                                         CAN-DO
                                     MARKETING PLAN
                                        WORKBOOK
                                            &
                                     REFERENCE GUIDE
                                         2nd ed.
--- ESCAPE key to exit ---
                                 With PROTEC's exclusive
                                         8-POINT
                                         AUDIT &
                                      5-POINT PLANNING
                                   Outlines and Checklists!

                                        Paul Oman
                                    P. O. Box 590011
                                    Houston, TX 77259
                               713/486-1587 (voice & fax)
Copyright 11/91

$30 plus $5 S&H/tax
No reproduction of this material is permitted for
any use without the written consent of Paul Oman

-----------------------------------------
Preface


Like many things in life, I've found that in business,
and in marketing, things seem to happen in groups of
three. For example, according to Dean Kring,
director of the Entrepreneurial Development Center
in Houston, successful businesses are:

       *     1/3 product or service
       *     1/3 administration
       *     1/3 marketing and sales

What this means is that time, resources, personal
etc. should be divided up at approximately these
ratios. The sharp manager or CEO will overcome his
nature favoritism and inclination toward one of the
three and see that all get equal attention.


Picture any business as a three sided pyramid. Each
corner is one of those three business parts.
Forming the top of pyramid is the CEO. Within the
pyramid are an infinite number of points that
include various proportions of each of the three
parts, plus anything else that is part of the
business structure. Businesses rarely operate from
the corners, that's why any real life business tool
must deal with all the parts, no matter what they
are or how they are defined. I wish I could break
marketing out of the larger context, but
unfortunately it can't be done. That's one of the
primary reasons my 8-POINT AUDIT and 5-POINT
PLANNING approaches grew into so many points.


I also would have liked to combine the market
auditing and market planning into a single entity.
Again, it wasn't possible. That's why all the
marketing books I've collected and read turn out to
be either auditing workbooks or planning workbooks.
Therefore, while I couldn't combine them into a
single entity, I included both in this book, albeit as
separate sections. This seems to be something of a
first in the field of marketing books. While my
actions may have broken some hidden taboo, my goal
was to give you the best and most comprehensive
book available.


So, what exactly is marketing? It's everything you
say or do. It's the color of your product, the color
of your office building, the color of your tie and
how you comb your hair. It's what the outside world
thinks of you and what you think of them. It's even
what your workers think of your product or service
and how you interact and motivate those workers.
It's the essence of business and of life! You can
choose to be indifferent to it, or your can become a
skillful manipulator of it. Yet no matter how you
perceive it or decide to exploit it, you can't escape
from it....

----------------------------------

How To Use This Book


This book has four main sections: 1) 8-Point
Marketing Audit; 2) 5-Point Market Planning; 3)
Reference Guide; and 4) Meeting PROTEC. It was tough
deciding if auditing or planning should come first. If
you're starting from scratch, then planning comes
first. However, from there forward the procedure is
to conduct an audit first. This is followed by
planning to correct any deficiencies discovered
during the audit. Marketing audits need to be done
on an ongoing basis. Corrections, or planning fixes,
must be applied as needed.


Section three, the reference section, exists
because there is more to marketing than filling in
blank lines and asking yourself a lot of questions.
Section four might be called Marketing Examples, but
the truth is that it's more of a marketing plug for
the author's own services...

Begin with whatever section makes logical sense to
you and HAPPY MARKETING!


       SECTION I - 8-Point Marketing Audit

Evaluate your entire marketing from 8 key
perspectives


       SECTION II - 5-Point Market Planning

How to get a complete marketing program up and
running (a 5-POINT PLANNING PROGRAM)


       SECTION III - Reference Guide

Short essays, articles, and tips & tricks that
provides an eclectic cross section of insights and
information as well as some fun reading


       SECTION IV - Meeting PROTEC

See some actual marketing materials and become a
part of the author's own hidden agenda

