The StepChange 7 Step Planning Process
A robust, well-thought out marketing strategy is key to the success of any business. Your strategy must be based on rigorous analysis of your business environment. You must take account of your competitors. You must know your target markets and finally you must take account of the particular attributes or deficiencies of your own business. Knowledge therefore is the key to developing your strategy.
At StepChange, we are expert at helping you gain this all-important picture of your business. Once we help you to do this, we can then help you to understand where it is that you want to take your business and what the best positioning is for your business in the market.
Easy 7 Step Planning Process
We use a simple 7-Step Planning Process that enables us to work with you effectively and efficiently to understand your business. The process is very robust and helps us to get to the heart of your business objectives. We can then focus on what is required to achieve those objectives without ever losing sight of the cost impact.
The Planning Process
Research Phase
The aim is to identify factors that can impact your business. Some of these are within the business and some are environmental factors. We also examine your customers and your competitors.
Market Positioning
A key success factor is ensuring you understand what makes you stand out from the crowd. What makes you different to other brokers? Our process works to make sure your business has a robust strategy that takes advantage of your key selling attributes.
Guiding Principles
A good sales person can stand over any claim – the same applies to claims you make about your business. We help you to identify the key elements you need to have in place to support your market positioning. Do you need improved service standards? Are you communicating with customers in line with your market positioning?
Your Marketing Objectives
This is the nub of the planning process. Getting crystal clear on your marketing objectives. Do you need to build a strong brand? Or communicate better with existing customers? We work with you to ensure that your marketing activities have a clear focus and a goal to achieve.
Marketing Tools
It’s important to use the right tools that match your business objectives. We identify the most effective methods to achieve your goals in a cost effective manner. We also understand that time is limited and everything cannot be achieved immediately. We therefore look at both short term and long term activities so that the business of selling is not interrupted.
Costs Priorities & Measures
In today’s economy budgets are tight and accountability is key. We agree wholeheartedly! We only recommend activities that make sense for your business. We also ensure that measures are put in place to track the effectiveness of everything on your marketing plan.
Develop a Plan
Download Marketing Plan Template here »
It’s easy to be reactive and ineffective. We help you to be proactive and more effective in your approach to marketing. We take all the research, positioning information, guiding principles and marketing tools and use them to develop a marketing plan. The plan is easy to follow. It gives you peace of mind to know that each activity you carry out has a specific goal and cost measure. We also won’t bore you with a 20 page document. Instead the output will be an action oriented plan that will be simple to use and review.
A Guide to Marketing Planning for Financial Brokers
StepChange were commissioned by Professional Insurance Brokers Association (PIBA) in 2012 to write “A Guide to Marketing Planning for Financial Brokers”. A copy of this guide can be found here.
