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Nigeria Versus Tunisia Controversial AFCON Third Place Match

2019-07-17T15:06:00.001+03:00

HOW TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS IN THIS GLOBAL ECONOMY BY ADAPTING THE MARKETING ORIENTATION PHILOSOPHY - PART TWO

2017-01-07T13:45:00.000+03:00

This part of the TWO of the article named above, the first part was on Defining the Marketing Philosophy Concept, click to read if you missed it.

UNDERSTANDING THE MARKETING ORIENTED BUSINESS

To structure the business in order to embrace the marketing orientation philosophy one requires understanding of the marketing process and how the different cogs of this wheel relate to each other. For simplicity I have detailed below the functions of the marketing process in this philosophy and these are:

Constantly researching on consumers’ needs as this will enable the business to identify and understand the needs, then segment the needs and fit with different type of consumers and this eventually will lead to innovative products that will cater for any unmet needs. Therefore the task of collecting and analyzing information is part of the marketing orientation philosophy.

Once the consumer is understood and products ideas conceived, the philosophy helps in creating and assembling products that meet the needs of the market; customers.

The other elements of the marketing orientation philosophy includes transporting, storing, processing, grading and standardizing, promoting and selling the products and services.

The above process of the marketing orientation process mean one thing, that this philosophy is responsible for taking the business risks and hence you as the owner or entrepreneur should head it, no one is more qualified that you and no other person has the political will to do what it takes to lead this most vital business philosophy.

I will be right to say that this philosophy is the heart of the entire business, it’s the core of the business and no business can survive without it. A business can outsource its accounting process, its IT, its office administration, just name it, but it can never outsource marketing orientation. The cogs on the marketing orientation wheel i.e. sales or promotion can also be outsourced but ensure that the philosophy is not distorted in the process.

I would like us to take a step back and look at the entire marketing orientation and when we do that you realize that it’s not only a managerial but a social philosophy as well and that is involves consumer understanding in order to build a lasting relationship with the business source of income and profits.

A business that has a marketing orientation philosophy therefore meets its consumers’ or of if you like it customers’ needs in a superior manner, thus beating its rivals arms down. This marketing orientation philosophy will help your business create and execute its business model, read more about business model in this article.

Everything in a successful business starts in the marketing department and ends in the marketing department and all the other departments actually are support elements to the core; marketing. I know this changes you’re thinking radically, but marketing is all about the start of the entire business process, executing the ideas, concluding any exchange with the customers satisfactorily and all this at a favorable and acceptable price.

It’s the marketing process that allows flow of the goods and services from conceptualization, designing, production, transportation, warehousing, promotion and selling.

Hence my question, if this is what marketing is all about, then who should head and lead this vital business function? It should be led by the person who believe it the most; the entrepreneur.

In summary, marketing orientation philosophy is all about:

1. Studying, understanding and analyzing the market needs and wants (Marketing research)

2. Using the gathered insights to selects (segments) specific markets (target) and creating fitting products which are either tangible goods or services (Innovation)

3. Creating and executing the most efficient route to market plan that is efficient and caters for the selected target market (Strategic planning)

4. Keeping the promise by ensuring that the products remain true to the customers’ needs and offers value at the right price (Branding)

In conclusion, marketing orientation philosophy is the business core and one must ensure that this vital way of life is the business philosophy of serving and meeting the customers’ needs satisfactory in a superior manner to ensure that the business remain true and manages a profitable customer base through mutual relationship based on a superior offer.

HOW TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS IN THIS GLOBAL ECONOMY BY ADAPTING THE MARKETING ORIENTATION PHILOSOPHY - PART ONE

2017-01-07T13:36:00.000+03:00

This article has been divided into two with this part ONE is about Defining the Marketing Philosophy Concept while part TWO is about Understanding the Marketing Oriented Business

WHAT IS THIS MARKETING PHILOSOPHY CONCEPT

Being an entrepreneur is the greatest thing in the world, one has to design the way of life and if the choices made are not right, the consequences are like a death sentence, while if you succeed the profits enjoyed greatly improves your way of life. Succeeding as an entrepreneur in not that easy either, because the business environment is constantly changing and in these days of internet, social networks and selfies, nothing is same every day.

The whole business world is like it’s in the fastest lane along a highway that one is never even sure where it’s heading. These are truly the times we can say we are facing uncertainty each day we are alive, whether asleep or awake. But how do you keep tab to all these changes so that your business can stand tall and take advantage of this ever changing world? The key to this is a philosophy known as marketing orientation. A marketing orientation philosophy is not that new, it has been the core of all the successful business since the 70s, well it has undergone tremendous evolution but the core has remained the same and this is not about to change.

But wait a minute, what is this marketing orientation? To get a picture of what we are talking about, we first need to understand what marketing is.

For you to take advantage and ensure your business thrives especially in this information age when your customers have choices and can access the information of both your business offers and those of your competitors, you will need to embrace the concept of marketing. Many times when the term marketing is mentioned, sales comes to mind, but from today hence forth just remember the two terms are not synonymous.

Allow me to draw the line here. Sales is a very small element in the entire marketing process. Think of marketing as a huge wheel with so many cogs of which sales in one of those cogs. Marketing on the other hand is the process of understanding the needs of the customers, analyzing these needs and then creating ideas, planning, executing those ideas and converting them to products or services that meet the needs of your customers.

Therefore, marketing determines the created products and services pricing, distribution and promotion, in what is commonly known as route to market or the value chain. For one to succeed in business, one need to starting thinking of marketing as a philosophy known as marketing orientation that I have just described above.

The whole reason or the objective of the marketing orientation is to meet consumers’ needs by exchanging the business products or services while making money and keeping the customers completely satisfied. What this means is that marketing as process is not a one off thing in any business or enterprise, neither is it a functions of a business department, BUT it’s the only way that any business in this world can make money in these ever changing times. Therefore any business that needs to grow and thrive must embrace the marketing orientation philosophy. This calls for change of paradigm shift towards a marketing orientation philosophy.

To successfully benefit from a this Marketing orientation philosophy, then you will need to structure the business in a certain way, read part two of this article on Understanding the Marketing Oriented Business

FIVE THINGS YOU MUST DO TO ENSURE YOUR BUSINESS SURVIVAL IN TODAYS INTERNET ENVIRONMENT

2017-01-05T19:48:00.000+03:00

I have started relooking at my business books as well as articles and today I would like to share with you a very interesting business topic based on Michael Porter’s book “The Competitive Advantage”; this is the Bible of Business Strategy just in case you have never read or heard about it. It’s quite a big book, so it requires time to read and internalize. But let me stop boring you with academics because we are here to ensure our business survives these harsh realities of the knowledge economy, besides making us lots of money. Remember Troy the movie, “We are here because we want our names to survive through the ages” and I believe that is why you started the business isn’t it? If not then you may find this post boring.

In his book; “The Competitive Advantage”, Michael Porter talks about the Five Forces. These five forces are Barriers to entry, Business Rivalry, Buyers Power, Suppliers Power and Threat of Substitutes. In this post I will not break these five forces down but I want to put you into perspective of what your business faces because the above five forces determines the business success or failure. This post is not a list of suggestions, but what you must do to make it through and make tones of money in the process.