------------------------------------

SECTION I

8-Point Marketing Audit


                              Table of Contents - Section I


                          Introduction
                          1. Competition
                          2. Copy/Communications
                          3. Customer                                           4. Image                      I-8
   not in shareware ver.  5. Market
   not in shareware ver.  6. Product
   not in shareware ver.  7. Sales
   not in shareware ver.  8. Staff

----------------------------------


Introduction


Marketing interacts with every facet of your
business. A marketing audit must therefore delve
into the recesses of your business. On each of the
next 8+ pages some facet of your business is
addressed and issues and questions relating it to
marketing are raised. There is no way all the
questions appropriate to your company can be
listed. Instead, the questions are intended to get
you thinking in the right direction. You're the one
who will have to ask the right questions as well as
provide the answers. If you don't have an answer,
then that's a weakness the audit has discovered.
Perhaps a telephone survey (i.e. market research)
will provide the missing information.


Unlike most other market auditing books you may
have seen, I'm not going to insult your intelligence
with some sort of scoring system to the questions.
Marketing isn't a true-false kind of thing. You have
to be your own judge, jury, and (if necessary)
executioner. All I can do is prompt you into thinking.
I can't, and won't, do your thinking for you.


I've not put the eight business/audit topics into
any kind of significant order. I didn't want you to
get the impression that any one is more important
than any other. It's really the sum of the parts that
count and not so much the individual pieces. For
those of you who can't leave well enough alone,
notice the 8 points are actually in alphabetical
order.


The format in this section is simple. On each page is
one of the 8 audit topics and a set of related,
thought provoking questions. Instead of just
writing down actual answers, I suggest you work
your way through the questions out loud. When
you're done brainstorming write down a TO-DO list of
things that could be initiated to improve your
marketing.

----------------------------------

1. Competition



In love and in work the more you know about the
enemy, the competition, the more likely you'll win.
Business is no exception. Before smart strategic
marketing decisions can be made one has to know
what he or she is up against.


Who are my competitors?
Why do people buy the competitors' products or
services instead of mine? What do my competitors
think of me? Are they afraid of me? Do I worry them?
What do they charge for their products/services?
What is their profitability? Are their sales up or
down? What does the marketplace think of them?
Are they perceived as leaders or followers?
Are their products/services considered high-end or
low end? Who much do they know about our company?
What products do they have, what new products are
they working on? Are they hiring more people? Are
their workers happy with their jobs? What do their
brochures, etc. look like? (you should have copies)
What is their business philosophy?
What are their strengths?
What are their weaknesses?
Where, when, and how often do they advertise?
How are their sales teams compensated?


----------------------------------

2. Copy/Communications



Documents are weapons in the business war. To win
you need a large and diverse arsenal. Besides
quantity and diversity, quality is also a vital
consideration. Communications, from the brochures
and contracts, to the tone of your voice, and the
verbiage you use when answering the telephone, are
all marketing tools.


Each product/service (as well as the company itself)
should have several sets of increasingly technical
and complete pieces of literature. So too should
groups of related products. Don't forget corporate
documents that set the stage for all other written
copy. Develop effective cover letters for all
situations (brochures tell, cover letters sell).


       Do all our products/services have:

Data sheets? Brochures? Press releases written
about them? Trade magazine articles written about
them? Misc. promotional photos, slides, etc. of them?
Case studies and/or mini case studies (application
briefs)? Demo versions?


       Does our organization have:

A media/press kit? Internal and client newsletters?
Product reply/response cards? Form sales letters?
Formal contract/agreement documents? A company
brochure? A spokesperson? A official set of
guidelines/answers to respond to questions asked?
An advertising plan, budget, and strategy?

A computer database of all media contacts,
associations, publications, movers and shakers,
editorial calendars, freelance writers?


       Do all our communications have:

A consistency of: color, shape, message, theme,
layout, appearance, quality? Limited amounts of
technical jargon? Liberal amounts of stimulating
adjectives?


DOES EVERYTHING STRESS USER NEEDS, WANTS,
DESIRES, BENEFITS and not product/service
features, or company boosting?


       Handling bad news and negative PR:

Are we prepared to handle the response that will
appear if our company has a major accident, crisis,
disaster, emergency? Do we have an action plan (and
materials) ready to publicly present after only
brief modification?

