What exactly is marketing and why is it important to you as an entrepreneur?

Simply stated, marketing is everything you do to place your product or service in the hands of potential custom.

"If a young man tells his date she's intelligent, looks lovely, and is a great conversationalist, he's saying the right things to the right person and that's marketing. If the young man tells his date how handsome, smart and successful he is — that's advertising. If someone else tells the young woman how handsome, smart and successful her date is — that's public relations."

S.H. Simmons

Friday, July 1, 2011

Strategic planning and BCG Matrix

Strategic planning is defined as:

“The process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organization’s goals and capabilities and its changing marketing opportunities.”



Mission Statement
  • Mission statement: The organization’s purpose, what it wants to accomplish in the larger environment
  • Market-oriented mission statement: Defines the business in terms of satisfying basic customer needs

Business Porfolio

The business portfolio is the collection of businesses and products that make up the company.

A strategic business unit (SBU) is a unit of the company that has a separate mission and objectives that can be planned separately from other company businesses.
  • Company division
  • Product line within a division
  • Single product or brand

BCG Matrix

Stars are high-growth, high-share businesses or products requiring heavy investment to finance rapid growth. They will eventually turn into cash cows.

Cash cows are low-growth, high-share businesses or products that are established and successful SBUs requiring less investment to maintain market share.

Question marks are low-share business units in high-growth markets requiring a lot of cash to hold their share.

Dogs are low-growth, low-share businesses and products that may generate enough cash to maintain themselves but do not promise to be large sources of cash.

Matrix approaches to formal planning share many problems:
  • Difficult, time-consuming, and costly to implement.
  • Focus only on current businesses.
  • Too strongly emphasize market share growth or growth via diversification.
  • Centralised

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