BCG Matrix The BCG Matrix is also known as Growth-Share Matrix.

The BCG Matrix (originally developed by the Boston Consulting Group) is used for developing marketing strategies and performing marketing analysis related to portfolio planning and analysis. The portfolio analyzed with the BCG Matrix is generally portfolio of products and/or services offered by the company or strategic business units (SBUs) managed by the company. In both cases the purpose of the BCG Analysis or BCG Chart / Matrix is to visually present the competitive positions of all business portfolio members. The competitive position of each portfolio member is based on its market share, market growth rate and size/revenue. This effective business analysis is used for company's current and future market analysis / estimate and competitive marketing positioning in the marketplace. By using this tool marketing managers better understand the marketplace and are able to effectively plan and optimize their current portfolio and allocate their marketing resources effectively... Customer Survey Customer Survey Dashboard - This easy to use application for excel is designed for developing customer survey questions, printing your surveys, entering customer survey responses, and analyzing and printing your dashboard report. This customer survey tool has been used by hundreds of companies for developing and managing their customer survey process... Pareto Chart The Pareto Principle also known as 80/20 principle or 80/20 rule has been applied to business analysis and decision making in variety of business disciplines such as operations management, quality management and marketing management. The application of Pareto principle in marketing is of very high importance. It helps marketing managers understand the key marketing issues, drivers and problems. The 80/20 rule applied in marketing discover important issues such as customer profitability and key business accounts driving the business profitability. It also identifies areas for improvements such as bottom customers. There are many situations in marketing management where this tool helps marketing managers. Another example is understanding distribution and promotion costs for different customers segments. The Pareto Tool easily identifies and rank different customer segments and gives an insight into the business model. Sales managers also use the Pareto Tool to better understand sales force performances and sales regions on costs and profitability. The logic behind this very simple tool is the following: Not all causes and activities produce the same amount of problems, results and opportunities... Ansoff Matrix The Ansoff Matrix is used for planning and analysis of alternatives for business growth. This matrix considers existing and new markets and existing and new products for business growth and development. The Ansoff Matrix has four quadrants: (1) Business Growth with Existing Products in Existing Markets. This approach is Market Penetration approach where the business is growing with its current product / service offerings in the current markets... GE/McKinsey Matrix GE / McKinsey Matrix is strategic and marketing management tool used for portfolio analysis. Most of the time this tool is used for analyzing portfolio of products, services, and strategic business units. GE Matrix is similar to BCG Matrix and it is an extension of the BCG Matrix approach - multifactor portfolio analysis tool. The GE Matrix compares different businesses on "Business Strength" and "Market Attractiveness" variables, plus the size of the bubbles in the matrix represents the market size instead of business sales used in the BCG Matrix. The share of the market or business sales vs. market size is represented as pie

chart inside the bubbles in the matrix. This allows business users to compare business strength, market attractiveness, market size, and market share for different strategic business units (SBUs) or different product offerings on one matrix or chart... Marketing Dashboard Frequently used marketing metrics: overall revenue/sales, revenue per customer, revenue per product/service, revenue per region, revenue per market segments, market share, profitability/margin, revenue with new customers, revenue with new products/services, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, referrals, customer complaints, customer survey responses, top and bottom customers/accounts, quality of customer service, promotion/advertising cost, promotion/advertising effectiveness, sales force performance, online leads generation, customer lifetime value, customer retention rate, customer acquisition rate... Segmentation Performing Customer Segmentation Analysis and dividing your customer base into different segments based on different criteria is a great exercise for discovering profitable segments and alternatives for growth in those segments. Customers within one customer segment have similar characteristics and are driven by similar needs and preferences. Analyzing and understanding your customer segments can give you competitive advantage in your marketplace. For example, the better you know and understand the segment the more competitive you are in developing customized offerings, products, services or simply you are able to develop better sales and marketing approach. Customer Segmentation allows you to better allocate and optimize your company wide resources... RFM for Excel RFM is a database marketing technique originally developed and used in direct marketing and retail industry. This approach can be used in any industry to support marketing and sales decisions for developing marketing and sales strategies and tactics. RFM tool is used for analyzing customer behavior and identifying customer groups with similar behaviors. Different customer groups or RFM segments behave differently on different marketing approaches such as promotions and advertising so RFM helps marketing managers develop customized marketing strategies for different RFM segments. RFM also helps with identifying who are the best / most profitable customers and who are the customers who are more likely to respond to a certain marketing strategy. RFM Analysis is a simple quantitative approach and gives marketing managers business insight into their customer base... Marketing Plan The following is a list of most frequently considered issues by marketing and sales managers. Developing marketing plan is a process of creating a roadmap for building success in the marketplace. Its about exploring the market trends and opportunities and outperforming competitors while building long-term competitive advantage... Marketing Audit Marketing Audit is an organizational marketing assessment approach with the purpose of analyzing the marketing approach. Marketing Audit is very useful exercise for any organization because it can reveal weaknesses and identify opportunities for improving the current marketing activities taken by the organization. Marketing Audit is strategic marketing assessment and goes beyond focusing on advertising or marketing campaigns but it is a tool used to analyze the overall organizational approach to marketing and selling the products and services...