Do we have an action plan (and materials) in place to
capitalize on a competitors' mistakes (i.e. how we ca
capture their former customers, why it wouldn't
happen to us, etc.)?

Do we have materials ready to send to the press
responding to some no-blame crisis that we know will
happen sooner or later? Being the first to respond
will get us media coverage and position us as
national/international experts.


--------------------------------

3. Customer


In order to pitch your customer or client
effectively you must know them as well as you know
yourself. You probably don't have just one typical
customer, but several. You must be able to close
your eyes and picture every detail, every need and
desire of each of them. It may help if you give them
each a name, that makes building their identity much
easier. Conduct surveys to discover what you don't
know.


How do our customers perceive our product?
How do they perceive our company?
What do they like/dislike about our company and
product? How old are they, where do they live, how
well educated are they? What are their hobbies and
interests? What do they read, watch, or do? What
things are important to them?
What would get them to repurchase your product or
service? How important is price/image to them?
What do they all have in common?
What is different between them?
How do they see themselves?
What do they think of our competition and why?
Do they understand our product, or do they need to
be educated about it? Do we have a customer
computer database that we can use to track
activity?

----------------------------------

4. Image


Image is how your customers, non-customers,
competitors, peers, the media, everyone, pictures
you. It's something you create, but not something
you can easily control after you've created it.
Remember, what's important is not image from your
perspective, but rather from your buyer's
viewpoint. Strive to make certain you and your
customers agree on what your image is. If that's not
the image you want, then work to change it. Be
certain your image is consistent across everything
you do. For example, don't sell $80,000 cars while
wearing a $100 suit. That sends out mixed signals
and creates an uncertain, muddled image.


Does our dress/personal appearance/approach match
the class/niche of our product?

Does our office's image (location/furniture/etc.)
match our personal image and the image of our
products?

Is everything about us consistently high-end, low-
end, practical, extravagant, etc.?

       This includes:     business cards
                          paper/print quality
                          letterhead


What is special about our image that sets us apart
from the competition?

-----------------------------------------

SECTION II

5-Point Market Planning



                             Table of Contents - Section II


REDUCED SHAREWARE VERSION

                          Introduction
                          1. Getting Started
   not in shareware ver.  2. Market Research
                          3. Strategy Development
                          4. Scheduling
   not in shareware ver.  5. Implementation
   not in shareware ver.  FINAL EXAM


-------------------------------------

Introduction


Section II is the planning part of this workbook.
Here are the build/rebuild marketing activities
you'll face until you retire. You can do it all
yourself, or you can hire or retain someone to do it
for you. If you decide to farmout the work, the folks
who put this workbook together hope you'll call them
first!


Sharpen your pencil. You'll have to write short
answers and generate lists as you read the pages
ahead (After all, we did promise you a workbook!).
You'll be prompted where to write when you see the
Giant Pencil on the page.

--------------------------------

1. Getting Started


Target Markets

It seems like a foolishly simple question, but who do
you see being the receivers of your products or
services? You may have several classes or groups
of likely buyers picked out. That's OK, just keep in
mind that the same strategy, image, etc. may not
work for all of them. You may also need separate
marketing programs, perhaps even separate
companies, to serve each target group.


Here's where it's easy to go wrong. Children, for
example, aren't a target market. Using children as a
group isn't defining the target group well enough to
effectively market to. There are rich children, poor
children, city children, country children, black
children, white children and lots of other children
classifications. You can't reach each of them with
the same strategy or message, so they're not a
target group. Children under the age of 5 with
parents who live in large cities and are office
workers - that's a target market!


Even if you have a target market in mind, they must
be easily accessible or you are again in serious
trouble. The best Target Market members all belong
to some kind of organized group or association. For
example, assume that all lawyers in Texas belong to
the Texas Bar Association or some such group. If
you can get your message into that group's
newsletter or magazine, you've reached every
potential customer with just the one message
printed in just one publication! That's cheap, simple,
and easy marketing!


