Services

Marketing Services

If your firm is a market driven firm (if it is not, then it is in very deep trouble in the new millennium), then a formal marketing plan is a tool by which to steer your firm. A marketing plan should be an evolving plan, it's analogous to a financial budget projection - you must change it in light of actual operations. Our system allows your plan to be a living plan that evolves as your business does.

A good marketing plan will have as its basis some type of formalized review of the market, competition, and your firms resources. Please refer to our program - SWOT Analysis - for one method which we have found to be beneficial as a basis for marketing plan development.

Marketing plans often have elements already developed that must be made a part of a small to medium sized businesses' marketing plan. If your product is your service skills or if you only have one product (which is never a very good circumstance to be in) then of course some of the decisions have already been made for you. However we have found that product, pricing, promotion, advertising, distribution, competition, and other factors rarely are one dimensional. That is why we offer the mix of marketing services, some firms may only need mentoring/coaching in one area, so for cost effectiveness MM offers different levels of services. What stage your business is in also determines which services would benefit you with the greatest impact on ROI (Return On Investment).

Issues addressed by our services  include Developing The Marketing Strategy, Operational Implementation, Human Elements of Implementation, Financial Assessment Process, Evaluating and Controlling Marketing Activities, and Reviews of Electronic and Traditional Commerce Channels.

Advertising and Promotions

MM can provide services on a project by project basis or long term in any of these critical marketing functions. How to manage and evaluate the expenditures that fund the advertising, sales, and promotions functions needed to achieve the goals and objectives of the marketing plan is a subject that is often treated as a trade secret by the practitioners. Large firms may have staff devoted to this particular function, yet small to medium sized businesses often do not. MM is the solution for businesses who want to have either expert guidance or out source either all or part of the marketing function. We are also the "quick fix" for problems that require immediate attention or a stop gap solution until you find a replacement for staff.

MM has the experience to look at your resources, evaluate your competitive position, and develop sales programs, advertising, promotions, and results analysis. Any dollar that is spent in your business in these areas should be evaluated for its impact on your ROI (Return On Investment). MM understands that a single ad for a business needs to achieve goals, ads that don't have goals can't help the firm achieve its objectives.

From simple print ads to infomercials to catalogs to web sites, MM has created advertising that works. This means building franchise and driving sales. MM is the professional source to manage your advertising programs. MM focuses on the big picture – the objectives and goals of your firm and then focuses the advertising program to achieve these goals. MM is ready to provide support at all levels in the advertising chain, We can take your needs and translate them into a program that is cost effective and drives both brand and sales. If you need support in any area of advertising, MM has both the expertise and resources to get the job done for you.

Sales Management

Do you have a sales person (of course you do even if it is you!). Do you have a sales program that provides results and develops an information base that you can use to further develop the relationship between you and your customers? Do you belong to organizations that can bring you in more business? Do you have a web site that sales your brand and business 24/7? Do you keep it fresh and updated? Do you have a management program that includes compensation incentives for your staff? Do you know how to sell to the one that sells to the many? Do you write Proposals, respond to RFPs, or competitive bid? Do you know the Life Time Value of your customers? These are just a few of the sales elements that MM can offer support in for your business.
 
Do you know what separates a promotion from your normal sells efforts? Do you know the difference between price competition and promotion? Do you know how long a promotion should run? Do you know the different types of promotions that can be developed for your products/services? Is direct mail dead? Can you promote on the Internet? What is the best way to track a specific promotion? Can a promotion build franchise as well as sell product/services? How often and long should a promotion be used? Promotions are a competitive tool that have to be used properly to be effective. MM has the experience to help you create and use promotions effectively.
MM offers a broad ranges of Sales Services ranging from RFP writing to Sales Force Management. Do you have a sales force that needs help in understanding the sales function? Are you satisfied that you know who the producers are? Are you compensation packages tied in to productivity? Are you capturing all of the field intelligence that your sales forces knows? Are you winning your competitive bids? Can your staff produce a response to a RFP that represents the expertise of your firm? Is your sales force trained in the areas they need to be effective? If you a professional or the sole worker in your firm, do you understand the sales function? Do you have plan that maximizes the number of clients seen by you? Are comfortable with today's technology? MM can supply sales support for projects or on a long term basis.