For any business to thrive and do what it was designed to do; that is make loads of money for the owners and probably put your name in Forbes List of the Most Successful Personalities, then one need to understand the following five things:

You must conceive, create, execute and make others understand your Business Model

A business model is simply the method used by business to build its resources in order to offer its customers and other stakeholders including its owners, government and the community better value than its competitors. A business models therefore is an enabler to keep one ahead of the pack.

It is what keeps your business ahead of the game by offering something beyond what your rivals can. Simply put, a business model is the way a business plans and makes money not only in the short term but in the long term too. A business model is made up of a systematic way of arranging the resources, other business components and linking them together to offer a dynamic money and value making formula; actually it’s your business operating manual. You need it because without it you out of business and you are the only one who can make and apply it.

You must understand the Business Environment

Another element that one needs to understand in succeeding in any business is the environment that the business operates in. A business lives in an environment; your business is not in space or a vacuum. What this means is that the actions impacted on its environment affects the bottom-line and above all its very own survival. Just like a human being, your business survival is very important and that makes your competitors lifelong rivals.

I remember back in my school we read about Charles Darwin and his theory of survival for the fittest, call it business Darwinism or not but it is a reality and if you do not face it sooner or later you will face nature’s natural selection and this means your business will be a thing of the past. Because business lives in a competitive environment its success is based on its business model as we saw earlier.

For a business to succeed there is a need to first carry the SWOT Analysis which means that you must understand your business internal Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, for external environment scanning PEST Analysis is carried out, this is scanning the Political, Economic, Social, Technological factors that your business is operating in. Nowadays 2 other elements are added to the PEST Analysis, Environment and Legal, making it PESTEL Analysis. As you embark on SWOT and PESTEL Analysis please bear in mind that with the internet, the environment is the whole world. Besides you also need to assess your external environment through what is commonly known as PEST Analysis. SWOT is the internal scanning while PEST is the external scanning.

Besides the competition, there are other factors that a business must deal with strategically; these include the suppliers and the customers.

You must control and check your business suppliers’ power

Controlling the suppliers’ power is another very important element that eases your business survival. As a business you should make sure that you avoid having very powerful suppliers as they will force you to take substandard goods or services at high price. Your business needs many small and less powerful suppliers. The many, small, less powerful suppliers you have, the more power and control you retain. It may sound harsh, but it’s either you or them and it’s all about survival and self-preservation.

Powerful suppliers will change price now and then making it hard for you to survive in the today’s competitive business environment. Remember, the higher the price from the suppliers, the lower the profits for your business. Powerful suppliers will definitely push you out of business and one way many business avoid this trap is having many suppliers for a given product

You must control and check your business customers’ power

The reason why one puts up a business is serve the customers. We have been told that “Customer is King” which very right. The customer is the reason for your business, and without them you have no business to write home about. But when your customers are powerful, they will force the price down and ask for more value than the business can sustain.

Lower price translates to lower profit and this could kill your business if you are not careful. Powerful customers includes institutions i.e. governments, corporate etc. Diversify your customer portfolio to avoid few supper customers who do nothing but push you to the wall, always remember the saying “Customer is King”, please note and do not confuse that saying by thinking “Customer is the King”.

Accept, appreciate and drive change because this is inevitable

Back to Charles Darwin who said that survival for fittest calls for adaption to changing environment. For your business to remain competitive and survive, the business owner must take charge of change. You must drive change before others do that for you. When you fail to accept, adapt and drive change, you are forced to accept change from others and this is not pleasing at all. Change is an element that if ignored will lead your business to become extinct, just like the dinosaurs of yester years, they roamed the earth and were huge creatures but ice age drove them to extinction.

Take care of changes by understanding the trends, new way of doing things, living with the consumers at heart because this way you will understand their changing consumption patterns, their changing lifestyles etc. Understanding change is also important as it leads to new opportunities and diversification.

I would like your business to survive through the ages and I look forward to when our names will be echoed thousands of years from now “ Let them say I fought in the times Hector, let them say I fought in the times of Achilles” and I believe that above five rules will see that happen.

THE ROLE OF THE MARKETING PLAN

2011-04-10T13:07:00.000+03:00

For an entrepreneur to understand the process of creating a marketing plan, he or she must first understand the concept of marketing. The concept of marketing is commonly known as the marketing concept or the marketing orientation and has been one of the greatest drivers of business growth in the 20th and the 21st century.

The concept of marketing is the process of matching the consumers’ or customers’ needs with what your specific business offers. This way, the business makes the money and the consumer or the customers’ needs are gratified. As an entrepreneur, it is important to understand the marketing concept which is mainly referred to as the marketing orientation, or the marketing mix made of the 4 Ps.

For an entrepreneur to get the full benefits of the marketing concept there is a need to develop the marketing plan. First some assessment needs to be done. Like the strategic plan we discussed earlier, the marketing plan starts with the assessment by analyzing the business abilities.

To assess the business abilities, a key question of what can the business do and not do and why need to be the start point. The business ability is the business core competencies. Popularly known as the marketing audit, like the financial audit, the marketing audit looks at all aspects of the marketing.

Some of the elements assessed at the marketing audit include the market share, the industry attractiveness and the competition analysis. Ignoring the business core competencies leads to business disasters that makes the business lose money, time and may even lead to the death of a business.

The marketing assessment starts with the entrepreneur defining the competitors; however the word competitors narrow and lead to only assessing businesses offering similar products or offers. For experienced marketers and business people the word competitive set is a more holistic term.

Let’s look the two terms, the competitors and competitive set if applies as a basis of an airline. For example an airline’s competitors are other airlines, while if the same analysis was based on the competitive set, it would include video and teleconference facilities, the internet chats, emails and brands like Skype.

Besides, assessing the competitive set, the marketing plan also need to assess the operating environment, which include the economy, the political elements, technological changes and the legal elements.

For a marketing plan to be of a great advantage to a business, three key elements must be taken into consideration, these three elements are, the business core competencies, the consumers’ or the customers’ needs and the business operating environment.

It is important for the entrepreneur to know that a marketing plan helps in identifying the business competitive advantage and thus making the business focus on what is best at, giving your business the much desired competitive advantage.

The entrepreneur should not look at the marketing plan as a waste of time and money, but as an investment. A marketing plan will create a detailed process, detailing different activities and how to achieve the set objectives.

Without a marketing plan a business will not be able to take advantage of the marketing opportunities, face the challenges and optimize the profits.

HOW TO COME UP WITH A WINNING STRATEGIC PLAN WITHOUT BREAKING A BANK TO GET IT DONE

2011-04-07T18:18:00.000+03:00

Every year, business leaders and entrepreneurs and their employees take a retreat and work out on what is commonly known as a strategic plan brainstorming sessions. Business Strategic Gurus make money as they guide the whole process for at least a two days session. The whole organization is excited as they sit and listen to great ideas that will move their humble business pass the million or billion mark, who would hate such growth as it means more money for everybody; i.e. more profit to the business owners and more salary to the employees and even the government will get more tax making these session seem like a win win situation. These sessions have become a norm and it’s one of the best sources of income for many hotels world over. The origin of this tradition is not something I can write about because I don't know the first person to come up with a strategic plan brainstorming session but in today’s world this is the trend and will be here with us for a while.

