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It's Important!
The February 2007 Harvard Business Review contains an article entitled, "How managers' everyday decisions create - or destroy - your company's strategy".
This thought is at the heart of the
Our focus is on "hard skills". These are the skills associated with managing the business as opposed to managing people - though we recognise that the two are inextricably intertwined - in fact, the need to take an holistic perspective is one of the recurring themes of our courses.
HappyAtom works with organisations in a number of ways. Our Services page provides more detail. Briefly, we provide training - development of materials, train-the-trainer, delivery - and consulting services.
Marketing Training
From marketing planning training through to finance, HappyAtom offers a unique approach to gaining sustainable competitive advantage.
Marketing Training is NOT just for Marketing Staff
At HappyAtom we believe that Marketing is a whole approach to business. In the words of Peter Doyle:
"Many companies do not understand that marketing is a business philosophy that requires a complete change in attitudes and practices for everyone in the organisation."
It is our belief - and there is strong evidence to support this - that organisations that practise the "marketing concept" are more successful. This depends on an acknowledgement that marketing is the responsibility of everyone in the organisation. Marketing training should be within the curriculum of every manager.
However, one cannot expect positive results unless responsibility is accompanied by knowledge, skills and understanding. Not to mention attitude. Training is essential.
HappyAtom provides a wide range of marketing training. The training may be split into 3 broad areas according to the target audience:
- senior management - the most important marketers in any business must be the senior managers; they must set the direction and define what it is that the company should offer, by:
- assessing the competiitive position
- market segmentation
- differentiation and positioning
- brand development and valuation
- non-marketing staff - the focus here is on ensuring that staff understand the factors affecting customer buying decisions and how they as individuals can have an impact. Typical topics might include: the importance of brand and how it is developed, establishing and maintaining good customer relationships etc.
- marketers - HappyAtom also provides more "technical" marketing training, covering aspects such as:
- direct mail
- brand development
- developing market plans
- forecasting and budgeting
We also have expertise in finance and strategy. This expertise provides a more balanced approach to our training:
- Finance - much of marketing is concerned with intangibles such as brand and customer relationships; assets which don't appear on the balance sheet and yet are probably the most important drivers of financial performance. Furthermore investments such as advertising that build long-term brand recognition (eg KitKat's pre-eminence is built on half-a-century of promotion) are treated by accountants as expenditure and so depress profits for the current year. So, marketing assets aren't recognised and investments reduce profits - marketers need financial skills to make sense of these anomalies; enter value management!
- Strategy - to many people, strategy IS marketing strategy. The HappyAtom approach brings together the perspectives and knowledge from all areas of strategy. A particularly significant area for marketing people that we address is: differentiation and we consider 16 different approaches. Moreover, we illustrate how the Balanced Scorecard can aid the implementation of marketing plans
