An essential guide which covers the Marketing Resources that can be found across the web-site.
Please use these to stimulate your thinking and as aids in your development of marketing strategy and planning. Browse through the topics and if there is anything that you would like to discuss in more detail, please do so by emailing info@getcomfortable.co.uk
Tools of the Trade - A guide to some of the tools used in Marketing!
- The Marketing Mix: The suite of tools you use to determine what you offer to the market
This article coaches you through assessing and improving the marketing mix in your business. Learn more about how to define your Market offering by clicking here
- The SWOT Analysis: A tool to review your Business or Marketing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
This article guides you through producing a SWOT analysis, and then what to do with it. Learn more about how to define your Market offering by clicking here
- The Marketing Planning Process: They key steps to developing a clear Marketing Plan
In this article you will learn step-by-step how to pull together a robust
and credible Marketing Plan for your business. Click
here to read more about Marketing Plans.
Useful Business And Marketing Books:-
Reading is essential to keep your business and marketing knowledge up-to date. See the latest reviews on the books Norman has read below or click here to browse all of his marketing and business book reviews.....
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Oct 29: The End Of Charity: I really enjoyed reading this book. Nic Frances shares his experiences of working for a charity and his own journey that led him to move into business development. Although the book does not discuss the social enterprise model, it does discuss in detail the role of private companies in delivering social change and social benefits. Nic Frances argues that it is only by encouraging private businesses to develop values and principles that are not directly linked to immediate profit that we can produce sustainable solutions to social problems. The book describes how markets can be used as powerful enablers to deliver a range of benefits for the wider society. The End Of Charity sets out why a charitable model is not sustainable and proposes a market led alternative which is most interesting. It also gives some practical insights into starting a value led business from someone who has done it. I have often looked at ways or opportunities to work with the third sector and contin...Read the full article here Oct 15: Minority Verdict: Michael Ashcroft writes about the 2010 election. It is a fascinating read from both political and marketing perspectives. Obviously we know the result, a coalition government. What is interesting is how The Conservative Party used clever direct marketing tools, database segmentation, and market segmentation to offer up the best chance of getting an overall majority. It didn’t quite work, but they did come very close and the book explains why. Clever segmentation can often be used to develop disproportionately high gains in market share and this is a great example of it working. The book also shows the importance of getting the right message, in the right format, at the right time. This book has inspired me to become more interested in the research aspects of marketing and this is something I hope to develop in 2012....Read the full article here Sep 28: Serious Play and Open Innovation: I have spent a lot of time in the first half of 2011 looking at innovation and new product development. Two very good books here that I should mention on my blog. Serious Play is all about proto-typing. It explains the importance of modelling early ideas, both by developing concepts and by developing proto-types that people can touch, explore and become excited by. Serious Play is about how companies can use proto-typing to stimulate ideas within the company and create innovation. Rather than think innovative teams create innovative products, this book suggests that innovative proto-types generate innovative teams and an innovation culture within the organisation. Open Innovation is a very interesting area which is always developing. Although this book is academically written and therefore at times hard to read, it does offer some interesting models and frame works for creating an open innovation environment. Although not specifically about the software industry the book...Read the full article here Jul 25: Blue Ocean Strategy : A great book for anyone who is concerned with Innovation! It is both practical and challenging and has a similar feel to the Jim Collins books I have read. The book makes the central argument that real innovation is not about developing products that compete with competitors, but that real innovation makes the competition irrelevant because there isn’t any. So if your next big idea for business is a new product development launch don’t confuse it with real innovation. In my experience it is surprising how many businesses genuinely do. The book sets out a framework for analysing where true innovation may come which I think any business could use. It essentially focuses on increasing buyer value whilst at the same time reducing costs to deliver “value innovation”. The book describes several strategy canvassing and definition techniques to help people understand where innovation can be developed these include the value curve, four actions framework, buyer experience cycle, buyer u...Read the full article here
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