The sessions happen either last months of the business financial year or the first months, either way the results are the same. But as you organize such a session in the future, the question is what is a strategic plan and does it has to be done away from the office? When a strategic plan is mystified, I can guarantee you the entire plan will not be implemented as desired. This is because people think the process is not part of their daily work and many a times they fail to tie it to what they do on daily basis at the office. If the staffs fail to see themselves in the plan, then that is a failure and the process is a waste of time and money something that no business owner will entertain.

Any business guru worth her or his salt will tell you that a strategic plan is made of only four phases. The first one is assessment, and then planning and the third is implementation and finally the evaluation. What this means is that if for example last year your business took a retreat to that great hotels in Hawaii and developed a strategic plan and all action agreed upon have been met, this year retreat should be shorter and will assess what has been achieved what has not been done and why. I know some of you will hate me as I am actually killing that part of the year when you feel your employer need spends money on you after all you have been working for him or her. Please do not hate me but stick with me on this exciting article. This is because a strategic plan is a map of how a business needs to be run, it is that simple and actually is need to be done in the office where it’s expected to be realized not in some fancy hotels in Bahamas.

In the first phase; the assessment involves various already established tools. One of these tools is the Environmental scanning. At this stage the PEST or PESTEL analysis is one of the best tools for environmental scanning coupled with market analysis research and we have taken care of the external analysis. For internal analysis the best tool is the SWOT analysis.

The role of assessment stage is to understand the environmental and internal factors that that will influence the business in the future. The factors could be a new technology that will replace your stock taking software or a new legislature that is encouraging working mothers to get 3 months break to breastfeed their newborn babies. On the other hand, the internal factors could include lack of qualified staff as this could affect the business now and in the future. Once a true to the ground assessment has been done, a brainstorm involving as many people as possible is carried out to inform and verify the findings and this is a one key way of assessing a business.

Another problem with strategic planning is that many people make it a management task only, this is one challenge that any business owner should strive to overcome and ensure that a strategic plan involve all employees.

The next stage is the planning; this is the phase where the resources are allocated to meet different objectives to ensure the plan is followed. The objectives of the planning stage are based on the questions of how the business will utilizes the available resources to achieve its objectives. This is an important area as the business is able to identify areas with more resources than necessary, shortage of resources as well as resources that may not be required to meet the business strategic objectives. At the planning stage, a plan is laid down synchronizing the resources with the strategic objectives.

The implementation stage is where execution takes place. All that was put in the plan is brought to life. Here is about getting the hands dirty. The implementation stage is about bringing practicalities to the plan, making it real and achievable, not some notes on flipchart and good report.

The final stage is the monitoring stage. This is a key step that many strategic plans fail to develop. How will the business know if it is on right track or how will the business know that objectives are getting realized unless there are ways of measuring what has been achieved. If there is no tracking and evaluation ways and means, the strategic plan will remain static and will not achieve the desired results.

Follow the above insights and no one needs to have retreats every year for strategic brainstorming while developing a winning strategic plan that yield results in your business.

THE BUSINESS, STRATEGIC, MARKETING PLAN FOR AN ENTREPRENEUR

2011-04-06T17:09:00.000+03:00

A business needs to have a direction in its endeavor to grow. For a business to succeed there are many types of plans that a business needs to develop. As such, the planning for business starts long before the business opens its door to the first customer. The first planning is the business plan. Once the business plan is done, the next level is the strategic plan. The final part is marketing plan.

THE BUSINESS PLAN
The first of such plan is the business plan. Many people write a business plan to impress the venture capitalist and the banks. But did you know that a business plan is a very ideal tool for the growth of your business?
A business plan sets the course of an entrepreneur. It is a roadmap by which the journey for entrepreneurship follows. With this in mind, when making a business plan, remember it is for your business and not for the other parties like the banks and venture capitalists. Before you set up to make a business plan sit to understand the market and the industry you are planning to play in. This may sound farfetched but a business plan needs the industry attractiveness.

THE STRATEGIC PLAN
Once a business plan has been made, then it is time to develop a strategic plan. The strategic plan is the tool to action the business plan. It gives the resources required and the direction of the entire business. Whereas a business plan may cover the business in a lifetime, a strategic plan is made for a minimum 3 years and may stretch to about 5 or more years. The strategic plan details the resources required, the way the resources are going to be used, the purpose of each resources, the objective of every move. The strategic plan is simply a way of doing things to meet the desired objectives. The strategic plan includes other plans i.e. the marketing plan, the human resource plan, the financial plan etc.

THE MARKETING PLAN
The marketing plan starts with the marketing objectives, i.e. in my initial year I will grow my market share by 5%. For you to determine the percentage of growth, you must know the size of the market. The market size is usually determined at the business plan level. The marketing plan is made of small plans based on the marketing mix, or the 4 ps. In the marketing plan there is a promotional plan which includes the advertisement plan and budget and the desired result. The other part of the marketing plan is the product plan. This details the products, the different variants and sizes, the package, the role and what each elements plays. The other part of the marketing plan is the place plan; this is what channels to sell the product, the role of each channel etc. The final part of the marketing plan is the price plan. This is the role of the price, the pricing structure of each product.

For any entrepreneur to make it there is a need to harmonize each of the three plans to work for the business.

DEVELOPING A NEW PRODUCT THAT MEETS THE CUSTOMER AND THE MARKET NEEDS

2011-04-06T13:08:00.001+03:00

Where do new product for a business start? Many entrepreneur think that a new product or offer start in the business boardroom. You will find the NPD group in a business giving specs of the new product to the lab and in a short while a new formulation is developed, taken to the quality control for testing before hurriedly taken to government regulations and standardization body for certification. However, something is lacking in the whole process, the customer or the consumer of the product.

The problem with the above method of developing a new product is that it lacks the input of a key decision maker in the purchase of the new product.
In many of my writings, I have always talked about market insight that leads to a product development.

The journey for a new product do not start with NPD team in the business boardroom, but it starts with the customer. All new products should start with the customer needs. It is by identifying the needs, either through market segmentation, a usage and attitude survey, an observation or data mining do we investigate the need, size the market and go ahead to brief the NPD team on what the customer need and give specs of the NPD.

The first thing the NPD team does with the help of the marketing team is develop the concept of the new product. The concept is the idea of the new product, illustrated on a medium. It could be a set of sentences, a mood board or even a voice over description of the product, the benefits, both functional and emotional.

A concept is made of the insight; an insight is a truth about something that has been observed or derived from observing consumers. The need is what the consumer is looking for. The benefits are what the consumer expect from a product and the new brand fit is how the proposed brand fits with the insight and the consumer needs and the benefits is provides.

Below is an example of new product concept:

Insight
Every morning I wake up feeling tired because of the previous nights drink.
Consumer need
This makes me face the day with less energy and thus makes me fail to fulfilling my potential.
Benefits
To refresh my day, I take a cup of tea with olive oil, that helps clean my body system in a minute making me feel fresh and energized the whole day.
The new brand fit
Introducing Olivetea; a delicious tea in a tea bag, containing olive ingredients, which cleans my body from previous nights drink, making me feel refreshed the whole day, thus facing my day with confidence.
Olivetea, for the day after.

Once the concept has been developed, it is taken to the consumer through focus groups discussions or quantitative surveys.

It is important to develop between two and four concepts, each concept well thought and positioned differently.