Likert Survey Scale When designing a survey you always start with the goal in mind the purpose of the survey. Next is creating a list of questions (designing survey questionnaire) and deciding how the respondents will answer your survey questions. What answering options should you give to the survey respondents and how you are going to collect and analyze the survey results? Use the Likert Scale...

The BCG Matrix is also known as BCG Growth Share Matrix. The BCG Matrix tool and chart (originally developed by the Boston Consulting Group company) are used for developing marketing strategies and performing marketing analysis related to planning and analysis of portfolio of products and services (market offering). The portfolio of market offering analyzed with the BCG Matrix Tools is generally portfolio of products and services offered by the company and company's competitors. The BCG Matrix is also used for strategic analysis of company's SBUs or strategic business units. In both cases the purpose of the BCG Analysis or BCG Chart Matrix is to visually presents the competitive positions of all business portfolio members. The competitive position of each portfolio member is based on the following three marketing metrics: 1. Market Share 2. Market Growth Rate 3. Size or Revenue The BCG Matrix as an effective business analysis tool can be used for the company's current situation analysis as well as forecasting, marketing planning and estimating the future developments such as potential market positioning of new products, services or SBUs in the marketplace. By using the BCG Matrix Analysis approach business and marketing managers are able to better understand the marketplace and develop effectively plans and strategies. This business analysis helps with planning and optimizing the company's current portfolio of products and services and helps managers make better decisions on how to allocate their marketing resources efficiently and effectively. BCG Matrix Positions The BCG Matrix uses simple and yet very powerful approach to position each portfolio memeber (product, service or SBU) into the four-quadrant BCG Matrix. The four quadrants or alternative positions are: 1. Question Marks 2. Stars 3. Cash Cows 4. Dogs BCG Matrix - Question Marks The portfolio member positioned in the Question Marks quadrant of the BCG Matrix has low market share compared to other portfolio members such as competitors, SBUs, products and services. At the same

time the question mark member is doing business in high-growth market. The Question Mark position is typical for new products and services. This means that currently there are well established businesses in this market and new businesses try to grow and capture more market share. This market is growing and there are opportunities for new businesses and the market is becoming more competitive. At the same time there is a high risk involved with investing in this market and because of that the term Question Mark is used. Question Marks have to develop and grow and require continuous investments and competitiveness. The typical strategic scenario for Question Marks is increasing the market share by using resources / investments from the company's current Cash Cows. BCG Matrix - Stars Stars are the businesses, products and services with high market share compared to their competitors. Stars do business in high-growth market. Stars are market leaders. The company's successful Question Marks will hopefully grow, gain market share and will become Stars in the future (move from the BCG Matrix Question Marks Quadrant to the Stars Quadrant). Most successful and competitive business organizations have at least one Star on their BCG Matrix. Dealing with strong competition, Stars have to continuously improve their business in order to keep their leadership position in the marketplace. As long as this market is growing new Question Marks will try to capture new business. Managers should invest in order to grow revenue and gain market share and use the cash from the Cash Cows to invest. BCG Matrix - Cash Cows Cash Cows are SBUs, products and services generating most of the cash flows in business organizations. The market is not very attractive, the market growth rate is generally very low, but the Cash Cows have high market share compared to their competitors. This business generates a lot of cash from the Cash Cows and invests in other businesses, products and services to build a strong long-term portfolio. Since the market does not attract new players, this business does not need substantial investments to keep the market share. However, Cash Cows have to be strong, protect and keep the market share while maximizing the cash flow. Managers focus on keeping the strong market position and defend the current market share, take advantage of sales volume and leverage the size of operations to support other portfolio members. BCG Matrix - Dogs Dogs have very low market share and operate in low-growth market. It is unlikely that this business is very profitable and more likely Dogs are losers. Dogs do not generate substantial cash flow and have no potential to grow. Dogs need careful strategic consideration and most likely new strategy development. Potential strategies are include withdrawal from this business, selling this business, repositioning the current business and developing stronger business or optimize operations and reduce costs as much as possible. Tips for Dogs: Optimize your current operations, get rid of all current non value added activities and features. Reposition your offering to generate positive cash flow or sell this business.