc. can provide many valuable insights into the competition. As a great warrior once said, keep your friends and family close, but your enemy closer. Entrepreneurs should never underestimate or discount the competition. It explains Google’s exponential rise. Both Microsoft and Yahoo heavily underestimated the power of their search program. Yahoo even gave up a chance to buy Google for a million dollars back in the late 1990s.
The marketing plan of any company should begin with a purpose or objective. Entrepreneurs should do a detailed study of the target consumer market demographics. Knowing the customer and customers need is extremely important for the success of any company. Research should also be done to find out how much the customers are willing to pay for any product, where they prefer to buy their services from, and how can the word about the product be delivered to them in a timely fashion.
Gathering information from primary sources is always important. If the consumers can be polled and if they are allowed to voice their opinions, it can be of great use. It can also mean sending a lot of spam to friends, family and their friends and family. Word of mouth can do wonders.
However, gathering information from primary sources is not always possible or easy. Secondary sources are also a great way to find information about the target market and consumers. A good example is to get the information on the competition and their products and services. Trade magazines, newspapers, etc. provide a great source.
After collecting all the information, it should be tabulated, interpreted and put to use. Data should be viewed in various forms. For example, segregating the information by different age groups, sex, geographic locations, etc. can help the company place its product better. Marketing is usually the major expense for any organization. It’s in the company’s best interest to target the consumers as accurately as possible.
In today’s world, data means everything. It’s the reason why a young, online company like Google is worth more than an old media giant like Time Warner. We live in a new economy.. Old is now not necessarily gold. It might be considered to be extra baggage. AOL considers Time Warner as excess baggage. Ebay bought Skype for a spectacular $4 billion – which is 4.5 times the worth what hard disk maker Seagate bought its competition Maxtor for. While Maxtor is a real revenue generating company, Skype’s revenue was hardly comparable. Skype was bought over for its user base which is nearing 24 million.
The IT industry is now considered to be mature (or is it?). No matter what the case, we should expect great things from it, at least I am!