BWE assists you with what may be the most critical part of your new venture; the efficient and effective acquisition of new customers. Our approach is a total encompassing effort. Each area of study and consultation builds upon the previous section so that a solid foundation is established. By using this approach, you can easily identify critical areas and make mid-course corrections as necessary to keep your business plan on track.

The following broad-view graphic can best explain how we transition through various phases to produce the best tailored plan for your specific business:

Figure 1: The Strategic Marketing Planning Process

Some of the most important strategic questions to be answered by following this process will be:

• Who are your intended customers, how are they different, and what are their needs?

• What product/services will you offer to meet those needs?

• How do you differentiate your offerings from competing products/services?

This is your business; you are going to live and breathe it day-in and day-out. It’s your responsibility, your baby, your future, and your success. Right? Considering the importance of your venture, we do not merely mail you a report with all the answers. What we do is get you engaged in the process so that you can provide inputs, thoughts, challenges. You and BWE become team partners in developing your marketing planning. This is the best way to truly take ownership of the process. After our initial scope, the next step is to prepare a project outline so everyone has a roadmap to follow with milestones and goals to keep the process moving along in a timely fashion.

We’ll work through many forms that study and catalog the competitive offerings you face. We’ll develop a concrete Value-Proposition that easily communicates to your targeted customers and focuses your organization. We’ll put numbers to all of this so that you have quantifiable targets and goals. You’ll learn about the other “shares” that lead up to your market share and why they are just as important as the market share numbers.

An outline of a typical BWE engagement follows. Got other ideas of what you would like and don’t see it here? Give us a call to discuss your project and get our perspective:
 

BWE Broadband Market Planning Project Contents

    1) Executive Summary - Marketing Your WISP Venture
    2) Your Company - Strategic Level
        a) Company Mission
        b) Driving Force
        c) Objectives and Goals
        d) Growth Strategy
        e) Business Portfolio Plan
    3) Business Environment
        a) Macro-environment
        b) Publics
        c) Competitors
            i) Strengths/Weaknesses
            ii) Product/service offerings - features/benefits
            iii) Positioning
            iv) Pricing
            v) Intangibles (messages, media, etc.)
    4) Product and Market Levels: The Marketing Process
        a) Market Opportunity Analysis - Market Segmentation
            i) Segment Parameters
            ii) Segment Selections
            iii) Segment Descriptors
        b) Target Market(s) Selection - Product Positioning
            i) What Position to Take
            ii) Value Proposition Development
        c) Marketing Mix Strategy - Product Optimization and Forecasting
            i) Product
                (1) Features
                (2) Benefits
            ii) Price
                (1) Strategy Choice - Value, Low Price or Differentiated?
                (2) Packages/Bundles
            iii) Placement
                (1) Where?
                (2) Interaction with Target Customers
                (3) Channels (direct/indirect)
            iv) Promotion
                (1) Advertising
                    (a) Pros and Cons of media types
                    (b) Acquisition Cost Development
                    (c) Media Budget and Plan
                (2) Public Relations
        d) Marketing Systems Development   

            i) Goals and Objectives of Customer Satisfaction
            ii) Personnel Review - Customer Contact Personnel
            iii) Training Sessions - Customer Contact Personnel
                (1) Residential Customers
                (2) Business Class Customers
            iv) Service Level Agreements (yes/no?)
    5) Metrics
        a) Selection
        b) Quantification
        c) Milestones

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary highlights the most important areas of the Market Planning Project. Your Mission, Driving Force, Objectives & Goals, and Growth Strategy will be reinforced and refined.

We’ll delve into the Business Environment to catalog what forces and influences are at play that may have a shaping impact on your venture. This will include not only your competitors, but trends and influences from other areas that might be threats or opportunities to your business.

The Marketing Process will describe your segmentation process and yield those target areas that you have decided to pursue. Moving on from segmentation, your positioning takes shape along with the Value Proposition. The Marketing Mix is delineated and developed to maximize your success.

The Executive Summary will also include a review of your Marketing Systems Development. What is in place now, and what is needed, plus the roadmap to get these vital customer care systems up and running.

Lastly, a table of Metrics is included that puts all the work from the Market Planning Project in a quantifiable perspective so that tracking and monitoring can be done in a consistent manner.
 

Your Company - Strategic Level

If you have already determined and solidified your Company Mission, Driving Force, Objectives/Goals, and Growth Strategy…fine, we’ll incorporate this information into the plan and build around it to fit your company. On the other hand, if there are still questions in these areas, we’ll work through the exercises to determine the most appropriate launch-point and course for your company in the context of a WISP. What we accomplish in this area will ensure you don’t fall prey to what BWE calls the “Christopher Columbus Syndrome.” Which simply means, "I don't know where I'm going," "when I get there, I’m not quite sure where I am," and "when I return, I'm not quite sure where I’ve been!"

Developing the Growth Strategy will ensure that there is a correct prioritization of opportunities. We’ll work with you to set a strategy that will focus your resources and align all your employees. Growth is usually a combination of both products and markets. We’ll develop both. A graphic representation of this process follows:
 

Figure 2: Thrust for Business Development
 

Business Environment

If you are fortunate enough to setup your WISP in an area devoid of competitors you will truly have a rare opportunity to achieve greatness. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case, especially in the world of Internet. There is a saturation of Internet, but a lack of true Broadband in many areas. Finding the “under-served” market area for Broadband will put you in a ‘target-rich” environment for your offerings. Such an area will afford you the opportunity to price for differentiation as opposed to value or low cost. BWE will help you determine the exact “richness“ of your market.

