There are a number of ways to get started using Growth Panel. Last week we tackled two scenarios: how to get started when you’re looking for a solution to an immediate marketing challenge, and getting started managing an existing marketing project. 

Another approach is to dive into the marketing content to expand your expertise in a specific subject. Most marketers and consultants have deep expertise in 3 to 5 of our subjects, along with hands-on experience in six to eight. 

Visit the Library and choose a subject to access the content you’d like to explore. After you select a subject, the exercise panel will display the core exercises you can download to execute and manage each task. Download them here and review each exercise.  You don’t have to do them all right away; just look at the tasks each exercise presents to get an overview.  This might take 30 minutes to a few hours, depending on the subject and the depth of your review. 

Marketing Content for New Expertise

I learn best when I write or type something that I’ve read, so I like to create my own summary of each exercise in my own document. Let’s take a look at Pricing.  After downloading and reviewing the exercises, my outline looks like this:

• Pricing Strategy: What are we currently using?
• Steps to determine pricing strategy
       - Match value proposition to market maturity level and market share goals
       - Understand cost structure
       - Calculate cost-of-goods sold
       - Determine desired gross profit margin
• Review main competitors’ prices and try to identify their pricing strategy
• Match competitors’ value propositions to their pricing strategies and check for alignment. Which ones directly compete with ours?
• Determine acceptable range of prices that meet profit goals
• Review process for evaluating price changes
• Determine how to assess price elasticity and how to evaluate its impact on revenue and profit

More Content in Extended Library

Next, use the side navigation pane to move to the Extended Library and Links panels to review other articles that might be useful. Each panel delivers internal and external content that expounds on the core exercises. They’re tagged as tools, reference material, books and articles. 

As an example, here’s what the Pricing section currently contains: 

• Case study on how a billion-dollar parts manufacturer approached revamping their pricing strategy
• Articles about how to use value-based pricing (for consulting firms)
• Articles and case studies on how companies set prices and approach pricing changes
• Recommended books detailing the math ties between pricing, demand, COGs and margin
• Online calculators to run instant what-if scenarios
• Price elasticity diagrams 

You can also check out the Description panel, which contains our eBook content for each subject. We’re adding an editing function soon, so you’ll have the ability to tailor the content to your company. 

Applying the Content and Tools

After completing my outline, I like to dive into an exercise and start applying it to my business.  I use the Extended Library and Links content to expand on my tasks as I’m working through them. I’ll generally set aside a solid 60 minute window for each learning session, and focus on mastering one or two key tasks at a time. 

We’ll send you alerts each month when we add new content to your Extended Library and Links panels, so you can increase your expertise as needed.

In our next post, we’ll address how to move all of your marketing management to our platform. 

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• Effective Price Management (slideshare.net)

Welcome to our new brand! 

Growth Panel is software-as-a-service (SaaS) that blends a career’s worth of marketing content with online project management. It’s a marketing platform that enables users to generate marketing solutions, add their own expertise to make it their own, and organize and manage their marketing activities.

How do we describe our space? We’re calling it Intelligent Marketing Management. Growth Panel delivers a ton of marketing content focused on marketing planning, execution, and results–all blended into an online project management application. 

We didn’t seem to fit into any of the existing slots: We’re not MRM, EMM, MOM, marketing analytics, planning, marketing automation or plain old project management. (Aren’t those acronyms terrible?) 

Since our application is completely new and different, we wanted our brand to capture the essence of what we deliver for companies and marketing consultants.

It’s a control panel for company growth. Thus, Growth Panel was born. 

The Journey 

It’s been a long journey getting to this point. We started as a group of domain experts–sales, marketing and SME executives–creating marketing structure for our SME clients (small to mid-size entities, typically under $100 MM in revenue). We quickly realized the value of our internal content and tools and transitioned them to the web for others to access. 

We added software expertise to our team, worked with our customers, and put together everything we learned to complete the transition.  Now we’re a unique SaaS offering that addresses a major pain point for most SMEs. 

Marketing Consultants

Marketers and consultants have previously used our marketing content and tools to develop marketing strategies and plans, execute tasks and grow their expertise, whether it’s for their own company or their consulting practice clients. 

Since we allow our users to put their own brand on our content and tools, consultants use it as infrastructure for their practice, whether they’re facilitating strategy, expanding tactical marketing offerings, or handling marketing planning for client companies. 

There aren’t many offerings in the marketplace that give consultants such generous rights. 

Marketing Departments

For SMEs, the value and return can be just as great. Marketing is challenging and often misunderstood. Most SMEs don’t have the bandwidth or resources to select the right marketing activities or effectively execute for successful results.  SME marketers generally have expertise in only a handful of areas, which often limits their selection of strategies and tactics. 

With Growth Panel, SMEs can access a complete array of marketing intelligence to choose the right marketing strategy and tactics, with tools their team can use for better execution. There’s nothing similar at a comparable cost. The alternatives include countless years of study and expensive training, increased headcount, or both. 

Check out our tour! We’re looking forward to continuing to help marketing teams and consultants add intelligence to their marketing management to achieve better business results!