The best concept is converted to a product. Once the product has been developed, prototypes are developed and a process of product testing is carried out. The product testing is simple process where a questionnaire is developed. Through quantitative testing, monadic sampling is applied. Like the concept, it is important to develop at least test two prototypes of products to be tested. Besides, at this point the pricing research can be combined with the product testing.

The most common pricing research is the Price Sensitive Measure (PSM). For the analysis of both the product and pricing research, a statistical technique known as conjoint analysis is applied to determine the best product and optimal price.

If a new product follows the above process, the chances of success are higher than if a boardroom decision led to a new product development process. The above process is way of an entrepreneur to reduce chances of failure as well as save money.

MARKET RESEARCH FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND STARTUPS

2011-04-05T17:51:00.000+03:00

WHY MARKET RESEARCH
As an entrepreneur with a zeal to succeed, you business needs a marketing strategy. This is a long term plan of set policies and guidelines that enable your offline and online business achieve its business objectives. Creation of a market strategy revolves around effective ways of coming up and executing the marketing mix.

Marketing mix is popularly known as the 4 Ps of marketing, namely place, promotion, product and price. Effective marketing strategy ensures that the customer's needs are met and satisfied and the business makes profit, which is what any entrepreneur want. One of the key question many entrepreneurs ask themselves is how do one develop an effective marketing strategy?

As an entrepreneur, first you need to understand the market; this can be done by carrying out a marketing research. Marketing research is based on three main methodologies and these three methods are: desk research, qualitative research and quantitative research.

DEFINING DESK AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Let me start by first defining three research techniques. Desk research is the secondary research. This involves the researcher going through historical documents and data. This could be other research findings, industrial documents and information from the search engines. Desk Research is about analyzing information already in the public domain.

The Qualitative and quantitative research are primary research techniques, this means that the research gathers the data herself or himself. Qualitative research aims to explore whys, initial market understanding plus motivational issues and usually involves smaller samples. Qualitative research gives words as opposed to how many and the numbers and has borrowed a lot from social sciences. The key data gathering tool for qualitative research is discussion guide; an unstructured questionnaire that changes as the research continues.

Quantitative research seeks to quantify and measure relationship of various attributes. Unlike qualitative research we talked about earlier, quantitative research sampling is far much larger as well as representative of the target population. The sample selection is an elaborate process which could be either random or purposive.

It is based and borrows a lot from applied mathematics and is used for hypothetical and other mathematical testing. The key data collection tool for quantitative research is the structured questionnaire and this could be administered face to face, phone or online. There are also special gadgets that are used for data collection i.e. the bank customer service tools that we press every time we visit a bank. Quantitative research borrows a lot from applied mathematics.

WHAT IS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Qualitative research is critical in situations basic information is lacking. At times if one has quantitative data qualitative research is used to understand the motivational factors leading to the numbers. Another key use of qualitative research is in hypothesis generation and once the hypothesis are generated the quantitative seek measures and tests the hypothesis.

Another key thing to note is that qualitative research does not require representative sample and purposive sampling techniques are applied. This means the sample for qualitative is not a representation of the population or the target market.

There are various methods used by the researchers to gather qualitative research data. One of the key methodologies is the Focus groups discussions. A Focus Group discussion is a group of people are invited to a place to discuss about their attitude or usage of a product or service.

The focus groups are moderated by a qualified moderator, who asks questions in an interactive manner using the group dynamics to get the relevant feedback. They gather both rational and irrational answers and through content analysis the research develops the finding of the research.

The focus groups discussions are designed to make the members of the group feel free as they would normally be when discussing in an informal setting. The group is either taped by audio or video recorders where the contents are transcribed and used thematically in report writing.

Focus groups are used in usage and attitude survey, behavioral surveys concept testing, advertisement testing and idea generations. Focus groups are also ideal in new packaging development or improvement.

Besides Focus Groups Discussions, Ethnographies are used too as qualitative research methodologies. Ethnographies are basically observations. In Ethnographies the researcher is either an active or passive observer. This means that he or she is a member of the target group and becomes part of their routine.

Ethnographies help in understanding the respondents through observation and participation. This could be a researcher going to live with a family to understand the way they watch TV, how they prepare and eat their food, wash their utensils and clothes as well as the brands they use etc. Ethnographies provide information based on observations, whereas the other techniques interview the respondents. Ethnographies call for active involvement with the target group.

WHAT IS QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
Quantitative Research is a methodology that deriving numerical data. It is a key research method ideal for measuring attributes, phenomenon and deriving relationship among factors being measured. This type of research is more systematic as it seeks to quantify and measure and results are usually in tabular or graphic form.

As I mentioned earlier the sampling is far much larger and is the representative of the target population. A structured questionnaire is the primary data collection tool and the questionnaire is administered either face to face, through the phone or online.

To design a questionnaire for a quantitative research, the first converts the objectives into information areas. The generated information areas are structured into questions with scales to enable measuring. A typical structured question could be: in a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is the least important and 5 is the most important, what are the factors that you consider before starting a new business.

Quantitative research is ideal for testing hypothesis, simulating and modeling the market as well as track performance and measuring satisfaction in customer or staff surveys. Quantitative research is used as experimental and quality control in businesses

Statistic plays a big role in quantitative research to generate figures, perpetual mapping as well other relationships.
The quantitative results either maps, means, percentage, ratios and other mathematical models explaining relationships of measured attributes.

So next time you are creating a marketing strategy remember that you will need to have some help in designing your marketing research process.

Do you know the industry you are about to start a new business

2011-04-05T12:48:00.000+03:00

The other day a friend of mine was asking me what business he should be on. I paused for some time trying to think how to answer that question. It was a straight forward question but the answer was not as straight forward.

Starting a business is not about having money, but having the right idea. The idea is based on an observation or knowledge on something the market need, what the market need is sometimes referred to as an insight. For you to get the insight, you must be familiar with industry.

This does not mean for you to start a business, you must have worked in the specific industry you are planning to start the business. What it means is that prior to starting a business you must make sure you understand the industry basics, the market dynamics, the competition, the pricing model, the regulations in that specific industry among other things.
It may sound a tall order to gather the information I have mentioned above, but with internet and the local libraries that possible.

The first thing you need to do is carry out a desk research on the industry you are about to venture in. To get the industry information, go to the local chamber of commerce; get all the relevant documents related to the industry of your interest. There are many publications in the public domain relating to the specific industry you want to be part of.

Try and get what any industry research that has been taken on the industry you are planning to be part of. The industry research provides very relevant information on current market size, the competitive sets, trends and projections. This information forms part of your business plan and cash flow projections. The trends are very important in designing the offers to you customers. The market size and the players are ideal for developing the right strategy for your business.

The other way of getting to know about the industry before you start the business is carrying out some interviews with the stakeholders. Get out and talk to the competitors, of course you will not tell them that you want to compete with them. This way you will get to know the dos and don’ts of the industry.

Every industry has what are called the industry experts; these could the local journalist who writes about the industry, the government official who regulates the industry or even the tax department. Make appointments and meet with them in their office or a café, have a set of questions and ask them about the industry. The questions could be what they think is the future of the business, what are the perceived threats and opportunities, the existing regulations and what do they perceive to be the future trends.

The final way of getting to know about the industry you want to start a business is visiting a trade fair; most of the trade fairs are announced way before they start date giving you ample planning time. Get into one of those fairs and meet the industry stakeholders. This way, you will meet the players in the industry. At the fairs you will get to know how the industry is structured, who are the big and small guys and how do they relate to each other.

