Marketing Training

We offer a variety of marketing training courses, all of which are customised for your company needs.

So, if you are an accountant, or a lawyer or any other service company we will not spend time discussing how to market widgets or other physical products. Instead our focus will be on how to market your company's services.

Our training is aimed at small and medium sized businesses who cannot afford to set up a full-size marketing department staffed with MBAs and professional marketers. Our training team have experience in a wide variety of organisations.

Current courses offered include:

Marketing Planning - How to prepare an effective Marketing Plan.
This course explains the reasons why all companies should prepare a marketing plan to guide their actions, and the steps needed to produce a plan that is effective and usable.

We also offer a Marketing Planning mentoring support service, where we will help your marketers formulate their own plans using best practice templates.

Marketing Analysis
This course takes the Marketing Planning a stage further by teaching advanced analysis tools and techniques that can help you understand your business position. Techniques covered include SWOT and PEST analyses, Sensitivity Analysis, the Ansoff Matrix, the Boston Consultancy Group Matrix (including its relevance for product portfolio planning and profitability studies), Value Chain analysis and more.

Scenario Planning - preparing for the next 10 years or more.
The part is an open book. It is the future that companies need to worry about. Our Scenario Planning course shows why most current methods for planning for the future cannot work in an era of rapid change. We also show that there are tools that can be used to anticipate and prepare for the future - and show how the most popular tool, Scenario Planning can be used by all organisations to prepare for their future. This course assumes that participants have a full understanding of their business environment.

Competitor Analysis
A key skill for sales people, marketers and business owners, our current programme will train your people not only to understand current techniques but to realise that the only reason customers don't buy from your business is that they find your competitors more attractive!

Business Advantage is a programme that combines effective sales and marketing training with effective customer care and marketing support.

For more information on any of our marketing training courses contact us today

Marketing Planning

Supporting companies in their marketing planning activities, and acting as an objective external view / sounding board for the company. Helping companies prepare for the future.

We support company marketing planning by providing:

SWOT and other analytical support required as a preliminary stage before creating a marketing plan.

An objective reality check. Is the plan workable and feasible. Often marketing planners are too close to their companies to be totally objective. As outside specialists we can spot where problems can arise by companies being subjective - even if they believe that they are objective.

Supporting your staff in producing a marketing plan. We use standard approaches for preparing marketing plans - based on best practice as described in the marketing literature. This service includes our mentoring service where we will be contactable to answer any problems or issues that arise during the planning and implementation stages of the marketing plan.

Market research required to formulate elements of the marketing plan.

Decision Making

SWOT analysis and value chain analysis - looking at what the company is good at, where the company needs to improve, where the profits come from and where savings can be made.

Once the analysis has been completed, it is then time to make that critical decision...

Many people believe that in today's rapidly changing world it is becoming well nigh impossible to plan for the future. Some would even view it as a waste of time. Within the UK there is a debate about whether the UK should enter European Monetary Union and embrace the euro. In other markets different issues are hot topics. The common feature is that the future is uncertain. Nevertheless businesses do need to anticipate the future. And they need to look 5, 10 or more years ahead. Pharmaceutical companies do this on a routine basis - planning for when a key patent expires. But all businesses need to look forward.

Traditional methods for anticipating the future extrapolate from the present. The problem with this approach is that the further forward one goes the greater the error - and thus the greater the risk of making a mistake. With the speed of change in some industries, extrapolation beyond 2 or 3 years is not even possible. (There are many examples of how business leaders have got it wrong in their predictions of the speed of technology.

Scenario Planning is a technique that overcomes these problems. It is a methodology that allows practitioners to prepare for the future by looking at trends in the present and mapping how these interrelate with each other. From this study, a number of scenarios picturing possible future worlds are drafted, along with a description of how these futures could arise. Businesses then plan around these - with contingency plans for undesirable elements. Key change indicators are monitored and used to gauge how events are turning out.

Edison can help you anticipate the future by training your staff in the scenario planning technique. We can also work alongside you in drafting up scenarios for your industry, business and for competition.

Specific decision making techniques, such as Ishikawa, cause and effect and decision tree are also featured along with current software applications.

Market Research

Finding out what the market thinks, what customers think, what suppliers think. Using questionnaires, telephone surveys, personal interviews and mystery shopping, etc.

Our market research services enable companies to evaluate their position in their marketplace.
We will advise you on how to find the information you need to compete - whether this involves desk (or secondary) research or primary research.

We will interview customers, suppliers, prospects and other interested parties to identify perceptions, expectations and attitudes towards, you, your market or your products and services.

Are you interested in knowing what competitors charge for their products or how customers perceive your service? Our Mystery Shopping service can help you identify the issues.

Perhaps you are not selling as effectively as you believe you should be. We can help you find out why - by identifying the messages you deliver to customers, and how customers perceive your company and products.

You may wish to move into a new location or business area. Our research will help you decide whether there is a demand for your service.

Our Market Research services can also supplement our more targeted business intelligence research services by giving you a wider picture of your total industry.

SME Support

SME business support and mentoring - acting as an external advisor to the small business for all its marketing activities.

Small and medium sized businesses may lack the staff and budgets to launch a full-blown marketing campaign available to larger organisations.
Small and medium sized businesses may not need to pay dividends to shareholders, or pay close attention to their share price - but in most other respects their needs are similar to the major corporations. Both types of organisation need to find customers, work with suppliers, set prices and promote products. As a result in many respects their marketing needs are also similar, except in scale.

We offer a number of services to help SMEs in their marketing. These include our customised training support for marketing planning - where we are very aware of the need to keep within a small budget - and our mentoring services where we offer customers advice on how to make the most of their marketing effort.