Strategic Marketing Masterclass

Course Introduction

Organisational success by putting the customer at the heart of planning

What's it about?

The main challenge facing many organisations today is how to ensure their activities are customer-focused and their strategy externally driven. Today’s changing business environment drives the continual search for competitive advantage and this master class is designed to provide delegates with the knowledge, tools and techniques to achieve this.

Who should attend?

This workshop is for organisations wanting to improve their external focus or the effectiveness of their marketing activity – within the public or private sectors. Delegates need to be experienced managers, from a marketing or non-marketing background, involved with their business planning and strategy development or who have authority to develop and implement marketing plans and strategy.

Learning outcomes

• Understand current approaches in developing marketing strategy and able to compare these with best practice and other sector practice
• Increased confidence and able to provide the evidence needed to make a business case to support stronger external orientation and customer-led planning
• Extended range of planning tools and techniques, and new ideas that will help achieve performance goals
• Methodologies to improve market and customer understanding
• Ability to develop fully evaluated marketing strategy proposals supported by a clear investment appraisal/business case  

Benefits

This masterclass will provide participants with the time and catalysts to help them identify opportunities that could directly improve their competitive advantage and planning processes. The programme is pragmatic, delivered in a way that allows the benefits of fresh thinking to be applied directly to business. Participants have the opportunity to call on two hours of individual mentoring which will provide additional support.

Course Structure Highlights

• Marketing’s role in organisations today
• The challenge of establishing a market orientation
• Structure of a customer-focused marketing plan
• The tools of internal and external analysis
• Using the SOSTAC framework for planning
• Aligning strategic, operational and tactical level plans
• The challenges of segmentation in both B2B and B2C organisations
• Developing the value proposition
• From product to service to solution
• Brand strategy and delivering the brand promise
• Metrics to improve future performance