What is the Small Business Marketing Cycle?

What is CCG's Marketing Cycle?

The biggest misconception in marketing is that it's just about developing ads or social posts to sell stuff.

Marketing is way more than that: it's a way to deepen relationships, outperform the competition, and deliver better products and services. This is done by moving a product, service, process, or idea through the Marketing Cycle.

The CCG Marketing Cycle is the cycle in which products or services move through to connect consumers. For this reason, the CCG Marketing Cycle is separated into four stages that make it easy for small businesses to navigate.

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The Marketing Cycle Phases

The Marketing Cycle is broken down into four segments:

-Research Phase

-Strategy Phase

-Launch Phase

-Monitoring Phase

The Research Phase is where market research is conducted. It will help you refine your products and gain a deeper understanding into the market your products or services are entering.

In this phase, you conduct market, consumer, and competitor research to refine your products and tailor them for a specific consumer base in a way that local competitors don't.

By the end of the Research Phase, you will know the market segment and consumer base that will most appreciate your products, services, processes, and ideas. This is called the target market and the target consumer.

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The Strategy Phase is where the data gathered in the Research Phase is used to strategize how to align specific products to specific customers.

Strategies help you find the most lucrative way of connecting your product, service, process, or idea to your chosen market and consumer base. In the strategy phase, you will find the best way to operate, fund and market products to make the most money in the most efficient way.

The main output of the strategy phase are operational, financial, and marketing strategies. These strategies will not only help you identify the operations, financials and marketing responsibilities needed to manage your products, but they will also include ways to help you outperform competition.

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The Launch Phase is where the products or services are introduced to the market and target consumer base through an implementation strategy. The Launch Phase is where you can penetrate a new market, attract and engage with customers, deepen relationships, and create brand loyalty and community. This phase is where you actively execute the strategy steps.

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The Monitoring Phase is where you manage the actual performance of the launch. This is where you see how your strategy performs in the market and if it hits metrics. To do this, you select Key Performance Indicators and Thresholds that measure your expected or wanted success and then compare the actual performance against your expectations. This will give you a picture of how well your products are performing. This is also the phase where you identify any areas that can be improved.

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Each Phase of this Marketing Strategy depends on the other. A strong strategy cannot be created without strong research. A launch will have very little impact if there isn't a strong strategy supporting it. For this reason, it is important to not skip any steps.

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