What will we cover?

We start with a quick discussion of what we mean by marketing – and, as well as learning
that it is not the same thing as promotion, distinguishing it from related activities such as
sales and branding.

The rest of the course is devoted to explaining how we draft a marketing plan. To do this,
we follow the CREATE/VALUE framework for Marketing, which sets out the:

• context in which your organisation is operating
• results you are seeking to achieve
• execution that this demands, in terms of strategy and tactics
• assignments both internal and external this requires
• tests to put in place as you work on the campaign
• evaluation at the end to learn lessons for the future.

New Markets
The course also explains how you can discover or create new markets for your business.
It looks at the popular Boston matrix to chart existing market share and market growth for
each of your products, before turning to the Ansoff matrix to consider the pros and cons of
shipping new products and/or entering new markets.
Before entering a new market, of course, it is essential to gauge demand. A fundamental
concept is elasticity, which we can apply to price and income.
A more data centric approach is provided by HDDF: what has driven growth in the past and
what is likely to drive it in the future? This enables us to forecast demand.
We end up by considering whether we should even try to create our own market, with an in
depth look at Blue Ocean strategy.

Innovation
The course also considers the important subject of innovation.
We start by discussing the purpose of business: to create value for its customer. Yet
customer satisfaction is also a function of expectations – and the problem is that the latter
demand more and more over time. The solution to this ‘ratchet’ is continual innovation.
To explain why, we ask what innovation means – and reiterate that it is about the value we
create for the customer, rather than our technologies or even our product.
The question is how we identify innovative bundles of value – and, to do this, we look at the
innovation circle. We then explore how to manage the process through stage gates. The spotlight then shifts from supply to demand with a look at innovation models. How do
new ways of creating value spread through a market? What is the hype cycle?
We end with the idea of disruptive innovation, contrasting it with sustaining innovations,
and ask how we can avoid the “innovator’s dilemma’.

What will I learn?
• what marketing is (and is not)
• the difference between marketing, promotion, branding, and sales
• how to draft a compelling marketing campaign
• the best way to communicate with your customers
• how to discover or create new markets for your business
• the true meaning of innovation and its importance to your firm.

Who should attend?
Any entrepreneur, director, or manager who needs to improve their marketing.
The course consists of pre-recorded material, which you can work through at your own pace,
followed by a live two hour webinar to apply what you’ve learned to your own business.

Book now