I once made the blunder of attempting to access
non-oil industry people in Texas who get money from
oil or gas production on their family lands. It failed
because these people have no common link. Many of
those people probably do subscribe to, and did read,
my ad in Farm and Ranch Magazine. Yet that magazine
link wasn't strong enough to work.


O.K. - enough talk!   List YOUR Target Market(s)
below:









Positioning

For the most part, positioning usually focuses upon
product pricing. You can be the low cost leader that
everyone can afford, the blue collar service
provider, or the play thing of the rich. There are
several factors to consider - the size of the
market at your positioned price, the competition at
that price, and how you will handle the image issue
necessary to convey that positioning (we'll get into
Image next).


Keep in mind that there is often more money in
positioning your product at the high end instead of
at the low end. I'm reminded of what my mother use to
tell me, "Paul, it's just as easy to fall in love with a
rich girl as it is a poor one,"...










Image

Image is a lot of things. It's how you wear your hair.
It's the location of your office, it's furniture, the
color and make of your vehicles, the clothes you
have on, how you answer the phone, your business
cards, and the look of your letterhead. Consistency
is the key. Obviously, if you're selling high cost
business services you'll need a classier look than if
you're selling earthworms to fishermen. But it
should still be consistent across the board.


Your letterhead logo should match logo on your
business cards. Your high priced stationary
suggests you should be wearing high priced suits.
The typeface on your brochures should match the
typeface in your ads. All your marketing copy and
materials should have a common tread or link
between them. EVERYTHING should be tied together.


Here's the hooker. It's all too easy to over-do or
under-do the image thing. What you determine is
enough doesn't mean much. It's your buyers and the
marketplace that will evaluate your image. For the
most part, they won't tell you how you rated, not
directly at least. But it will, of course, affect your
sales in the long run.


It's probably better to over-do things a bit than to
under-do it. People are quick to notice bad.
They're indifferent to AVERAGE or SLIGHTLY ABOVE.
It takes SPECIAL to get noticed.


Below, rate your (1) office; (2) the personal
appearance of you and your staff; (3) your marketing
materials; and (4) your business cards/stationary,
etc. for a consistent image. There's no right answer
here. The purpose is only to take a critical look at
your current image.







------------------------------------

3. Strategy Development


Goals

Goals are big picture wants, while objectives are
more specific and measurable.

Example goals include:


       *     SEPARATING YOURSELF FROM THE COMPETITION

       *     DEFINING AND DEVELOPING A UNIFORM IMAGE

       *     CREATING AN INDUSTRY SPOKESPERSON WITHIN
             YOUR COMPANY

       *     MAKING SALES CALLS MORE EFFECTIVE


Write down 3 - 5 goals you have. Don't just go for
more profits, instead, list goals that lead the
company toward better cash flow.


1.

2.

3.






Objectives



Here are some sample objectives:


* CONTACT EVERYONE IN ALL YOUR DATABASES 5 TIMES
EACH YEAR

* MAIL 500 PIECES OF COMPANY MARKETING COPY EACH
MONTH

* HAVE ARTICLE REPRINTS OUT IN TIME FOR THE NEXT
TRADE SHOW


List  3 - 5 of your own objectives below:


1.

2.

3.

4.

5.




Percentages

It's important to allocate resources for your
marketing effort. Resources could be dollars, hours,
people, or all three. That decision is yours.



Enter your units (hours, dollars, etc.) here
____________



% spent on/with existing or past customers/clients
_____________


% spent on/with specific potential customers or
leads ______________


% spent on industry PR (articles/press releases
etc.) _____________



       (TOTAL FROM ABOVE SHOULD EQUAL 100%)







Next, let's split advertising from other marketing
and PR functions. One of the first things companies
tend to do is run ads. That's part of the marketing
picture and it's important to know the percentage of
dollars (or whatever) it will require relative to all
other PR/marketing activities. While you can always
count on getting in print with an ad, its cost can be
high enough to cripple other marketing activities.


