About

Problem
Over the past few years, key metrics were stagnating and, in some cases, declining, in the all important for-profit publishing business of an international nonprofit membership association. Market Strategies Group was asked to develop a strategic marketing plan and help identify why the team was losing money.

Solution
Market Strategies Group began the process with an extensive market analysis including estimating the size of the market, understanding how the association’s publishing products and services stacked up against the competition, evaluating whether there was potential for increasing prices, and understanding how industry disruption and technology trends might impact future initiatives. To understand the market, we did extensive research including interviews with industry experts and key customers. To analyze internal performance, we applied a consumer-goods perspective to analyzing financial and customer data as well gathered feedback from those who had been involved in running the business in the past.

At the same time, Market Strategies Group worked with association personnel to understand why contribution margin had dropped precipitously over the last few years. This involved significant analysis since the financial systems at the association are geared towards traditional nonprofit financial management and not towards product-specific cost accounting.

After presenting the market analysis to the publishing team, Market Strategies Group worked with the team to create strategies for how they could go to market based on the data collected in the market analysis. This included decisions on market segmentation, targeting, positioning, what types of products and services were required to be successful, setting a pricing strategy and developing a strategic communications plan. Once the team was in agreement on the overall goals and strategies, Market Strategies Group worked with key managers to develop a series of integrated action plans, timelines and budgets for implementing the plan.

Results
The publishing team is now working from a one-year and 3-year fact-based strategic marketing plan that helps focus their ideas, activities and budgets. Some members of the team work remotely and having a documented, agreed upon plan gives team members the roadmap by which they can make decisions on what needs to get done and by when. Now, they spend their time working to execute against a plan rather than wondering whether what they want to do will have any impact on the business.