Competitive SME : building competitive advantage through marketing excellence for small to medium sized enterprises / David Hood.

Includes index.

Competitive SME is a comprehensive guide to grasping the competitive and marketing opportunities facing small to medium size enterprises today. Inspired and driven by the EU initiative futureSMETM, it gives essential advice on how, by implementing a clear and focused strategy and using simple tools, you can survive, thrive, and compete. It outlines a simple yet effective model that will allow you to:? create and manage effective marketing and branding processes;? better engage with your market, creating and projecting real value;? increase your worth to the market with corresponding.

List of Figures and Tables; Figures; Tables; Acknowledgements; Foreword; 01 Introduction; Why you should read this book; How to use this book and what you will get from it; A straightforward seven-stage path to competitiveness through enhanced marketing; Practical book and tools; Clear definitions and direction for the SME; Why should I care about marketing? I want to know more about being exceptionally competitive!; Marketing: what it is; and just as important, what it is not; A short and essential history; Using the book in conjunction with the futureSME initiative.

02 The reality: Addressing stress for the SME owner, manager or executiveAchieving a sound sleep at night ... ; The reality for SMEs and turning things to your advantage; Reducing personal stress; Changing 'cannot' to 'can'; 03 Competitiveness and the SME: We want it; but how do we get it?; Forget 'Pareto's principle'?; What are competitiveness and creativity, in terms of their use to me?; What SMEs think about competitiveness; What marketing does for SME competitiveness; Competitive SME and marketing; OK, so where do we start? -- using the tools in this book; The marketing mix.

The marketing auditQuick marketing audit (© Copyright David James Hood: Competitive SME); Note; 04 Increasing your confidence: Leveraging what you have; Affordability; The power of 'FREE'; Communicate, communicate, communicate; Piggyback; 'I just don't have anything to say'; So what makes a great story?; How you can actually use feedback to be a major differentiator; 05 Maximizing SME management: Making better decisions: Investments and predictions; What is 'success' in managing an SME?; Knowing your direction, goals and objectives; Making decisions that matter; Strategy; Creating new markets.

Self-creating markets and the new realitySocial media communities; Strategy and measurements for decision-making; Cost-plus and cost-accounting are the enemy of the SME; Purpose; Decision-making and improving judgement; Growth v growth; Do not neglect marketing when concentrating on sales!; Customer relationship management (CRM); Incoming or 'in-bound' conversations; 06 Your unique selling proposition: Agility, the 'adaptive organization', profit and revenue improvement; Advantage and 'the product'; Resourcing to create advantage; SWOT analysis; It is a knowledge economy now!

07 Real market presence: Marketing on a budget branding, positioning and the SME; Power and your market; Assessing your market: marketing and market research; Market/marketing research template; Sources of information; The 'value proposition'; Have you fully clarified the value proposition?; The total product concept; Looking at your proposition from the OUTSIDE IN; The value matrix; Notes on using the value matrix; Statements and 'stories' supporting the value proposition; Testing the 'force' of the proposition; Steps to checking your value proposition; 'Branding' and 'imagineering'