% spent on ad programs     ____________


% spent on everything else  ____________







Expense Budget

A great number of marketing programs fail because
the person in charge doesn't have an expense budget
to work within. When sending out a press release,
newsletter, etc. the marketing person needs to know
how much he can spend, and then have the authority
(and funds) to do just that.


For example, the total costs associated with the
first class mailing of 5000 four-color, 6 page
newsletters followed-up with a telephone call are
large. Compare that to the simple bulk mailing of a
two page, photocopied newsletter.


Want more? Should press releases go on special 2
color letterhead, or will plain paper do? Decisions
regarding quality and quantity must be made. What's
the monthly expense budget for stamps, copies,
printing, etc.? Will it be $300 or $3000?


Excluding things like salaries, trade show expenses,
travel, etc., what amount of money are you willing to
use for marketing production and distribution each
month?


Enter your figure here _____________






Trade Shows

Trade Shows are very important marketing
functions. They're also often very expensive. Much
can be done to make those dollars work harder for
you. Just don't show up at a show and hand out
brochures. There are things that should be done
before, during, and after the show. We're not going
to delve into all those things here. This section is
simply here to help you realize that some major
outpouring of resources will be necessary to handle
a trade show correctly.


All you need to do on this page is list the trade
shows you plan on attending, and the dates of these
shows.








Crisis Planning

You can count on a crisis happening. It could be your
crisis, your competitor's crisis, or a crisis for
everyone. For example, if you're in the
environmental consulting business, you can almost
count on a major oil spill happening somewhere in
the near future. Your firm should be ready to
immediately react to the new spill and be the first
to tell the public media, (TV, newspapers, etc.)
exactly what the problem is and what the possible
solutions are. This could get you national headlines
- if you're prepared for this opportunity.


If the bad news concerns your company, your
marketing team needs to know what to say and what
not to say. Then they need to start repairing the
damage before you lose all your customers. The
trick is to be prepared before it happens!



List a few outside happenings that you could pre-
package.


1.

2.

3.



----------------------------

4. Scheduling


Now comes the serious stuff! List the marketing
tasks you've planned for each of the next 6 months.
Month 3 might include:


       Send out our new computer article to 25
magazines (estimated cost: $150)

       Write an article about the new software
interface

       Complete draft 2 of our fall newsletter for
mailing next month

       Complete the new press kit

       Place a new ad in the leading trade magazine
(estimated cost: $1000)

       Write a press release about our product, send
out 500 copies (cost: $250)

       Add 50 new names into the marketing database



MOST IMPORTANTLY!!  --  meet with marketing team on
the 15th of the month to insure all parties are still
working on the same set of priorities.


Now it's your turn. Remember that month 1 will often
be filled with creating databases, setting
priorities, interviewing and meeting staff
members/executives and hands on training on the
company's product for the writers and marketing
staff. Create your schedule for the next 3 - 6
months.

Month #1              Month #2                    Month #3






------------------------------------------

SECTION III


Reference Guide


                             Table of Contents - Section III

Almost Free! (Mktg Advice)
Sales vs. Marketing
Strategic vs. Tactical Mktg
Test Your Entrepreneurial
Poor Mktg Kills Great Idea



THE FOLLOWING ARE NOT IN THE SHAREWARE VERSION:

14 Guerrilla Mktg Tricks
Marketing Strategies
Client Focused Ads
Press Releases
Newsletters
Advantage Marketing
Trade Show Tips & Tricks
Getting The Most For Your Trade Show Dollar




-------------------------------

Almost FREE! (Marketing Advice)


That FREE in the title, it got your attention,
didn't it? Everyone loves to get something free and
smart marketing people know that and use it to
generate sales. It's just one little marketing trick
you can use to turn your hobby or your
entrepreneur dream into a successful business. If
you're already in business, it might mean the
difference between staffing up and moving to new
offices. Perhaps it could provide the extra dollars
to take a quick vacation to Europe this summer.

