Positioning
is highly important in business. How a new business gets a foothold can
be greatly influenced by how close the business is to the people who
really need its product or service. This could be by the degree of
empathy, by sense of belonging, by location, and by identification. A
business may struggle for a long time just because there is a gap
between its product and the people who need it or because the owner of
the business is perceived to be too aloof by customers.
This is especially if economic condition
has made the product to be passing through a buyers’ market period –
where buyers dictate the price and can afford go for substitutes or
completely turn down the use of such a product.
Today, we are going to continue from
where we left the discussion on business plan preparation four weeks
ago, to deal with issues on who is fit to start a business. We stopped
then on the importance of market research in business plan preparation.
We will go further on this salient issue by stepping into the realm of
marketing plan and how it serves as pivot, and how it is regarded as the
hub on which the wheel of business success rotates.
Inside the training room and as one of
the specially-authorised trainers/facilitators to use the standardised
business plan training module of the International Labour Organisation
to help businesses thrive, I have had occasions to interact with several
men and women who found it difficult to take their businesses to the
desired heights. The question mostly on their mind sounds like, “What do
I need to do to better to make my tottering business perform?”
Often, the fact has been that many
Nigerian entrepreneurs have never taken time to discover who they are to
serve in business and there was no clear-cut and decisive marketing
plan for their businesses. Good enough, we have been able to help as
many as we have come in contact with to redirect their focus and reshape
their businesses by not only showing them what to do and how to do it
but also helping them through the process – with after-training
consultation back-up.
Bear this in mind: It is improper for a
business to start without proper marketing plan. Many entrepreneurs
just open their shops without first finding out how the product ought to
be presented or what features should it have before it can become
acceptable to consumers. They only found out after rolling out the
product in large quantity only for them to be rejected in the market.
This shock occasioned by disappointment or rejection had put paid to
aspirations of many aspiring entrepreneurs because they were too dazed
to know where and how to begin again.
Marketing plan is the roadmap to your
business success. It is done so that it can and direct your marketing
initiative and assist in the attainment of your business goals.
It should contain everything you need to
do to identify your customers out of the numerous people within your
business environment. The marketing plan should help you find out the
price your would-be customers are willing to pay, the strategies to
adopt in making your products easily accessible to them and how you
should inform and attract them so that they can patronise you.
What am I saying here? Before you open
your business, you should have first listened to the wishes of your
would-be customers because if you fail to give them what they want and
provide it the way they want it, no one will buy your product. Doing
business has gone beyond coming out to push a product just as it catches
your fancy; it is now about coming out to offer consumers what they are
looking for.
A good way to organise your marketing
plan is to critically examine what should be done in packaging the
product, what price you should set for the product, proximity to
customers and what you must do to inform and attract the people you have
identified to be buyers of your product. This is the area we are going
to explore next week.
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