Marketing

We grow businesses. All sizes, industries, products and services. Because we know business.

Let us take the mystery out of marketing for you!

Marketing planning is the best investment you can make in your business! It is your blueprint for success. Without a marketing plan, your organization cannot possibly make effective cost-effective decisions about how to grow your business and increase your profits.

We can save you time and money!

At Dark Horse Strategies, we help our clients determine:

• if your current marketing strategies and tactics are working
• which product markets to enter/exit
• which customer segments to target
• which geographical locations to serve
• how to effectively communicate with your customers
• effective cost-efficient use of the web for your marketing purposes
• which promotional tools and techniques best suit your needs
• how to get the most bang for your advertising/media bucks
• how to achieve increased sales
• what data is necessary to understand your markets
• how to develop, manage and get the most from your marketing budget

We deploy a five step process:

1. find out what needs fixing (Marketing Audit)
2. clarify your current environment – customers, competitors, industry (Market Research)
3. develop your plan (Marketing Plan)
4. implement the marketing strategies and tactics (Implementation)
5. on-going follow-up and support (Ongoing Support)

While every client may not need to help in every part of the above process, we at Dark Horse Strategies can guarantee that your business needs help in at least one of these steps. Let us help you!

Marketing Audit

Dark Horse Strategies will evaluate your company's ability to market its products and services. We'll help you identify areas that need work.

• Pricing strategy: Is the price you've selected appropriate for the volume you wish to sell and your expected profit?
• Distribution strategy: Is your method of getting your product/service to your customer efficient and effective?
• Product strategy: Have you attempted to build customer loyalty and increase revenues through innovative changes to the services and products you offer?
• Promotion strategy: Do you advertise when sales begin to soften, or do you follow a focused plan that outlines who your ads should reach, what the ads should say, and how to most effectively utilize your marketing budget?

Marketing Research

• You need accurate and useful information to make smart management decisions. We help you collect information from the people who know your business inside and out: your customers and employees.
• Employee Research: The best marketing ideas always come from the front line. We can help your staff contribute new and innovative ideas.
• Competitor Research: Don't be blindsided by competitors. Stay in touch with your competition.
• Customer Research: Collecting this information is not always easy, because you must respect your existing relationship with these people. We have extensive experience collecting useful information in a tactful and professional manner.

Marketing Plan

Marketing is not rocket science, but you do have to make hard decisions. A game plan helps you develop new ideas, develop a realistic strategy, and prepare to implement your plan.

• Entering New Markets: Be prepared to make judgement calls on issues such as distribution, product features, advertising message and pricing. Take the time and effort to understand what your customers really want and how to structure your services to deliver what is required.
• Developing New Products: Ninety percent of new products fail, largely because they are not developed with the customer in mind. Customer input is necessary for developing and launching new products.
• Advertising Plans: Setting a marketing budget and determining which forms of promotion are effective can be quite frustrating. Developing an effective advertising plan requires creativity and knowledge of the vast forms of promotion available (from direct mail to radio).

We work with you to develop a marketing plan which you can implement. We will not give you a plan that just sits on a shelf and never gets used by you. Marketing is an dynamic constant in all businesses. It is important that your marketing plan be flexible and adaptable to the changing conditions facing your business in terms of clients, competitors, the industry you are in, and the economic environment in which you conduct your business.

Dark Horse Strategies also reviews existing marketing plans which are no longer viable or achievable. Together, we can help your business grow and become more profitable in significantly less time than you can accomplish if you were to attempt to do this yourself.

“Implementation is key”

~ Lori Muldowney, Dark Horse Strategies

Ongoing Marketing Support

Dark Horse Strategies provides on-going marketing support to help you implement your marketing plan or to address issues/questions you encounter as you begin to roll out your marketing activities. A typical scenario would be for Dark Horse Strategies to meet with you every month to every quarter for the first 6 months to year after your plan is developed or redesigned.

Implementation

In some situations, Dark Horse Strategies would contract to implement the marketing plan for you at your request. We would then become your “marketing department” for a specific period of time. This service helps businesses keep their costs down: they do not have to hire full-time in-house staff as the expertise can be available to them on an as-needed basis through Dark Horse Strategies. Why struggle to hire someone in-house when you can get professional highly experienced marketing support from Dark Horse Strategies? Let us help you achieve your business goals – increase profit and keep costs manageable!

With Dark Horse Strategies’ help you won't have to take time away from your business to come up with an advertising plan, do the research, compile the information and contact the media outlets in your region. You can concentrate on running your business - we'll help you get your message out!