Mapping Out Your Marketing Objectives – Part 10 of the 2009 Marketing Plan Series
March 31, 2009 :: Steve FisherOK. You are half done the marketing plan and while you might scream “only half!” at the top of your lungs, you have suffered through the tough part – the analysis. You have spent time building the case that your products/services are competitive, viable and profitable. Now that you have proved that point you have [...]
Doing the SWOT Analysis Dance – Part 9 of the 2009 Marketing Plan Series
March 27, 2009 :: Steve FisherConcluding our dive into the sub-sections of the situational analysis, we wrap up with the all important SWOT analysis. It is a dance of sorts because you have to dance around the fact that in some ways your competitors might have over you but it is better that you learn this now and how to [...]
How Do You Make Financials Sing? – Part 8 of the 2009 Marketing Plan Series
March 27, 2009 :: Steve FisherYou can’t have a product discussion and not include financial for the number geeks in all of us. We will dive into our “Marketing Plan Financials in Plan English” toward the end of the series but many will need to connect some financial dots in the situational analysis at a high level leaving the detailed [...]
The Impact of Technology, Economy and Socio-Politics – Part 7 of the 2009 Marketing Plan Series
March 26, 2009 :: Steve FisherAs we continue our Marketing Plan Series and keep working our way through the Situational Analysis we make a pit stop to talk about the macro-level environments that impact your marketing and your competition. This part of the Situational Analysis is usually called “Environmental Problems and Opportunities” and is about 1-2 pages in length.
This could [...]
Understanding and Beating the Competition – Part 6 of the 2009 Marketing Plan Series
March 25, 2009 :: Steve FisherThis is the second part of the situational analysis which deals with the competition and appropriately called “Competitor Analysis”. I mentioned in Part 5 that the Situational Analysis is probably one of the hardest sections you will write and this section validates that statement. You believe your product/service is the best on the market but [...]
Understanding Your Market – Part 5 of the 2009 Marketing Plan Series
March 24, 2009 :: Steve FisherThe Situational Analysis is designed to take a snapshot of where things stand at the time the plan is presented. The Situational Analysis is probably one of the hardest sections you will write because you are essentially laying out how the product will function in various environments and how it will be perceived in the [...]
SXSW Entrepreneurs: Jeremy Wright of B5 Media
March 23, 2009 :: Steve FisherJeremy Wright is a entrepreneur that understands the power of flexibility and that in order to be a successful entrepreneur you need to be willing to modify and sometimes overhaul your business model to succeed.
I used to write for B5 Media a few years ago for about three months at their entrepreneurship blog, Startup Spark, [...]
SXSW Entrepreneurs: Alex Hillman of Indy Hall
March 16, 2009 :: Steve FisherOn Saturday at SXSW (South By Southwest) I had the opportunity to attend the Core Conversation on Coworking given by Alex Hillman.
For those who don’t know Alex, his blog is Dangerously Awesome and his Philadelphia-based coworking space, Independents Hall or Indy Hall, was one of the first to formalize the coworking space.
The core conversation was [...]
Writing a Winning Business Card
March 11, 2009 :: Steve FisherAs many of you know, I seem to have taken on this mission of trying to be the “Dr. Phil” of Business Cards. Some people need it told to them straight, some need to be saved from themselves and some people, well you just can’t save.
Recently, I wrote the post “Don’t Get Your Business Card [...]
Killer Marketing Plan Summaries – Part 4 of the 2009 Marketing Plan Series
March 10, 2009 :: Steve FisherEveryone who begins the journey of writing a marketing plan usually looks at the Executive Summary section early on in the process. A Marketing Plan Summary is usually 1-3 pages long and the goal is to summarize the entire marketing and possibly sales plan into something digestible by new readers and those in other departments [...]