BWE will analyze your markets and determine the competitive threats that exist. We’ll profile the competitors as to strengths, weaknesses, positioning and pricing. Knowing your competition in-depth will afford you the best platform from which we can develop your positioning in the marketplace. You will be able to attack competitors on your terms without playing defensively.

If you have already engaged BWE on your Market Assessment (Module: 1), then you have a good idea of the overall opportunities in your marketplace. We’ll expand on those opportunities in this section and look into the macro-environment to project a future outlook and incorporate this into a quantifiable picture for growth. This will provide you a projection and timing for market expansion beyond your initial area.

Product and Market Levels: The Marketing Process

For the majority of our clients, this is usually the most comprehensive area of study. This is where your target segments, broad product offerings and what your business communicates to the marketplace takes shape. These are the cornerstones of your business.

After the cornerstones, we move on to the "building blocks," or the Marketing Mix. This sets up your specific products, pricing, promotion and placement pictures. These building blocks are what everything else revolves around. The encompassing process is depicted below:
 

Figure 3: Marketing Process

By now you may have already decided, in a broad sense that you want to market to both residential and business class customers. While this is a good start, BWE will take this further and help you create more defined and viable segments to enhance your penetration rates that will drive your financial success. The rule of a viable segment is:

• Distinctly different, able to be identified and stand apart from others

• Large enough in quantity to warrant distinctive, tailored marketing

• Able to be differentiated in marketing communications

We’ll explore the possibilities in demographics, psychographics and other areas to develop significant segments to direct your marketing efforts.

Once the segmentation process is in hand, we’ll move on to your positioning. Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the target. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospects. Together with BWE, you’ll develop the image that you want your targets to remember when they think of your brand and communicate it to others. The net result is you will be afforded the attributes of good positioning; Uniqueness, Importance/Desirability and Believability. The last part of Positioning is to develop the Value Proposition. This is a simple, yet powerful message that tells your target market what your company stands for as translated into your products and services.

When we work with the Marketing Mix Strategy, we’ll leverage off the competitive analysis that was done and couple this with the positioning work to arrive at the best blend of product features, price points, promotion communications, and placement in the marketplace. These four areas are the traditional “tools” to craft the overall market plan as it truly is experienced by your target customers. There are many ways and areas to spend your advertising dollars. BWE will assist you in developing the most cost-effective and efficient program to fit your needs and aid your market penetration efforts. While the ultimate goal is market share, there are other key “shares” that precede market share. Specifically, these are “Head Share” and “Heart Share.” Only when the appropriate objectives are attained in these areas can you count on achieving your desired market share. Our “Share” work is as follows:
 

Figure 4: Share Acquisition

In the end, how you treat your customers is going to immeasurably differentiate you from your competitors. This is a basic tenet of marketing that is as true today as it was 20 years ago. BWE will help you set up your Marketing Systems to ensure you have optimum customer satisfaction.

Need training for your personnel in handling and dealing with customers? This is one of the specialties that BWE excels in from our many years of successful, hands-on customer service to both the residential and business class segments. You’ll work with the Marketing Management By Objectives (MMBO) to establish quantifiable marketing objectives at the company level, your team or SBU level, and the individual employee level.

If you elect to employ a sales force (outside or inside), BWE will assist you in appropriate training sessions and even develop incentive based compensation systems for you.

Do you need a "Service Level Agreement"? This can be a somewhat complicated undertaking. However, it can also be a critical part of your offering and customer-care program. We have extensive experience in this area and can shorten the timeframe to put this in place for you.

Metrics

All the best marketing program plans are useless without good, multi-level metrics to track the progress toward attaining your desired objectives and goals. In order to coordinate your entire marketing effort, we will establish an appropriate set of metrics that dovetails with the work-product of the BWE M²BO™ system. You’ll be able to track the effectiveness of your customer acquisition activities, not only in total numbers of customers, but how efficiently your marketing dollars are being spent.

All marketing plans, no matter how well thought out and planned originally, are subject to varying, and unforeseen competitive forces. When unanticipated forces come into play, your plan may get off track. If this happens, a comprehensive metric system will enable you to pinpoint the affected area and implement swift actions to counter the threat or rectify the situation.

Business today is run by the numbers. Don’t solely let financial numbers be your guide. If you do, then you may find yourself driving your business by looking in the rearview mirror (making decisions from data after the fact). A well designed set of operational/marketing metrics from BWE will ensure that your decisions are as timely as possible to assist in keeping your financial numbers on target.

Module 4: Summary Deliverables

• Comprehensive, tailored BWE Broadband Market Planning document

• Creation of Marketing Project Plan

• Creation and collaborative coaching sessions on use of interactive forms to guide the market planning process

• Review, confirmation, creation of Company Mission, Driving Force, Objectives/Goals and Growth Strategy

• Assessment and detailing of Business Environment to include Competitors, Publics and the Macro-environment

• Segment determination, profiling, and creation

• Positioning strategy for company and all product/service offerings

• Creation of Value Proposition

• Creation of the marketing mix strategy; products, price, promotion and placement

• Review and selection of the appropriate advertising media; budget and media planning

• Development of Marketing Systems

• Public relations management guide

• Personnel coaching, education and training in customer care and management

• Development of Service Level Agreement

• Comprehensive set of marketing management metrics system; acquisition, multiple "shares," by market, customer, and product classes

• Establishment of a marketing system

• Sales activity incentive and compensation program

If you would like to begin the WISP development process you can click here to fill out a business lead form that will gather the preliminary information we'll need to get started.