No matter how the great is your business idea, getting to know about the industry you are about to start the business is the first step. Without that inner industry knowledge you could be heading for a very hard start or even failing.

MORE ON COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

2010-08-10T14:33:00.003+03:00

As I mentioned in my previous post a business core competencies creates its competitive advantage. A competitive advantage enables a business to offer its customers better value than its competitors. The competitive advantage is sustainable depending on how difficult it is for the competitors to imitate. The ability to imitate a competitive advantage may difficult if the business in question has been in existence for a long time.
Take for example the Coca-Cola Company, it has been there for years, it has developed an effective distribution system and has created trustworthy partnership with its distributors and if one was to start manufacturing soft drink, then he or she would need to have their own such an effective distribution channels to compete effectively. For Coca-Cola the effective distribution is part of its competitive advantage. However with today’s technology, a new business may strategically use internet to create a pool of affiliate marketers thus leapfrogging Coca-Cola.
However Coca-Cola has many defense mechanism to protect its competitive advantage, First Coca-Cola may opt to block its competitors by patenting its distribution system or even threaten legal action to whoever tries to copy its distribution model. However such a move could only keep other business away from the Coca-Cola competitive advantage for a matter of time. Besides the consumers behavior could change to buying everything from the internet thus rendering the Coca-Cola distribution system obsolete. It may buy time blocking the competition but eventually they will catch up. The block strategy, Coca-Cola may opt to erect barriers around its business model by making their offer distinct and different from other offers in the market thus offering the consumers a unique value and then block the competitors by introducing better margins to its distributors. This blocking strategy bear fruits only if the product line is so distinct and different from what the competitor offers the market.
Because of the shortcomings of the block strategy above, Coca-Cola may decide to use a run strategy, this means that Coca-Cola will keep coming with new competitive advantage and every time the competitors catch up Coca-Cola is ahead. This has been the case of Apple, they first came up with Macintosh computers which were easier to use. By the time the competitors caught up with them, they had moved ahead with the IPod, then IPhone and latest IPad. This strategy calls for business to be always identifying new consumers needs and moving ahead to provide new products.
Coca-Cola may also opt to use team up strategy; that is team up with online merchants to extend its products online. This way, its consumers can either buy from Coca-Cola brick and mortar infrastructure or from its internet based business.
The best way for a business to operate is to use the above three strategies in order to maintain the competitive advantage.

BUSINESS CORE COMPETENCIES

2010-08-09T17:00:00.000+03:00

I would like to write more on the competitive environment. For any business to succeed in today’s competitive environment then a business must have a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage is the position of any business operating in a competitive environment that allows the business to make profit and grow in investment in a sustainable manner. This competitive advantage must be unique as to differentiate the business from the competitors. To develop the desired competitive advantage then the business needs to fulfill the criteria below.
First the business must be willing to leverage widely in many products and markets as possible, this will increase its opportunities in its environment. More products means more niches and hence more money. More products which are complimenting each other make it hard for the competitors to develop substitutes thus defending the business from encirclement and flanking attacks
Secondly, a business must come up with a business model that the competitors will find difficult to copy or imitate. This goes even to the type of offers the business is providing to its customers, remember one of Porter’s five forces is threat to substitute products. Thus a business must work hard to identify new opportunities, cover its back to avoid competitors coming up with new ways of meeting the needs their product are meeting.
The third and not the least criteria is to fulfill and meet the consumers needs by providing product, services or solutions that meet their needs.
The above three criteria are what business experts call business core competencies.
Take a look at Apple, they are always on the lookout and they come up with new products to keep pace with the market, their core competencies rotates around innovations. Core competencies have been defined as a specific factor that a business sees as being central to the way its business works. Core competence can range from superior customer service “Customer is the king” to innovation. Once a business define its core competence and take them as the guiding light, every employee must know that is what the business stands for. Business core competences are strengths relative to that specific business competitors and peers. Core competencies must flow to all facets of the business if they are to meet any desired objective. Core competencies define how the business is ran, how the resources are shared, the skills required, coordination of different sectors of the business. Core competencies are a commitment to a business, when a business says customer is the king it cannot afford to treat customers in a carefree manner, it must make sure that all the staff know customer is the king, every mantra of that specific business must demonstrate that customer is the king. For me I always look at core competence as a culture and the business DNA.
In competitive environment a business must have a competitive advantage to grow both in profit and revenue over time. Competitive advantage is achieved through a business developing and sustaining its core competencies.

OF THE BRAND AND BRAND PERSONALITY.

2010-08-07T20:51:00.000+03:00

I was reading an article the other day, when a term I had almost forgotten was mentioned by the author of the article. I remembered almost five years ago when this was a term that could not go unmentioned for a day and I wondered if I was becoming rusty in my marketing and branding knowledge. I have decided to write about that term in this post because for any business person it is a term that we cannot allow to get forgotten. The term is Brand Personality. The brand personality I am talking about it’s the one written by Jennifer L. Aaker in her article to the Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 34 on August 1997. This article title was Dimensions of Brand Personality . In this article, Aaker talks about a theoretical framework of the brand personality. Aaker defines the brand personality as “the set of human characters associated with a brand. Aaker mentions five brand personality; Sincerity, Excitement, Competence, Sophistication and Ruggedness. Understanding your brand personality is a very important in your business as brand personality is used in positioning the brand in consumers mind. A brand personality is what differentiates one brand from another. Let’s look at some of the brand personality of some of the brand we know. Caterpillar and Levis are brands that have a rugged personality. One the way market researchers gets the brand personality is in the qualitative research where the researcher asks the respondents to imagine the brand in question was a human being. This activity is called personification and the respondents goes on telling the researcher if the brand is a male or a female, what its age, the type of the car the brands drives and the respondents even give mentions the brand personality, i.e. cool, trendy, smart, down to earth, you name it. After the qualitative stage, at quantitative stage, the respondents in a point five scale are asked more on the brand personality. I would go on and on about brand personality, but I believe in teaching a person to fish as opposed to giving out the fish and hence I have included a link to the Jennifer Aaker’s article. Read more on the Dimensions of Brand Personality here, you can even download the article Dimensions of Brand Personality .

WORK HARD TO LOOK FOR GAPS IN THE MARKET AND YOU HAVE BUSINESS

2010-02-18T16:24:00.000+03:00

First and foremost starting a new business is not as easy as many people think. It is one big reap of faith. It is something you have to do with knowledge that it could fail. One thing about entrepreneurs is that they are easy goers, adventurers sort of people. The other thing is that they like freedom. They hate structures and are very determined lot. They also need a lot of support from their closest relatives and friends. I was reading something about Amazons founder Jeffrey P. Bezos and how he quitted his job at D.E. Shaw to start selling books in the internet. By then internet was at its infancy. What I like about this story is the trust the Bezos had on Jeff that they gave him their retirement money to start a business that had 30% chances of succeeding. In this story I see determination, positive attitudes and trust. To succeed in business, one need to understanding the trends in the industry they plan to be in. Jeffrey of Amazon got his aha moment. This aha moment came when he saw that internet in 1994 was growing at 2,300%. He thought strategically by wondering what business opportunity was there for him and true to his word he created Amazon. He stated by researching on top 20 mail-orders to determine how he could give the customer the best value. When he identified a gap in books, he went for it. Because of his research and discovering a niche, he discovered that he had limited knowledge in books and he went ahead to attend the American Booksellers Association's annual convention in Los Angeles. This basically is the very path many entrepreneurs pass through, they identify a gap and ask themselves how they can offer the best value to customers. Work by first looking for gap in the market and then asking yourself what you can offer and there you are, you have your business model.

