Successful marketing, whether for a single product or an entire company, requires careful planning.  But how much planning is appropriate?

Some managers spend so much time developing their plans that they lose valuable time.  They may miss their window of opportunity, completely forfeiting market position to competitors.  Others rush to market with poorly conceived or positioned products and services, and missing their market, they fail.

They key to success is to tailor your plan to the situation.  MarketPoint adds structure and discipline to clients’ marketing efforts, without stifling momentum.  We help clients quickly assess their situation, analyzing internal and external factors that will affect success, on both macro-environmental and micro-environmental levels. 

We choose analytical frameworks appropriate to each client’s situation, including In 1979, Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter identified five forces that determine the competitive intensity (and therefore profit potential) of any market. Porter’s five focus areas included: the Company (products, image, technology and experience, culture, goals), its Customers (market size, market segments, customer benefits, customer motivations, consumer information sources, buying process and frequency, likely quantity and repeat purchases, trend analysis), its Competitors (actual and potential, direct and indirect, products, positions, market shares, strengths and weaknesses), Collaborators (distributors, suppliers, allies), and macro-environmental Climate (also called the Context in which the business operates). 5 Cs analysis pairs well with SWOT analysis.5Cs Analysis (company, customers, competitors, collaborators and climate), PEST analysis provides a macro-environmental perspective on the organization by considering the four major forces at play in the larger marketplace. These include Political forces (political stability, contract issues, trade regulations, tax issues, labor and safety regulations, environmental impact), Economic forces (economic operating system, currency issues, skills and stability of workforce, inflation and interest rates), Societal forces (demographics, education, class structure, entrepreneurialism, attitude, leisure issues) and Technological forces (recent and future technological developments, impacts on cost and value, rates of technological adoption and technological diffusion). PEST analysis enables a deep-dive into the Context issues addressed in 5 Cs analysis.PEST Analysis (political, economic, societal, and technological), SWOT analysis provides a simple framework for exploring the internal and external issues affecting an organization. Internal areas are considered in terms of Strengths and Weaknesses, and include culture, image, structure, key staff, access to resources, experience, efficiency, capacity, brand awareness, market share, financial resources, intellectual property. External issues include Opportunities and Threats, and include customers, competitors, market trends, suppliers, partners, social issues, technology, economic environment, political and regulatory environment. SWOT analysis pairs well with 5 Cs analysis.SWOT Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and Daniel Esty (Yale professor and former EPA official) and Andrew Winston (ecological strategist and former Boston Consulting Group consultant) developed the AUDIO framework for understanding the potential impact of specific ecological issues on an organization. Esty and Winston encourage organizations to consider, with respect to each environmental issue, the Aspects of an organization involved in the e-issue, the organization’s Upstream connections to the e-issue (inherent in the organization’s supply chain), the Downstream connections to the e-issue (how the organization’s products and byproducts impact the issue) and the Issues that could result for the organization because of the e-issue.AUDIO Analysis (aspects, upstream, downstream, issues and opportunities).

We develop marketing strategies, defining potential, addressable, and target markets.  We encourage clients to target market segments that are differentiable, substantial, accessible, and durable.  And we favor targets with an appropriate mix of selecton criteria, including size, growth rate, competition, buyer loyalty, share availability, break even cost, revenue potential, profit potential.

We develop marketing plans and tactics based on the classic E. Jerome McCarthy developed the 4 Ps model as a taxonomy for exploring and understanding the many “marketing mix” issues originally identified by Neil H. Borden in the 1960s. McCarthy’s 4 Ps model is particularly useful in marketing products and services (and potentially less useful for marketing an entire organization). The four Ps refer to: Product (brand name, function and performance, styling, quality and safety, packaging, service maintenance, and warranty); Pricing (retail price, promotional pricing, pricing strategy, discounting, and flexibility); Placement (distribution channels, market coverage, inventory management, order processing, and logistics); and Promotion (push and pull strategies, advertising and collateral communication, public relations, and selling).

Many authors have attempted to modify the 4 Ps model, by adding a fifth P (such as people or process), or by changing the designating letter (Cost instead of “price”, Convenience instead of “place”, Communication instead of “promotion”, Customer Value instead of “product”, and adding Community, which is coincidentally interchangeable with “partners”). These changes may be helpful in aligning the focus of your analysis to your organization’s specific challenges. But in the end, all such models are merely variations on Borden’s marketing mix and McCarthy’s 4 Ps model.4 Ps model (product decisions, pricing decisions, placement decisions and promotional decisions), and we advocate continual improvement and adaptation in response to market adoption.

Our work is marked with a bias towards action and results.  We maintain close contact with clients through implementation, providing quarterly reviews to ensure all involved parties are performing according to plan and that plans are updated as conditions or markets change.