MM has experience in all of these areas. We can help maximize your sales results by helping you create systems that work with equipment and software you all ready have. We can perform sales functions for you and/or mentor you or you staff while we do. In sales it is not what you expect but what you inspect that counts.

Sales is a time consuming, critical function that needs consistent attention for best performance. Are you experiencing high turnover in your sales department? Or is your one sales person controlling your business? We can evaluate and suggest changes that are based on a fair analysis. In some firms personalities often develop dynamics that make such changes very confrontational or impossible. MM can solve your sales issues.

Our sales service programs are focused in five areas:
Direction of Sales Operations 
Sales Planning 
Evaluating Sales Performance 
Selling Processes
Outside Sales Representation 
Proposal Writing 
Customer Relationship Management 
While we provide each of these categories as services that we can perform/manage, we also provide training programs in these areas which is especially appropriate for small business owners who would like to improve their knowledge and skills in these areas.
The cost of sales is higher than ever before, for those who can time manage, leverage computer skills, and understand Customer Relationship Management the rewards will find their sales efforts effective and profitable. MM can train either staff or a small business owner how to employ and maximize these skills or if you prefer we can perform the process for you.
MM's experience allows them to mentor sales staff and perform the sales functions. Sales programs managed include commission staff, outside sales, inside sales, online sales, competitive bid, and government contracting. Large dollar, complex bids are a specialty. If you need sales support, MM will provide a cost effective solution to fulfill your needs.

Strategic Marketing Plan Service

Do you find that you are not doing what you want/need to do?
Do you often think, Not Enough Hours In A Day?
Are the Marketing Functions something you are not comfortable or familiar with?
Need help but can't afford full time help?
Don’t know if all of those Marketing dollars are being spent wisely or generating ROI
Just starting your business and need a business plan?
Business slowed ?
Want to understand your business better?
Marketing as a paradigm is based on the evaluation of a product/service's benefits that satisfy customer needs. Firms exists solely for this function. Marketing is more than an academic discipline, it is more than sales, more than public relations, and more than advertising. Marketing is the paradigm that directs the applications of all of the firms resources to present to the customer how the firm's products/services meet the customer's needs and then fulfill the customer's purchase decision. Marketing is the key behind successful business. You can build the better mouse trap, but unless the customer knows its benefits and then how to purchase the product they won't beat a path to your door.
If you want to understand your firm's position in the market, then there is no substitute for a strategic marketing plan (SMP). A SMP covers all aspects of a marketing driven firms business, from Finance to Operations, with each element being analyzed in regard to how well it facilitates delivery of the goods and services of a firm to the customers and how those goods and services fulfill the needs of the target market.
This product requires a significant commitment of time by both MM and You. For the document should become a living document that evolves over time as conditions in the business environment change. The most compelling reason for doing a Strategic Marketing Plan is bright to light factors that are not readily apparent due to complexity or just not being on the radar. It is a thinking exercise that results in knowing our business to its very core. A strategic marketing plan includes all of the products but the marketing training that we offer.
One of the key benefits in doing a SMP is that if you are just starting your business not only will you understand your potential business in depth, but it will also be a check on your gut feeling about why the business should succeed.

For medium sized business this is a chance to review your marketing program and insure that you are seeing ROI on all aspects of your marketing. Such a review will have the potential to reduce costs as well as change your marketing mix. Since it is an outside review it can also be the basis for change without internal staff making the changes, often an important element when significant changes are required.