Very few businesses understand marketing and the
role it plays in their operation. Too often marketing
simply means cold calling, running an occasional
advertisement and joining the local Chamber of
Commerce. It's too often an unstructured, on-the-
side activity that gets mixed results. Successful
businesses, even those seeking just 15 minutes of
glory like the pet rock folks, know that marketing is
the essence of all business.

Marketing, which includes sales, should consume 1/3
of your resources. The other 2/3 should be split
between product or service, and administration. If
you spend 6 months and 1 million dollars developing
your product, you should spend similar time and
money marketing it. The golden rule: allow as much
(dollars, energy, time etc.) for marketing as you did
for product development/support. Also, develop a
written strategy plan or flow chart for your
marketing, just as your manufacturing division
operates under.

Consider your marketing dollars an investment, not
an expense. Investments often take time to pay-off.
Expenses, on the other hand, are short term
operating costs. Marketing is not a short term
thing, its purpose it to build up the business's
equity. Need more convincing? Suppose you could
purchase the exclusive rights to the Coca Cola name
for 100 dollars. Think of the millions of dollars that
name could generate for you. Now tell me, was that
100 dollars you used to purchase the Coca Cola
name an investment or an expense? For decades the
Coca Cola people have been plugging the Coca Cola
name. Haven't we just decided owning that name is an
investment, not an expense? For all those long
years Coca Cola has been INVESTING in marketing
their name. Today that investment is worth millions!

Golden Rule #2 is to market continuously. The big
wave will get notices briefly, but it's soon
forgotten. It's the little waves that over time
create and move beaches and mountains. Beach goers
expect to find the beach always at the same spot.
They don't like surprises when they get there.
Buyers are the same. Mark Twain said, "familiarity
breeds contempt and children." He was kidding about
the contempt, but it does take a feeling of ease,
comfort and trust between two people to begin
breeding. It is just as true between buyers and
sellers. Find an effective place to advertise and
advertise there regularly. Consistency is more
important than flash, use a small ad, but run it
frequently. Let the ad readers get familiar and
comfortable with you. That's when they'll begin
buying! While they're warming up to you, don't expect
them to save your telephone number and address.
Only when they're ready to buy will they demand such
details. If they know where to find your ad, i.e., in
every issue of the GREENSHEET, they've as good as
got your telephone number memorized! Give your
potential buyers ads they can depend upon. When the
trust and feel comfortable with your ads, they'll
feel the same way toward you!

                                           ###


--------------------------------

Sales vs. Marketing


Do you have a handle on your marketing?  Make sure
you're not failing to differentiate between SALES
and MARKETING. The following letter explains:

Dear Sales/Marketing Manager,

There's a sign above my desk that reads: LUCK IS
WHERE PREPARATION MEETS OPPORTUNITY. It's a
reminder that should be above every sales
manager's desk --including yours.

You're certainly well aware that any sale you, or
your sales team, makes is the result of seeing an
opportunity in the form of a customer's need and
being prepared to satisfactory that need. Some
might view the resulting transaction as a matter of
luck, but you know better. It's preparation, and an
outstanding sales team, that brings results.

MARKETING is those things you do to facilitate
SALES. It helps to bring additional opportunities in
the form of customer inquiries to your doorstep. It
simplifies the salesperson's task by pre-selling the
customer. After the sale, it functions to keep past
customers satisfied and coming back, thus freeing
up the sales team to concentrate on new business.

Unfortunately, too many people confuse sales with
marketing. The two are very different. The
personalities and skills of people working in each
are very different. It's a serious mistake to let
your marketing pros try to sell and your sales
experts try to market.

Is your marketing (i.e. sales support) as rock firm
as your sales department? If it isn't, you're
cheating your salespeople out of sales and lost
commissions, and your company out of a healthier
bottom line and a larger, more secure, market share.

Ask yourself the following: Does your sales
literature stress user benefits instead of product
features? Do the editors of your industry's trade
magazines have your company's name and products
always on the tip of their tongue (and word
processor)? Your brochures should tell - your
cover letters should sell. Do they? Every pitch
used by your sales team should also be in some sort
of written brochure or flier and used in either the
pre or post-sales follow-up. Is it?

