Strategic Marketing
Of Products And Services 11 - 15 Jan 2009 • Media Rotana • Dubai 
Learn the latest methods for defining, designing and marketing high quality products and services more quickly and efficiently
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Course Agenda
Course Timings
Registration for this course will commence at 08.00 on Day One, with the course beginning at 08.30 each day. Lunch will be served at 14.30 at the close of the day’s sessions. There will be two short breaks for refreshments at appropriate intervals.
Introduction
New products and services are vital to the success of any business. They open up new markets, attract new customers, and drive profit growth. They are critical for differentiating a company from its competitors.
Yet, many companies struggle to deliver high-quality products and services. Their customer requirements are poorly defined and constantly changing. The resulting products and services lag behind the competition and fail to meet customer requirements. Resources are never available when they are needed. Priorities are constantly shifting. Products and services don’t have to be managed like this!
Successful companies have learned to identify the right product concepts, define them in a way that hits the market “sweet spot”, and focus their sales and marketing resources on the most promising prospects – resulting in greater market penetration and increased profits. This five day beneficial course focuses on the management methods that will enable you and your company to develop the right products in the right way.
Course Overview and Objectives
To begin, we will identify the major challenges facing you and focus the course material on the issues that are most valuable to you and your organisation.
| Day One – Sunday, 11 January 2009 |
Selecting The Right Products And Services
Being successful with products and services requires having rich, innovative sources of new ideas and a disciplined process for determining the best ideas to carry forward. It also requires achieving the proper mix of low risk and high reward projects, matching the number of projects to the resources available, and ensuring that you remain innovative in order to stay ahead of your competition. During today’s sessions you will learn how successful companies manage these crucial steps in the process.
Effectively Managing Ideation And Inception
The product funnel starts with raw ideas for new products and produces carefully crafted product plans and roadmaps. While all phases of the product lifecycle are important, the front end can have the greatest leverage on the ultimate success.
- How to leverage a wide range of sources for new product ideas to ensure you do not overlook potential key contributors to your future profit stream
- A proven process for quickly and effectively screening new ideas to identify those with the best fit, together with a methodology for tailoring it to your specific company strategy and culture
- How to manage the “fuzzy” front end to get products started quickly
Increasing Your Level Of Innovation
Unless a company is innovative, its products and services will become dull and vulnerable to competition. Being innovative is not magic, yet certain factors need to be present for it to happen. This section discusses ways of increasing innovation within your organisation, to keep your offerings exciting and ahead of your competition
- Becoming more innovative: it’s about products and services – and a whole lot more!
- The key enablers that foster innovation – what needs to be in place, and the “innovation killers” that must be avoided
- Lessons learned form companies that have successfully innovate
Action Learning Exercise: Leveraging customers in the innovation process |
The Power Of The Brand
A company’s brand is often its most important asset, so decisions affecting products must account for the impact they will have on the brand (and visa versa).
This section addresses:
- Determining your brands position in the market
- Building brand equity
- Leveraging corporate brands and product brands
- Determining the brand-product alignment
Action Learning Exercise: The Product/Brand Audit |
Day Two – Monday, 12 January 2009 |
Designing Products That Hit The Sweet Spot
Once a product idea makes it through the screening process, it needs to be expanded into a detailed product design. At this stage, it is critical to understand the customers’ needs and select the target market segment for which the product will be optimised. It is also important to identify all of the components of the entire solution that the customer is expecting when buying and using your product. In today’s and tomorrow’s sessions, we will focus on how to convert new product concepts into detailed designs that hit the sweet spot of the market.
Determining What Customers Really Want
Customers want solutions, while most vendors think in terms of products. In this session, we will introduce the “complete solution”, which is the full set of products and services that will compel your prospect to buy from you in the first place and then keep him or her coming back for more.
What is the “complete solution” and how can it provide new insights into your product/service offering?
Why many companies overlook important ways of differentiating their products and services
The role of the customer experience
How to use the complete solution as a framework for future design and marketing activity
Action Learning Exercise: Developing A Complete Solution |