Now that you have done all the research or had a company do the research for you it is time to put all the information together in order to make sense of it so you can move forward with your marketing plan.
What is Good? What is Bad?
The first thing that should be included in you business review is a breakdown of what your company is good at and where it needs help. With the information that you have gathered you should be able to identify the advantages that your company has in terms of your target market wants and needs. The advantages your company can take in terms of distributing the product. How efficient your company can be producing the product and how that can be applied to making pricing an advantage. You will also want to identify your products technical advantages over your competition.
Is Your Company Working Together?
From the information that you have gathered you should also be able to determine how well your company works together. If your company is not working together for a common goal you will find the becoming successful is nearly impossible. To be a successful company all departments must be working in concert with each other for a common goal. Management and workers all must have a stake in what to final outcome of the product is. This is best accomplished by a consistent dialogue between both sides. Having a free flow of ideas between all sides will serve your company well and give you an advantage over your competition, and could even attract the best and brightest in your industry to come and work for you.
How Will Your Company Market?
The information that you have gleaned from several sources should also be able to help you identify how well your company markets itself. The answered surveys can be a key asset here. In the questionnaire there should have been questions asking consumers how they feel about your company and how effectively it gets its message across. Questions should have also included suggestions of how consumers want to be marketed to and what they are looking for in a company.
Where is Your Business Going?
With all the data you have collected the next step is to identify where you want to take your business. You should be able to determine if there are areas or departments inside your business that you feel will benefit from expansion. You should also be able to identify if there other areas that you feel that your business can expand and gain a larger share of the market. The data could also point out that this is not the proper time to focus on expanding. From surveys, you should be able to garner if your target demographic is looking for your company to expand and if they want new products from your company.
As you continue to prepare your business review there are more areas and steps that you will need to complete in order to make the most informed decisions for your company.
Identify Company Goals
Each company is different and therefore, should have its own unique set of goals that it wants to accomplish. The information that you have gathered through primary and secondary research will help you set the long-term and short-term goals of the company. These goals should include the sales goals of the company, profit goals, and what you expect from marketing campaigns. The information will also help you understand where to apply the budget across the company. You will be able to set a standard mission statement for the company to focus their efforts and how to go about relating to customers, employees, and developing the product.
Your Company
Put together a summery of your company’s history. Include how that company came to be, what it has accomplished to this point. How it has evolved over time. You will want to see if the company has changed its mission. How has expansion or contraction helped or hurt the business. However, it is not only the company history that you want to focus on. You will want to analyze the data you have collected to determine future trends in the industry in order to better position your company.
In order to get an unfettered view of your company the data that you have collected should be able to help you address what plans have been crucial to your company’s success, why consumers find your company worth purchasing from, and how your company is viewed by the public.
Company Organization
As well as looking at your company as a whole, you have to be able to look how your company is organized. If you have a marketing department, you must know how well that department works with the rest of your company. Make sure that the marketing department is sufficiently staffed and has the ability to come up with a professional marketing plan and that they have the means to implement the plan. The data that you have collected should also be able to show you how the marketing department has performed in previous campaigns. Responses from interviews will be key into providing information about the message that you have been trying to send about your company and products and if they have been resonating with your target demographic.
Sales Data and Trends
Analyzing sales data will be a large part of the business review. Sales data might be the most important of the analysis that takes place because it will tell you more about consumers than any other information that you have collected. A proper analysis of sales data will show you a definitive picture of sales trends for the industry, your company, your competitor, and who has the greatest market share.
When you are analyzing the sales data, it is important that you have at least five years worth of information to ensure an accurate sampling. By having five years worth of sales data you will be able to identify if sales of like products are increasing, decreasing, or stagnant. The analysis of sales data should also provide information about market share. It will show how much of the market share that you currently have along with if your company’s market share has been increasing, decreasing, or stagnant over the last five years.
The analysis of sales data can also be broken down further by analyzing sales data by individual stores. This will help you determine which stores are important to the future of your company and where you might want to think about trying different outlets. When braking down individual store sales your data will be able to show what stores outperformed others and which were below average in terms of sales and profitability.
Sales should also be analyzed by season. This will be able to tell you if the product is more desired at different times of the year. If that is the case, then it will give you a better idea of how and when your product will need help from the marketing department.
Moreover, the five years worth of sales data that you have collected should also be analyzed based on geographic region. This will better ensure that your product is readily available in stores where there is a greater demand for your product, and you will be better able to make sure that the product gets to the regions where you will be better able to make a profit.