WHAT MAKES AN ENTREPRENEUR DIFERENT FRON US ORDINARY PEOPLE

2010-02-17T11:50:00.000+03:00

Many Business starts with a bang but as times goes by they decline and die. They say over 50% of all new businesses die within first year of establishment. Many have attributed the failure to many things including lack of market, lack of capital, failure in management. But with all these failures we have some businesses which have grown to become the biggest in the world. Who knew Google in 1995? No one knew about Google, because Larry Page and Sergey Brin were just student at Stanford. But for the last 10 years Google, has grown to be one of the largest organization in the world. We can talk about many successful businesses which have grown from nothing to great business within the last 15 years. Think Amazon, EBay just to name a few. We can as well talk about many which died too. The greatest value any entrepreneur can have to make their business grow is the idea. The ideas of all the major business giants which have grew within the last 15 years have been different. The ideas were based on new ways of doing things. The ideas are different from other business, we knew in our childhood. But what do all the success entrepreneurs have in common? They must be willing to go the extra mile. They must seek new ways of doing things. They must be willing to pay in innovations. They must be willing to work hard. This way they are assured of their success in the long rum

BRANDING YOUR BLOG - THE TEN SUCCESS TIPS

2009-09-17T14:33:00.000+03:00

This is not a new post, I wrote it and submitted it to article directories some times back, the only reason I am posting it today is because somebody asked me a question on blog branding and I thought this article may help.
As a blogger the need for branding is huge. You cannot achieve the desired marketing growth if your lack proper marketing communication. A blog will do just that, it will communicate and help your online marketing. But how do you brand? The following are ten tips on successful branding of your blog.
1. Segment the market: This way you will be able to identify your primary target and develop benefits that will appeal to them. With a segment for your product or your blog, you will be able to specifically target your offering; you will be having a clear picture of who your intended customers are.
2. Know your target: understanding why they are buying from you is a big move that will help you in tailoring your products and designing your blog. Understand what sort of people they are, know their nitty gritty. This can be achieved by using subscription to be able to talk to them as often as you could make it personal
3. Have your unique selling proposition: This will make your offer unique. You will be different from your competition. Differentiate the way you sell your products, how you treat your customers. Have consistency in messages fonts, colour schemes. Get professional advice if you must but do it.
4. Know your competition: Your competitors will crush you if they get the chance, know them, and understand their plans, their customers, and their offer. Track, monitor their every move, anticipate their moves, it's a chess game, don't let the check mate you.
5. Turn your brand inside out: Look at what is working and retain, throw away what is not working, innovate, turn your brand younger by the years, extend your brand, give your customers new experiences and change the rules of the game. It's the only way out.
6. Create loyalty: People by nature want to be part of something larger than them. People need a hero. They hero worship anything bigger than them. Niche marketing is your best shot. It creates niches which eventually turn into small tribes. Tribal brands are worshiped by clique of people and guarded secretly.
7. Be a good brand: A good brand is consistent, gives clear messages to its customer. Provides details of its benefits. Its benefits include both the extrinsic and intrinsic of the brand. It caters for its customers both functionally and emotionally. A good brand keeps its promise
8. Give consistency in quality: Consistence should be all round. The product quality should be the same. A bottle of coke is the same whether in a store in Atlanta or hawker cart in Tajikistan. Quality of a brand is in the color scheme, the way the name is written. Consistency is part of the promise. Part of the offer. It reassures your customer of lifetime relationship.
9. Be distinct, relevant and memorable: Since you know your customers very well, then you know what they want, why they want it, and you will always be able to remain relevant. While your competitors are stuck in old ways, you become distinct, standing out. Have easy tags, lines that even kids can recall. Live memorably to live longer
10. Offer more than your competitors: This is the golden rule in marketing. Yes, with all the above then you will be offering more than your competitors.
By adhering to these ten tips in your branding, you will leap benefits by getting traffic and your marketing online efforts will start paying off.

YOUR BUSINESS PORTFOLIO AND YOUR BUSINESS PLAN.

2009-08-22T16:11:00.001+03:00

We have talked about business plans; we have described some business plan parameters and what makes and breaks business plans. I want add something to your business toolkit; a business portfolio. A business portfolio has been defined as a collection of products that make up your business. A business portfolio is a sum of what your business need to sell to make it in the marketplace. It is the entire line of your products and with each products contribution and role defined strategically. Each of your products must play a critical role in the growth and profitability of the business, now and in future. In a business portfolio development, each product must be described in its current and future role to your business. Your business portfolio must be in line with your business SWOT and your entire business mission and vision. To come up with an effective business portfolio that will serve your business on a long term, you must start by scanning your current business portfolio and ask yourself what role each of your product is playing currently as well as its future role in the entire business. Scanning your business environment gives a clear picture of how your business environment will be today and the future and therefore you will be able to determine the lifespan of each of your products and assigning them a more strategic role as well as allocate the right amount of resources on a long term basis. Scanning the environment will enable you to create the right strategy for your business product line. Your business portfolio must be in line with your business strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities. In your business portfolio creation, you must decide on resources allocation and how that will be maintained currently and in the future, the resource allocation will be based on current and future role of your products. The relationship between your business portfolio and the strategy is that your business strategy borrows a lot from your business portfolio. Your business portfolio is the map of what products need to be killed, replaced and which products needs to be maintained and for how long and any products extension your business might need in future. I always say that a business portfolio is your entire marketing strategy. To close this post I would like you if you have no business portfolio to start by doing the following: Start by scanning your business environment, and develop your long term product strategy. Sorry guys, lunch hour is over, its time to get back to work.

BASIC MARKETING COURSE: MARKET TARGETING AND SEGMENTATION

2009-08-16T18:01:00.000+03:00

A segment is a group of people, customers, and businesses, which have one or more similar characteristics. A market segment is ideal in marketing because it can provide a basis of providing product or products to that specific segment. Within a market segment, the attributes that make the segment be classified together are considered homogeneous within the group but are heterogeneous compared to other market segments. Thus market segmentation is the process of dividing different customer clusters that share similar attributes within each segment but are different from other clusters. When your business is carrying out a segmentation exercise it must have enough information on the entire market so that you can be able segment the market into distinct market segments with similar wants, needs, attitude, demographics, psychographics, lifestyles, life stages etc across the entire segments. After the segmentation exercise, a close match of products benefits are closely matched with the needs of the specific segments to create relevant products for that specific customer segments. This, in marketing is called targeting and the specific segments for that specific product is called target group. The action of matching the segments to the products is what in marketing is called market positioning. Segmentation enables a business to calculate the size of the segments, making it possible for a business to forecast the revenue as well as profits, an ideal step when writing a business plan. While developing a business or a marketing plan, the market segmentation exercise will enable your business set effective and tangible targets for each part of the process, based on tangible information as opposed to gut feelings. Market segmentation exercise improves on marketing efficacy, which means that it improves on the marketing effectiveness as well as the efficiency, and brings value to your target customers. One key advantage of segmentation is that the marketing efforts is applied to each segments with a clear understanding of who they are and where they can be found as opposed to scattering your marketing spending to the entire market some of whom will never care. Don’t just get into the market baselessly; segment the market to enable your business take advantage of the existing niches based on the customer needs.

