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Evolving technologies, coupled with dynamic global shifts in consumer demands, threaten even the most successful brands and established producers of consumer and business products. Today’s bulletproof products can be tomorrow’s distant memory in a landscape overcrowded with options for the consumer and business dollar. In this workshop, you will learn how an organization can survive in chaotic environments through carefully executed strategic marketing practices. You’ll leave this workshop with a kit of practical tools to practice the information you gained in two short days.

It is critical to reduce the gap between strategic marketing theory and marketing practice. It is imperative for today’s marketing executives to ask

• What effect do our company’s decisions have on existing and potential customers’ desires to use our products?
• As product lines are expanded or diminished, do those decisions enhance our image or add to the customer’s confusion in an already complex marketplace?
• Do we play it safe with a brand extension or do we take the risk of pursuing a totally new product concept?

These types of decisions are made a easier with marketing strategy executed by key executives within a firm.

Learn how to execute marketing strategy by understanding the uncertainty that faces all firms today. This process will be pursued through a practical hands-on approach that permits participants to take advantage of the collective knowledge and experiences of the attendees as well as the guidance offered by a seasoned street marketer turned academic in recent years.

Learning Objectives:  

• Understand that uncertainty confronts all players in today’s marketplace
• Recognize that marketing strategy is everybody’s game – not just marketers
• Establish a significant corporate strategy as the basis of a sound marketing strategy
• Analyze the activities within the framework of strategic marketing
• Understand the steps necessary to place marketing strategy into practice
• Focus on creating value through recognizable brand image
• Use traditional marketing tools to better understand corporate position in the market
• Select a “Board of Play” based on corporate risk tolerance  
• Build a portfolio of strategic moves and know when to implement each

 Valuable Resources for the Office

• Copy of slides with your notes from the workshop
• Selected white papers discussed during sessions
• Real world examples as cases for discussion
• Newly developed conceptual models that can be applied to your situation

Who Should Attend

• Operating-level Marketing Executives
• Senior-level Managers desiring a greater understanding of marketing

About the Instructor

Mike Rich is the executive director of the Southwest Marketing Advisory Center and professor of marketing at Southwest Minnesota State University. After completing 27 years of steady advancement in industry with such firms as Eastman Kodak and Kennecott Copper, he entered academe as an assistant professor of marketing. While teaching full-time, he completed a Doctorate in Marketing at the University of Pittsburgh. Today, Mike conducts marketing research for a variety of firms, involving senior-level undergraduate and graduate marketing students through the Southwest Marketing Advisory Center that he founded in 2002.  To date, the center has completed over 200 marketing research projects.