Competitive Analysis

The initial step in performing a case analysis is to develop a comprehensive situation analysis. A situation analysis consists of seven investigative and analytical steps.
Assessment of the market needs for the product
Assessment of the market demand for the product 
Assessment of the nature of the market competition 
Assessment of the external environment 
Assessment of the internal environment 
 Assessment of the product life cycle stage 
Once the comprehensive situation analysis has been preformed then one is in position to analyze the problems and opportunities that have been identified.
  The identification of problems and opportunities will then be summarized and evaluated utilizing either quantitative or qualitative methodology referenced in the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) framework.
Since we will be focusing on developing your competitive analysis, we will only say at this point that analysis often highlights relationships that are contra-intuitive and often can only be discovered by data evaluation.
  We perform these Analysis so you fully understand the value of the methods that we use to enhance the performance of your firm.
  We do not just restate the facts of your situation, We develop an integrated view of your firms competitive position.
If a fact is a significant element in your analysis then it is reasonable to restate it, however we will explain why it is important and what is its impact on the performance of your firm.
 Rationality is Key to Assumptions 
  While we will attempt to give you as much information  as we can to support our positions, it is our experiences in the field that are the strongest factors in our recommendations.
  Correlation and Causation, Symptoms and Disease
  Cognitive recognition of cause and effect is a skill that must be developed. One major strength of case study analysis is that it will cause you to become cognizant of causation and able to distinguish between the Symptoms and the Disease. This is where statistical analysis can often lead business people astray: Correlation indicates only a relationship in the values of two items, it is the human intellect that finds and defines the underlying significance of such numeric relationships. This is where most firms fail in their analysis. You must have significant experience to identify which relationships are critical to yours firms performance and those that are merely academic in nature.
  Understand the Concept of Opportunity and how it impacts a firms performance.
  Opportunities exist outside of the existence of the firm/organization. If the firm goes away, but the condition or situation remains, then that is an opportunity. These are the areas of the most promise and risk for firms.
 Review Objectives Critically
Stated objectives can often tell a manager about the management philosophy of the firm and about the current marketing strategies being utilized by the firm. It is important to identify the true goals of your firm, for they will often determine the allocation of resources to reach specific objectives.
State Several Alternative Action Plans with the pros and cons of each plan.
  This will demonstrate that we have researched and developed an action plan based on careful evaluation of alternative plans. In reality this facilitates the development of causation recognition. The analysis of alternative plans will make you know why the plan works. It is the "Why" that is the goal of our business evaluation..
We Will Present our Final Analysis in a clear and concise manner.

Product Management

Product Management is generally reserved for very large companies. However many of the tools and techniques used by product managers can and should be used by small and medium sized business when dealing with unique products and services. Elements like Pricing Decisions, Promotion Decisions, Distribution System ,Value-Added Chain Management, and Category Attractiveness Analysis are just a few tools that can help your price and compete with your products and services.

These techniques are especially appropriate if you happen to have only one key product or service. Product Management is unique in that the focus of a specific product is narrow and requires very specific knowledge about the benefits of the product/service and how it relates to specific competitors.

MM has the skill and experience to quickly assess these factors and develop a marketing strategy. Too often products are priced solely on price without a strong competitive analysis or specific goals or objectives set by using specific tools. Product management has less room for error because the single product is the key to success of the business. Diversified product lines allow the risk of failure to be spread out, single product based business are required to have greater information and oversight.

If you are a single product business, MM has the skill and expertise to help you develop a program to manage the life cycle of your product in the most profitable way. MM has experience with international and national product management.

Promotion Management

When you have a need for a promotional campaign, MM can produce manage, develop and measure its effectiveness. Our programs develop a usable promotional campaign that is centered on cost effectiveness and sales impact. Selection of promotion concepts, price points or discounts, and product mix are essential to the development of a successful promotion plan.

We use our knowledge and experience to determine promotional opportunity, set promotional objectives, organize the promotion, select a proper target market, develop and create the message, selective the promotional mix to meet your goals, and determine the budget (notice that this comes almost last), implement your program, and finally, measure the results.

In order to be cost effective, promotions must be viewed and developed with a close relationship to the advertising, sales, and public relation activities of the firm. We will show you a process which will allow you to evaluate your resources and make sure your expenditures have impact.

It is not only consumer goods that benefit by strong promotion management. Services and industrial items can also take advantage of the techniques and tools of promotion management. Today's competitive environment mandates that firms insure that they attract the attention of potential customers so that they can educate the consumer about how the can solve their needs.

MM Promotions management takes care to measure the effectiveness of your campaign and this is formation allows your advertising suppliers or in-house staff, your sales staff, and your marketing channels feedback so they can do a better job for you.

MM understands   the concepts of problem recognition, general need description, product specification, suppliers' search, proposal solicitation, supplier selection, order-routine specification, and performance review and how your promotional efforts may impact each stage.

We also teach you to develop international promotions. Key concepts will keep your firm from making some of the mistakes that large firms have made. Small to medium sized firms will be the bulk of internet business and as global markets emerge, they will be a significant portion of US import and export business. Develop your strategy for tomorrow today.