WHY MANY BUSINESS PLANS FAIL

2009-08-15T16:01:00.001+03:00

The bug to start your own business has bitten you and you are talking and telling your friends about it. But stop a minute, what will you sell (the product), who will you sell to (the target customer), what is the price (The price), how will people know about your business (Promotion). Basically what is marketing mix? These may seem simple questions but actually if you do have an answer to each one of them, then you have no business to talk about. The right answer to each of these questions is what is called a marketing opportunity. A marketing opportunity is a combination of factors that creates a market. A market is a place where you find two types of people, willing buyer and willing seller. Many times we think we have a viable business idea, we talk about it to our friends, relatives or even neighbors, we spend time writing business plans but we never execute those business plans. This because we cannot answer the above questions, we have not identified a marketing opportunity, we don’t have a marketing mix and we have no marketing strategy. Many would be successful business never see the light of the day because the idea owners lack the necessary skills to identify a marketing opportunity, as well as create and implement a marketing strategy. Marketing strategy is basically a plan and execution of any business on how to sell anything in this world. It is the core of sales and profits. It is what gives our business the bottom line as well as, maintain a health cash flow. Marketing plan creates our business competitive edge, which differentiate us from other businesses and make us grow. For you to identify a marketing opportunity, the first thing to do is to carry an environmental scanning. This scans both the business’s macro and micro environments. I have talked before on how to carry out environmental scanning, you can get write ups on PEST and SWOT analysis by visiting this blogs archives. The tool for analyzing your macro environment is SWOT analysis and the tool for analyzing the micro environment is PEST analysis. Therefore as you are planning a new business, scan the environment and your business will succeed and grow.

FIVE QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF BEFORE GETTING TO BUSINESS.

2009-07-19T00:32:00.000+03:00

Many people get to business and fail within the first one year or so. This is because they get themselves into something they are not ready for. I don’t want to discourage you, but for you to become an entrepreneur there are some basic attributes you must possess. I’m not saying if you don’t have them, you are done, but you will need to learn them. This is the only way you can be assured that you will have a business to be proud of. One way of establishing if you have the relevant traits to succeed in the business of your choice, is to ask yourself a series of questions.

The first and critical question to ask yourself is if you are familiar with the type of business. If you are familiar then there is no problem all you need is self confidence, patience and some luck. But if you are not familiar you need to learn or get a partner who is more conversant with that type of business or industry.

The other question to ask yourself is how much time do you need to make it happen and do you have the strength, the patient, the resilience and the money to survive. A business takes a long time to give returns and if you do not have the above attributes, you are definitely going to fail.

The third question is do you have what it takes, entrepreneurs are hard people, they can withstand a lot, they work hard and late. You cannot become an entrepreneur if you are an eight to five gal or guy. You must be ready to spend time over and above what a regular job demands to make it work. You must be willing to sacrifice a lot.

Another question to ask is who is supporting you. If you are married, your spouse must be on your side otherwise, it will be the business or your family. Remember you will need to spend a lot of time trying to make it work, you are going to be rare to your family and friends and if they cannot understand your mission, then it’s going to be a tough time for you. You might be forced to make hard choices.

The final question will be can you live with failure. No one is telling you that business is easy. You could brow all that money and live with huge debts. Are you ready to face it, when the time comes and your business idea doesn’t work, are going to be an entrepreneur enough to call it quits and still be willing to get to another venture in future? If the answer is yes then you are an entrepreneur.

If you can answer the above questions positively then start a business, you are an entrepreneur and you will make it. If you are not sure, repeat the questions again and if you are not sure, take some few days and ask yourself the question until you are sure whether you are an eight to five guy or gal or an entrepreneur.

THE FIRST STEPS ON WRITING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS PLAN.

2009-07-18T21:16:00.000+03:00

I have written a lot on business planning, but I have to admit that there is a first step that I have not written about and it is very important. A business plan is your business concept put on a paper. Therefore for you have a business plan, you must first have that concept in your mind. As much as it may not be written, it must be well organized in your mind such that when you begin writing, it will be easy for you to put it in a more organized manner. An idea could come in flash, but I always tell my trainees to have a note book and write those flashes. I have such a note book and I write my ideas in it. I have written so many ideas and I have utilized very few. Such a note book helps your business by keeping the business ideas in one place. This helps you to toy with those ideas before you make a decision to put any in action such a business venture. The other important point of toying with your business idea for a while is the fact that you become conscious of it and you move with it in your mind. This way you come face to face with your potential competitors and understand more on how the market is structured.Once you commit to a business idea in your mind, it is easy to start planning your potential business in the following key areas:
• How to start the business.
• How way to raise capital.
• Identify the best location for your business and if it is an online business, you toy with the design, the domain name and you even such for its availability.
• You also start talking about it to your friends and family who will either support or discourage you

It at this is the stage you carry out the SWOT, PEST and Five forces analysis. This forms the basis of creating a strategy for your business. By having the potential business idea toying in your mind you understand the legal element plus the taxation issues related to your business.By the time you commit to write the business plan, you can vividly talk about the following:
• The capital required and where you propose to get the support, could the banks or venture capitalists, or a loan from friends and relatives.
• The competitors and the way the market is structured and your war plan.
• The cash flow and other related matters and how you will manage your finances.
• The legal elements and the political situation of your market.
• The future trends and the expected opportunities as well as the expected market threats.
• The competition and the size and how you will deal with them.

You can see that already you have your business plan in place; all that is remaining is committing it to a paper. This way your business plan will meet your needs and you will be able to present it to all the relevant parties.

HOW TO DO A FEASIBILITY STUDY.

2009-06-26T16:15:00.000+03:00

How to Do a Feasability Study

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

re more then you can imagine for a fesability study, you did it so often so people calls you consultants.

Steps

Define the objectives of study, there might be one to several
Research on the business model analysis of targeted industry or company
Conduct market analysis, i.e. 5 Forces, competitive study, market share analysis
Construct business plan
Review the plan with insider, i.e. managers, frontline staffs,suppliers, customer of targeted company or industry
Simplify and modify the business plan so everybody will be able to understand after 1min's pitch
Conduct Market research on proposed plan to focused group or survey
Perform breakeven analysis and sensitivity analysis
Marketing plan
Operation plan
Financial plan
combine everything in above to perform decision tree/fishbone/scorecard analysis.
Write the study report

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Do a Feasability Study. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

THE ROLE OF A FEASIBILITY STUDY IN WRITING A BUSINESS PLAN.

