[Marketing 101] – Developing a Marketing Strategy
As I’ve researched the publishing industry over the last year, I’ve been struck by two things:
1) Manuscripts being developed into books are typically given a long lead time – often 12 to 18 months – for “marketing” purposes.
2) Most of the “marketing” being done in the publishing industry seems to be lacking when it comes to strategic planning.
As I’ve said before, marketing is much more than making sales and scheduling author signings. Marketing begins when a product idea is conceived, and doesn’t end until the product is retired. It affects products, product lines, brands, companies, stakeholders, and even the individuals involved with any of the things I just mentioned. It’s very, very important.
So, why do so many publishers seem to rush through it?
Clearly, a lot of small publishers are run by people who have the entrepreneurial spirit, but who lack formal training. A lot of mid-range publishers are run by people who have editorial knowledge and publishing experience, but not necessarily formal business knowledge. And many trade publishers are structured like corporations, separating the marketing department from the editorial department and relegating marketing decisions to sales and advertising instead of allowing the marketing department to be involved in all stages of the process.
Unfortunately, this sort of attitude towards marketing limits what marketing can do for a publisher of any size. And that’s why I’ve decided to focus today’s article on two strategic planning tools that I’m using in the development of my own company. The first is a 5-Step process recently published by Dr. J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School of Finance. The second is called a SWOT analysis, and it’s something I use to evaluate each strategy I generate.
The 5-Step Decision-Making Process
Dr. Armstrong is known for criticizing the various methods of strategic planning taught by business schools today; in an essay available through the American Marketing Association website, he lists several well-known techniques and says that he is unaware of any of these marketing tools actually resulting in better planning. Instead, he proposes that diligently adopting the following process is the best way to develop any kind of strategic plan:
1. Determine your company’s long range objectives.
2. Generate alternative strategies
3. Evaluate alternative strategies
4. Monitoring implementation and outcomes
5. Gaining commitment from everyone who will be affected by the plan
To be fair, this is not a new or revolutionary idea; it’s a structure businesses have been following for decades. But Dr. Armstrong swears that it’s the best way to do things, and backs his argument up with evidence that shows that this structure does, in fact, work.
How should a publisher implement it? The first step can be accomplished by writing out a thorough business plan that details the company’s aims, research, business model, a proposed product line, a budget, a timeline and financial projections. This plan doesn’t need to be polished or pretty; it just needs to be comprehensive, because it’s going to be used as a foundational source as you move through the rest of the process. Depending upon the scope of what you’re trying to accomplish, your plan could be anywhere from 10-100 pages My own plan for Army Ant Publishing was close to 70. And, incidentally, even if you’ve been in business for awhile, you should still have a written business plan to refer to, so either write one or update the one you already have to reflect your current business models.
With your business plan in hand, start a brand new document and begin thinking about your products, and how you would like to develop them. I usually start by outlining my marketing mix (Product, Price, Promotion, Place) for each product (or product line), and then focus on proposed improvements to my plan. I write everything down, regardless of how silly it seems, and wait until my ideas are completely exhausted before I begin evaluating what I’ve written. Waiting to evaluate ideas is important; if you evaluate ideas as they come, you might miss some interesting new perspectives that come from ideas that are otherwise impractical.
Once I’ve “pruned” my ideas and removed the alternatives that are obvious losers, I take the remaining ideas and integrate them into my existing market mix framework. Once that’s done, I consider whom I’m going to need to persuade to go along with what I’ve got. If I’m working with a client, I talk to them. If I’m working with my own company, I talk to my staff.
This is when it’s a great idea to use that second tool, a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for “Strengths/Weaknesses, Opportunities/Threats,” and it takes a look at helpful and harmful points, from an internal and an external point of view.
Now, the SWOT is a tool that’s extremely overused in the world of business, and often in improper ways. For example, run a SWOT on your publishing company, and it’s likely to look something like this:
Strengths
|
Weaknesses
|
Opportunities
|
Threats
|
Personally, I don’t find this too helpful. It doesn’t tell me anything I couldn’t have figured out on my own, and it doesn’t give me a concrete plan for the future. And yet this is often the way companies use SWOTs to evaluate themselves or their competitors.
But if I use the same framework to evaluate the marketing strategy I just developed, I’m more likely to discover things I hadn’t considered. The strengths and weaknesses are there to identify the elements of the strategy I can actually control, while the opportunities and threats help me identify environmental factors in the marketplace. Strengths and opportunities help me see how the plan can benefit the product, while weaknesses and threats help me see how the plan can harm my product.
Once I’m satisfied with what I’ve found from my SWOT, I can commit to my plan a little more easily. I’ll also have less of a problem asking other people to get involved because I’ll be more confident in what I want to accomplish. And, with everything written down, I can even show my plan to others to get their feedback, just in case I missed something.
If this sounds like a lot of busywork… I will admit that it can be tedious. But it’s also important. Using a framework helps a marketing-minded publisher to think through all the little details, and to plan ahead. Plus, it’s often during the planning stages that even better ideas begin to appear out of the blue. Having all of this information written down makes it a valuable reference for down the road, and running a SWOT periodically as a means of monitoring a plan that’s in action can help a publisher make the proper adjustment to keep the plan profitable.
Articles, Marketing 101 | SeanJJordan | 
May 14, 2008 11:26 pm
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