MARKETING SUPPORT

"Years of proven experience in a wide variety of sales and marketing functions makes the SMS client representative an important extension of client marketing teams."

Market Research
Customized, applied marketing research projects are individually undertaken that range from relatively simple emerging and existing market need identification activities to more complex assessments of specific market needs and analyses of the dynamic technological and competitive forces at work complete with time-line projections, recommended promotional activities, and budgets. These projects help clients determine the probabilities of success given the product and/or service advantages and the resources available.

Program Development
To promote clear and effective thinking as well as to control costs, it's very important that all marketing activities be considered as component parts of a coordinated annual marketing support plan with stated objectives, schedules, and allocated budgets. While SMS market support plans are very complete and detailed, they can and should be modified if an opportunity arises that will be more advantageous. Frequently, publications offer special distribution, lower rates, free mailing lists, buying intention surveys, bench mark studies or similar valuable incentives that require a reevaluation of planned activities. To accommodate these and other valid opportunities, SMS personnel check monthly with each client to reconfirm scheduled placements.

Consulting
Many marketing and sales organizations continue to operate in the same manner year after year regardless of competitive and market changes, however subtle. As sales and marketing costs continue to increase significantly, corporate assessment of better and newer marketing and sales strategies can lead to refreshed vitality, reduced costs, and improved performance. A natural and logical outgrowth of an SMS Situation and Opportunity Analysis is the development of new strategies with tactics designed to make better use of corporate resources, both human and financial, by balancing the elements of the sales and marketing mix, so that each component performs the function that does best and most economically. SMS is a highly experienced management, marketing, and sales resource for company presidents and operating officers of high-technology and industrial companies who wish to evaluate and improve corporate performance.

Competitive Analysis
SMS client representatives closely monitor the activity of hundreds of trade journals. Keeping current with the industry's ever changing dynamics helps keep the client representative and their clients in the forefront of their industries. Competitive analysis can be valuable in spotting competitive, or industry, trends; and allows SMS clients to adjust programs to meet or counter the activity.

Market Analysis Tools
Given the array of marketing activities that range from space advertising to trade show to personal sales contacts and beyond, it's very easy for any program to become unbalanced and to use the wrong activities to achieve objectives for which they were never intended. Inexpensive SMS "Buck's Stuck Here" mailers sample a client's prospects and potential prospects industry. Through a short questionnaire, clients can poll prospects in an anonymous straightforward fashion.