2009-06-26T15:17:00.000+03:00

The other day I was talking to my friend and he told me something I really would like to share with your. This guy told me that research is a life skill. I repeat it is a life skill, that each one of us has done marketing research at one time or the other. Let’s start; with buying a car, we carry out marketing research by asking our friends and relatives what they think about that particular brand of a car. When asking questions we seek to know what their experience is, what they have heard about that particular brand of a car and what its power, stability, performance, fuel efficiency and resell value. The same goes when buying a house. Imagine that even window shopping is a also a form of marketing research. Based on this, marketing research is the first action for any new concept or any improvement, be it in business or otherwise. To me marketing research is the dipstick to new waters. It is a measure of acceptability by our friends and relatives. In many of my trainings on business planning and marketing, whenever I mention the term marketing research, I see people panic. Many people think that marketing research is about the bar graphs and other statistical parameters and many people feel they are not curved for that. Today I would like to demystify marketing research by telling how to carry a feasibility study enable you understand if your intended business will work for you. A feasibility study is a simple way of identifying new business opportunity for diversification as well as starting new business. A feasibility study is the most important starting point for business plan writing. If you carry out a feasibility study you will be able to decide whether you will continue or stop your proposed business. In writing a business plan, feasibility study will create the basis of the cash flow projections. The following are basic steps for carrying out a feasibility study. Ask yourself the following questions:
What is the business and is it doable, is it real, is it practical? As much as entrepreneurs can dream big and innovate in a big way, their concept must fit the world they are living in. Imagine proposing to have a diabetic hospital in a region with its entire population always in dire need for a daily meal. Always ask yourself, Can it be done?
The next part is your concept’s economic sense, will it make money? This is tied to the cash flow and revenue, which forms a vital part of your financial planning. It is very important to establish how big the market is? If they are other players, inquire how much they are making, what is the size of their market. A simple way is to count the number of players, common sense dictate that if you find a business with many players, then there must be money to be made, they cannot all be making losses. However always remember that if you get to and industry with many players, competition is stiff and the barriers to entry are few, limiting your business sustainability and growth.
Another critical question is about you and your team’s abilities. What are your strengths and weaknesses, what are the technological and other technical know-how required for this business? Will you get the right manpower, is the technological requirement available. This calls for a SWOT an analysis of your current or proposed business.
Make sure that you have time lines of how long do you intend to take before you start operating. Are you going to get everything on the required timeframe? Make a critical path to enable you achieve your objectives and goals. The other critical thing is to segment the market. You must segment the market and at least estimate what each segment will add to your revenue. If a segment is very small and cannot sustain itself, combine that poor segment with a segment that is similar and get an offer that appeal to all the customers. Market segmentation is the basis of any marketing plan; this applies to either old or new business. Market segmentation will help you to create the customers’ profiles, which in turn will assist you in conceptualizing and developing the relevant offers, both available and unavailable market offers. The unavailable market offers are opportunities. Once market segmentation is done, project growth of all your segments and develop you financial plans. The financial plans include cash flow and revenue. With clear market segmentation then you will be in a position to project the market and be in a position to nurture both current and future growth both in value and volume. Value means finance and volume means customer traffic. By the time you are finishing in this feasibility study, your business will be taking shape. Based on the market offers, work out you mission and vision. This will enable you to work out the human resource required, including the criteria and qualifications of the required personnel. Get the steps of how to carry out a feasibility study in my next post.

FROM THE ART OF WAR: WHAT IS MARKETING TO YOUR BUSINESS AND THE CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL MARKETING HEAD?

2009-06-13T14:21:00.001+03:00

Sun Tzu says “War is a matter of vital importance to the state, a matter of life or death, the road to either survival or to ruin, hence it is imperative that it is studied thoroughly.”
That is Sun Tzu and Cashmoneylink says ““Marketing is a matter of vital importance to any business, a matter of life or death, the road to either survival or to ruin, hence it is imperative that it is studied thoroughly.”

We take marketing lightly, we mix it with sales, we think sales is marketing and marketing is sales, using the two words interchangeably. It is wrong, and for you business to grow you must start to differentiate the two, otherwise your entire business is headed to the ruin. Marketing is a process, it is a strategy, sales are the actions, and hence it is a tactic. Marketing involves planning, executing, conceptualizing, innovating, setting the price, distributing, promoting, linking with your customers to create satisfaction. Marketing is the department of defense, the Pentagon and the head of marketing is the General. He or she leads the army. What are the characteristics of your marketing general, back to the Art of War, He or she must be: wise and able, more talented, able to take advantage and identify the terrain, (read opportunities and threats), carry out the mission and the vision of the business and above all be able to develop the stronger army (read team). Better trained and finally be able to administer punishment and rewards in an enlightened and correct manner. Marketing is the entire business concept, without a marketing plan then there is no business, without a marketing strategy then there is no strategy. It is that simple. Do you take marketing seriously in your business? If you don’t, then remember in the business world, there are only two people, the Quick and the Dead, and without having a marketing philosophy in your business, I can assure you that you are not the quick, you are the dead. Give me two businesses, and let me judge their marketing head and I can tell which business will survive and which will die. Effective marketing is a reflection of the wisdom of the general. The general must be disciplined and your business must provide the necessary material to win the war (read customers). Customers in business are the spoils of war, the reason why we go to war (read marketing) in the first place, the end results of any campaign (business growth). Your general must create situations that will provide your business with more customers than your competitors (read enemies). The general in your business must be deceptive and gather vital information on your businesses competitors. The general must know what battles to fight, who to create alliances with, who to deceive and who to leave alone. Those are the hard decision that any marketing head must know hoe to make them and with the accuracy and precision of a brain surgeon. Marketing role is simple, to bring the money to your business, and if the leader who brings money to your business is not well trained, and disciplined you can bet that your business will not have the desired end result, to make money (read win the war). For me sales is the big guns, the missile we point to the enemy, sales are the results of a well executed battle plan (read marketing strategy). This strategy is well laid by the best general who never mix, sales and marketing. From today, ask your general to separate marketing and sales and your business will get the desired results (read make more money).

DEVELOP AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR YOUR BUSINESS PLANNING.

2009-06-10T15:52:00.001+03:00

Many times I have heard people use the word strategy synonymously with planning. This is not wrong, but planning cannot replace strategy. A plan can be either strategic or tactical. A strategy is a long term course of actions, while tactical is a short term. Strategy is deep and involves series of tactical moves. Strategic planning is critical for any business growth; strategic planning is your business way of defining your strategy. Remember a strategy is long term; it should not be less than 3 years and should be measurable over time. Tactics are the small moves that the business makes to achieve the entire business strategy. A business strategic planning should start with environmental scanning. The first step in understanding the environment is by understanding the political, environmental, social or cultural changes and technological changes. The other step, is the competitors analysis, this includes benchmarking your business with the competitors, identifying your and their strengths and weaknesses. This way, you will be able to identify existing opportunities. It’s time to practice this by creating a strategic plan for a real or hypothetical business. First take 4 pieces of papers, A4 size will work. On the first paper write this question: Where are we? This includes a SWOT analysis and a competitors’ analysis. On the second paper write: Where do we need to go? This is futuristic, opportunity identification and threats to be tackled. On the third paper write: What are the prevailing factors affecting our business? This is basically a PEST analysis, five forces analysis and competitors’ analysis. On the fourth paper write: What do we need to do to get where we want to be? This includes: Tasks and resources required in terms of capital, personnel, technology etc. There must be time lines attached to each resource or tasks, this is what makes a strategic plan measurable. If you can do this and follow what you have written then you have a strategic plan for your business. Remember a strategic plan can be amended along the way, but this should be because there factors that are beyond your power. Small adjustments are not a problem, but make sure that you at least you achieve 50% of your targets. If you find that your strategic plan is easy to follow and to achieve target then your environmental analysis was not accurate, you need to identify why it is simple and easy to achieve, adjust accordingly.