An excellent plan does not guarantee the success or the achievement of the projected returns, but it does put the Cía. one step ahead of those who do not have it.
What business are you in? Is your company competitive? Does your company carry out an analysis of the sector? Have you identified your direct and indirect competitors, current and potential? Are you clear about what the market needs? Have you defined your value proposition for the customer or channel, if you had one? Do you have corporate, competitive, internal and external growth strategies? Do you benchmark the product, prices? Do you understand that currently, no You compete between products, but in perceptions? Do you know what your positioning is? Do you know what the objective and strategy of your product is? Do you use techniques to estimate the sales budget, do it based on the historical or worse Do you project your sales subjectively? Have you defined the profile of your sales team? etc…
Many questions remain unanswered. Therefore, these companies lack a strategic marketing plan.
Many companies confuse a marketing plan, as a set of specific sales, advertising or promotion actions. I have found companies that apply almost no resources to achieve a GREAT GOAL; and fewer have a strategic direction and an organizational framework, and worse still are sold in the market as "great", perhaps because they have been in cruise flight and the competition did not show aggressive reaction patterns, or the sector was not dynamic. Even more “dangerously” and with bad “professional work posture” I have seen companies in which the commercial team learns the “business” and takes “flight” while maintaining a working relationship.
Success leads to being conservative and freezing. Today we need to have a philosophy of permanently innovating since markets are becoming less stable and supply increases.
I observe lagging companies, which at the time did not carry out a vulnerability analysis regarding what would happen if the variables that were not very controllable were present. Would they know how to do it? Maybe they didn't understand what business they were in? Eg LPG distribution companies: Some continue in the residential and bulk business for companies; others making efforts to achieve alliances with service stations to serve the automotive sector; others making their own investments; others waiting to receive a purchase offer, others designing an isolated strategy of placing NGV sales islands in their own stations, but thinking of financing the conversion of cars and vehicles to the dual system, but without an expansion plan. That is, they all know they have to do something, but almost none of them know HOW to do it.
Another example has been occurring in the mining sector. Not understanding what the large mining companies have been demanding: "locate what I need when I need it and at the lowest possible cost." A strategy from the supplier's point of view would be to develop “intense logistics” which in practical terms would be to convene the directors or logistics managers of the mining companies that use exploitation or management systems, machinery and similar products to agree on a purchasing plan and tailored sourcing of world-class products at lower costs and with the support of an expert and solid company.
Key task
The Marketing Audit examines all areas of the company and finds out the opportunities and threats, or more importantly, it indicates the areas of improvement on which you must act to increase profitability. And for this to be effective it has to be: periodic, systematic, and complete. Naturally, it will depend on the size of the company, regardless of its economic or market situation.
The Audit must have an independent character to guarantee an objective analysis; that is to say, to commission the performance or verification through specialized professionals external to the company, but who in turn must identify and fully integrate with it as an action policy and maintain absolute confidentiality in the information.
The most important utility of the Audit begins when, knowing where we are starting from, we can begin to create, plan and set objectives. What opportunities can we identify? How well do we know our current and potential clients? How much have we analyzed our competition? What is the rivalry in the sector? What are the reaction patterns of competitors? What internal and external growth strategies are they developing? Etc. If you have already reached these lines of the article, I congratulate you because you are passionate about changes and belong to the “target” that needs to adopt a Strategic Marketing perspective; that is, to give a new dimension to the term "Marketing" far above specific and operational actions. It is time to take advantage of the opportunities.