Marketing begins with new, hard hitting sales
letters and brochures. It expands into developing
and maintaining a PR/media data base and mailing
list. In its full form it's a ongoing, never ending,
behind the scenes factory of newsletters, press
releases, trade magazine articles (and reprints),
case studies, technical presentations, sales
letters, follow-up letters, brochures, trade show
strategies, product reviews, product rollouts,
product photographs, executive interviews, and, of
course, skillfully worded advertising.

XYZ Corp. has been providing those kinds of
marketing and copywriting services to companies
like yours for the past seven years. Here's four
reasons why you should be utilizing XYZ Corp. for
your sales support functions: 1) unlike others in
their field, XYZ Corp. staffers have technical,
engineering, and computer backgrounds; 2)
outsiders, like XYZ Corp., provide an injection of
new ideas, enthusiasm, and fresh insights that in-
house staffers lose over time; 3) XYZ Corp. rates
are 30% to 60% less than what agencies charge; 4) We
contacted you. This letter is part of an aggressive
marketing program of my own -- and you only want to
do business with marketing companies that practice
what they preach!

Sincerely,

XYZ Corp.

P.S. - I've enclosed a reply card (a must-have
marketing tool) to simplify advancing to the next
step. But time is money for both your company and
for me, so why not just pick up the telephone and
call me right now at 713/486-1587?

                                           ###



----------------------------------

Strategic vs. Tactical Marketing


In much the same way that friendship is the least
appreciated aspect of love, marketing is the least
understood aspect of business. Marketing
strategies that work for Company A may not work for
Company B. Simple marketing tips, like trying to
explain why lime green walls are inappropriate from
a marketing and company positioning viewpoint
doesn't always sink into the thick skulls of some
neanderthal bosses. Attempting to explain to a
computer programmer turned software developer why
he needs a marketing and PR staff and fewer
programmers is mighty tough. The fact that IBM
seems to consist mostly of account
representatives, and that the millionaires behind
the pet rock craze made their money purely by
marketing, rarely carries the significance it
deserves.

Most businesses owners consider marketing to be
one or more of the following: hiring a salesman,
running an advertisement, a Yellow Pages listing,
joining the local chamber of commerce. These kinds
of business leaders have no overall marketing plan,
just a series of disjointed, nearly random actions
that may or may not work. The fact these businesses
got started and are still in business was probably
more a matter of luck and circumstances rather than
business skill. There's nothing wrong with luck and
circumstance, we all could benefit greatly by
receiving more of each, but after they help get you
on your way your business deserves better from
you.

To achieve maximum successful requires a
dedication to marketing in terms of time, resources,
people and money. It also requires an organized
approach. Marketing, simply because it is somewhat
nebulous, needs to have structure and organization
imposed upon it. When thus configured it can be
addressed in a businesslike and analytical fashion.

The first step to serious marketing is strategic in
nature. Block out hours of time to develop a
marketing strategy. Decide what it is you're selling,
what makes it unique and what message or image you
constantly want to communicate. Then develop a
marketing budget for each month. Be reasonable,
remember marketing should be 1/3 of your business.
Now explore what you can do with those dollars each
month. How can they best be spent? How can the
dollars and projects of last month be tied into this
month's marketing? How can we track the results of
those efforts? Finally, write it all down in a formal
marketing document you can refer to and follow for
the next several months. Do exactly what your
document says to do, don't get back into the habit of
randomly trying different marketing tools. If a new
marketing channel develops work it into your next
marketing document. Don't impulse buy with your
marketing dollars - stick with the program.

The strategic side of marketing is all talk and
planning. It's necessary, but it's just foundation
work. Unless you put the plan into action, it's just
words on paper. Strategic marketing is planning,
tactical marketing is doing. Tactical marketing is
writing those press releases, newsletters and new
brochures your marketing plan has assigned. It's
making those specified 10 cold calls per day,
designing that image building logo and running those
ads in the magazines. It's doing a mass mailout and
secondary mailout follow-up, and then writing
thank-you notes to the people that responded and
purchased your product.

