Marketing 101: Microenvironment - Suppliers

Last week, we examined the Company in the Marketing Microenvironment.  Your relationship with other departments within your business can greatly effect whether or not you are able to successfully get a product to market, communicate the right message, create customer value, and get value from your customer.  Now let's examine Suppliers. In the Marketing Microenvironment, Suppliers form a critical link in the company's overall customer...

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Marketing 101: Microenvironment - The Company

In this continuing Marketing 101 series, I think it's time to begin looking at the Marketing Environment.  The Marketing Environment consists of the factors and forces outside marketing that affect marketing management's ability to build and maintain successful customer relationships with target customers.  Within this environment we have the Macro-environment and the Micro-environment.  Let's start with the Micro-environment. The...

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Strategic Marketing 101: The SWOT Analysis

My next post discussing the basics of marketing is the SWOT analysis.  A SWOT analysis is an essential part of any Marketing Plan.  It's best to include it early on in your situational analysis.  It may seem like a simple summation, but it's a great 30,000 foot view of the state of your business and the outside environment. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Strengths Strengths are any characteristic...

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