the marketing consultant's procedure for planning a strategy
The meeting with the client
Yes, obviously the first step in the process of creating a marketing strategy is the meeting with the client. Be careful: I speak of meeting in the singular, but it is certainly not said that a half-hour appointment is enough to have all the information necessary to start creating a marketing strategy. In fact, in most cases we speak of meetings and hours , because there is almost always a lot of meat on the fire.
What does the consultant do?
When the consultant meets with the client, the former opens his ears wide and starts actively listening to the company's history (if there is one), the descriptions of the services and products, the difficulties usefulness of self employed database encountered, the explicit objectives and so on. The consultant, in this phase, must ask, understand and take notes: this is certainly not the place to take the floor and start making explanations. Here we are still, in fact, in the phase of pure information gathering.
Start from data analysis
After the meeting with the client, the consultant produces a quote , proposes it and, if this is accepted, we move on to the second phase of creating the marketing strategy. Those who choose to do without a consultant, obviously, automatically skip this entire preliminary phase: this does not mean, however, that there is no need to ask the right questions.
Anyway, we come to the second step, namely data analysis . And here, ladies and gentlemen, there is no joking: we are now in the most important moment of strategic work.