Strategic marketing requires creative thinkers and
planners. Tactical marketing needs doers. Meanwhile,
someone else must be maintaining or building your
product, while still another person is seeing to all
the administrative chores (hiring, firing, buying,
accounting, etc.) running a business requires.

If you want to be an entrepreneur you must be
prepared to wear all those hats when you first
begin. Not everyone can or wants to do that. Yes,
being your own boss can be rewarding and exciting,
but sometimes just being an employee watching out
over only one aspect of the big picture seems very,
very appealing.

                                           ###


--------------------------------

Test Your Entrepreneurial Skills


Almost everyone comes up with one or two million
dollar ideas at least once during their life.
Unfortunately between the million dollar ideas are
dozens of flops. Whether it's luck or skill the true
entrepreneurs of the world seem to pick the
winners. What about you? Can you tell the mega-hits
from the mega-flops?

Consider This: In Texas and surrounding oil states
there are thousands and thousands of families who
receive oil and/or natural gas production royalty
income checks from producing wells drilled on family
property. Often the income, like the property, was
inherited and the recipients don't know much about
the well, the property, or the oil business.

From time to time there are stories in the
newspapers about royalty interest holders getting
cheated out of some of their rightful income by
shady petroleum companies. Also, oil and gas wells
give out over time so royalty income should
naturally decline.

Now, here we go. You believe there are a reasonable
number (from a marketing perspective) of royalty
holders who suspect they are being ripped off and
would spend about 30 dollars to test their
suspicions. It might be a real window of opportunity
without any known competition to drive down your
profits. As a geologist you know how to access
state records showing actual petroleum production
for leases your potential customers might have an
royalty ownership interest in. Your idea is to send
them copies of the lease's petroleum production
figures for 5 dollars per month (with a six month
minimum). That's 30 dollars.

You begin your business venture by placing ads in
the county-wide, local, weekly newspapers in the
sparsely populated, oil rich counties of West Texas.
You also run a much more expensive ad in the monthly
Texas Farm and Range Magazine which has a
circulation of about 140,000. The ads ask the reader
if he/she suspects they're being cheated out of
petroleum royalty income. It tells them that for as
little as 30 dollars they can find out for certain. It
asks them to send for a free brochure. Your
overhead costs are tiny: a few ads, membership in a
petroleum industry library, a few stamps, etc.


Question: This is the kind of project that could fall
into your lap. You decide, is this a good project and
will it make you money?

Answer: The wise entrepreneur would give this a
thumbs down. The newspaper ads actually produced a
few responses (well under a dozen). The magazine ad
resulted in exactly two requests for brochures.
None of the brochures mailed out resulted in any
incoming checks. Why?

Lessons Learned: (1) The target market, suspicious
royalty holders, was too scattered to be easily
targeted and approached via this type of marketing
(2) Perhaps the target market wasn't as large or as
worried as thought (3) No one else appeared to be
doing anything like this. It's safer to copy and
improve upon someone else's success than to try to
start one on your own. Maybe there's a good reason
why no one else is doing it! (4) Find a product or
service with an obviously larger customer base -
i.e. car owners, home owners, city dwellers, hungry
people, etc.

Well, did you pass the test? Is your money still safe
in the bank or did you spend it on empty
advertising?

                                           ###


-------------------------------------

SECTION IV


Meet PROTEC


Paul Oman, this book's author and president of
PROTEC, would very much like the opportunity to
work with you and your company. If your needs
include a marketing (plan) audit, marketing strategy
development, implementation of your marketing plan,
or business copywriting, contact PROTEC at:


                                       Box 590011
                                    Houston, TX 77259
                              713/486-1587 (voice and fax)

Other business/mktg books by Paul Oman:


PURSUING THE $10,000,000 DREAM -
       Vol.1  The Lifestyle
       Vol.2  Tips & Tricks
       Vol.3  How To - How Come

Each volume includes 25 essays for the self-
employed entrepreneur. Several of these essays can
be found in the essay portions of this book.

COST: $10 per volume (includes S&H)

