Marketing Diagnostic

An overview of our Marketing Diagnostic that we conduct as a necessary first step for clients:

Gives deep insight into your current brand positioning, marketing and competitive strengths and weaknesses.

Creates a roadmap to improved customer and prospect marketing.

In this diagnostic process we dive deep into a: 

  • Client’s business
  • Culture
  • Products/services
  • Customer base
  • Competitive set
  • Revenue growth and 
  • Sales goals.  

To do this we conduct in-depth discussions with 

  • Client principals/management
  • Other representative employees at all levels
  • Selected customers and prospects, and 
  • Relevant outside experts in the specific category. 

The focus of this intensive review is understanding and insight into both strategic and tactical issues. 

Strategic issues 

  • What kind of brand are you? 
    • Leader 
    • Challenger 
    • Other 
  • What is your brand’s positioning, and how is it different from your competitors? 
  • Specifically, how many of the following factors will your products/services impact: 
    • The “standards” – delivery, selection and breadth of offerings, price, return policy
    • Use of technology to make interaction easier for customers
    • Essential value delivery
    • Providing extra value through creativity and “disruptive” actions
    • Cost reduction 
    • Variation reduction 
    • Interaction with vendors – where are products made, how are they shipped etc.
  • Where do you want your brand to be two years from now? 
    • Metrics 
      • Awareness; perception; reputation 
      • Customer acquisition and loyalty 
      • Market share; revenue; profit 

Tactical issues

  • What are your most pressing marketing, sales, advertising issues today? 
  • Most pressing manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, delivery/shipping issues?
  • What are the sales propositions for your products/services that you sell? 
  • What are you doing now to: 
    • Establish the superiority of your brand and its offerings? 
    • Attract and drive customers to your products/services (part of this is to clearly define the customer prospect)?

Recommendations 

Our recommendations include a diagnosis of your brand strategy and product sales propositions’ strengths and weaknesses, and prescriptive measures, which will serve as a map: 

  1. Develop a formal Brand Objective statement, Brand Footprint and Product Sales Propositions, and provide direction on how to compete as a Leader, Challenger or “Other” brand; this is all meant to provide focus, discipline and consistency to your marketing.
  2. Provide perspective and prescription on your internal marketing, sales, advertising and promotion activities.
  3. Perspective on your competitive posture, and how your key customers see you (external factors).
  4. Provide insight into the comparative value that you bring to market based on the quality of your products and how you price them.
  5. We provide a bullet-point summary of our assessment and recommendations, and on-going consultation (typically via phone) for up to three months after the engagement.