Strategic Market Planning

Plan Strategically: Deliver More

As economic conditions have shifted, so have your key customers' perceptions of value in the business marketplace. Customers are now apt to put things 'on hold' as they rethink their strategic initiatives. Why? Mostly because they are uncertain what the best use of their resources might be. Their experience has taught them to be cautious. Sadly, this is counter to what they actually need to become successful.

MarketCues SmartPlan 360° process helps executives create objective parameters leading to informed strategy plans that deliver solid business results. Over the years we have found that there are four types of clients that greatly benefit from our strategic market planning:

• Growing organizations that are encountering problems of declining growth and/or profits;
• Organizations that need an interim strategic focus on a specific program to effect a specific innovation and change;
• Smaller businesses that need strategic marketing assistance but don't need a full-time Chief Strategy Officer; and
• Startups that need a Chief Strategy Officer but don't have the budget to hire a full-time professional.

Strategic Market Planning

MarketCues compiles all of the critical business intelligence it gathers and creates a dynamic Heat Map that identifies the specific areas that require development. This heat map visually presents three types of project levels: Required in red, Recommended in yellow, and Acceptable in green. A detailed business case is also prepared that details the essential executive management dimensions such as ROI models and the timeline required to execute the program.

The Project Runway brings visual clarity to the overall strategic plan and serves as the road map for the team members. Timelines, budgets and team resources are tracked on a weekly basis. This approach to setting priorities and assignments ensures that the project stays on track and you receive the business results you want.

How Does It Work?

MarketCues SmartPlan 360° uses a 10-point checklist to guide the discovery and analysis stages based upon two decades of B2B work experience. Critical objective analysis provides the basis for creating successful business programs that are both sustainable and scalable. Both Internal and External Environments are analyzed to gain an objective understanding of the organization's truest strengths and weaknesses. This data is gathered and analyzed and a Heat Map and Project Runway are created.

Internal Environment:

• Meets Marketing Goals
• Responsive to Market Needs
• Long-term Solutions in place
• Differentiation, Relevance, Esteem, Knowledge

External Environment:

• Customer Service
• Scalability
• Sustainability
• High Growth Potential
• Controls-Process in Place
• Leverage-Links Established

What Makes A SmartPlan Successful?

In our experience, one of the most critical challenges is caused by the myriad of choices new strategic planning creates. For instance, product misalignment often occurs because the primary product attributes are not properly mapped to the customer's needs.

As sales and marketing teams ramp up they can tend to operate independently until there is a crisis. By then it is usually too late to undo the problems and the need to go back to the drawing board results. A SmartPlan avoids these foreseeable problems and creates paths around them.