Tufts classes are now deep into their second week, and my Marketing students are equally deep into their projects with 5-6 students assigned to each.  In my consistent theme of "Marketing is Everything", which has been in my head, my writing, and basically everything I do in Sales and in Marketing, all my students are exploring and most importantly beginning to organize what will become fully developed marketing plans 10 weeks from now.  

Like any well-organized novel or research paper or business plan, there must be a natural "flow" of material in any Winning Marketing Plan taking the reader from an understanding of the markets, various product offerings and most importantly, the defined personas and their value propositions ultimately "flowing" down to the tactical implementations, their respective expenses and the forecasted sales those tactics will produce.  All of this in a very tightly developed document that's both easy to understand and highly impactful in driving revenue.  

Important concepts to always think through 

• "Marketing is Everything".  The hard part is making the choices from "everything"
• Marketing has only one purpose: drive sustained revenue from specific personas
• Marketing must have a financial ROI: cost of a lead over time equals degree of sales velocity

At this time of year at Tufts it's Innovation Month as the Derby Entrepreneurship Center reaches out across all our 10 schools and thousands of students to get them interested and signing up for our classes, workshops, clubs and especially our myriad of events.  Having said that, of course, every other department, every student club and every athletic department is doing the same thing all of which is happening at exactly the same time that a heavy load of brand-new academic demands is occurring.  The question was then raised and quickly answered by the brilliant and experienced management of the Center, which was free tacos. 

Marketing & Free Tacos 

- 200+ students

-exceptional personal contacts were made

-informal, and also highly organized

- low cost: tacos and water

- music

- 2 minute talks from real student-entrepreneurs

- everyone gave emails for future marketing 

- professors answering questions 

Marketing is in fact "everything"

The opportunity in all marketing work is how to make the correct choices out of "everything" and figure out the correct ROI for what you need.  What we know from our work at Tufts and from our decades of work in consulting is that the concept of "free" itself in product offerings or in "free trials" rarely works, but free food most often does. 

Have a great weekend!!!

MARKETING SUCCESS IS MAKING CHOICES...AND MEASURING EVERYTHING!

Just some thoughts for a Friday morning to think about over what looks like a spectacular weekend with fall right around the corner, and, yes, the leaves are already turning in Vermont where I am working this morning!

At any time, if you want to discuss your own marketing planning for the rest of this year, just connect with me for some quick ideas and feedback. There's no cost to a call or two, plus I love listening and talking about this new rapidly changing world of marketing, which is nothing like the old days of 2020! 

In the meantime, take a look at our 2022 edition of our Writing the Winning Marketing Plan in 2022.

www.derbymanagement.com  
Derby Entrepreneurship Center@Tufts.