Marketing

There is a common misconception that marketing and advertising is one and the same thing, but marketing actually runs much deeper than a cleverly crafted advertisement and spans a much wider subset of considerations including the method of delivery, what to sell and where to sell it and how to price and promote. At the most basic level a clear marketing strategy helps to get your business’ product/services into the eyes of the customers you are targeting at the right price and through the right channel.

The Four Ps

If you have read about or heard about marketing techniques in business you most likely already have some knowledge of the “4 Ps”.  These “4 Ps” Product, Place, Price and Promotion (aka the marketing mix) provide a useful framework to reference when thinking about and developing a marketing strategy:

• Product – Product should get you thinking about the product/service that you are offering in the market. Are you breaking new ground with this and thus creating an entirely new market? Or are you simply looking to expand an existing one?  What are your key differentiators that you wish to demonstrate to your customers? How are you looking to package it? Is it a budget alternative? Or a luxury offering? Such considerations will feed into how you wish to promote and price your product as well as helping you envision a desired brand and customer experience.
• Place – Place covers two distinct aspects when putting together your marketing strategy including:
  • Where are you looking to sell your product/service? Different countries will have different cultures and legal guidelines whilst different areas within a country will have differing customer preferences (e.g. Buying power, age, lifestyle etc). You should have an idea of who you are looking to sell to from your market research in the business planning phase and as such should be able to focus in on the target locations of your intended primary customer base
  • How are you going to get your product/service to your customers? This is an area known as logistics/distribution and you will need to understand what channel(s) you wish to explore as a means of getting your product/service to your customer. There are, as always, a plethora of different channels ranging from indirect methods (e.g. wholesalers and retailers) to direct methods (Physical stores, e-commerce) and you can select a concentrated or mixed strategy dependent on your requirement.
• Price – This ties in nicely with your product and place overview as you need to ensure your pricing is not just competitive, but also correlates with the nature of your product and the customer you are targeting. If your product is a budget offering your pricing needs to ideally undercut the market and offer your prospective customers value for money whereas a more luxurious product should come with a price tag that doesn’t undervalue its image.
• Promotion – It is a deliberate move to list promotion as the final bullet point in the overview of the marketing mix. It pays to have a thorough understanding of your product, your customer, distribution channels and the pricing you can offer before putting together a promotional campaign that would fit with the product/service and create the kind of customer experience you are looking for. At the promotion stage it is also important to understand where your probable purchases are going to start looking for information, if you can place yourself at the forefront of their first initial touch point with seeking a product/service such as yours, you will be in an excellent position to convert the lead.

Overall a successful marketing strategy should look to inform, attract and engage your target audience, articulating why they should choose you over someone else by spelling out how your product/service serves the needs they have. Good marketing and a good product/service offering should then provide a foundation to build your reputation, sell more and ultimately grow your business.

How could you promote your product/service?

Social media – Social media has risen rapidly as one of the key and least expensive methods of advertising (depending on how you use it) and it is therefore paramount that your business have some form of social media presence especially on the big 3 – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Having an active account/page on each of these mediums can present significant opportunity, not only can your prospective customers find you easily, but it also allows you to run campaigns such as contests and influencer promotions (see below) whilst also engaging with other trending topics to boost visbility.

Hosting contests – Contests can be potentially linked to social media, but can also be run through other mediums and are an excellent and cost effective method of reaching a wide ranging audience. Contests often work via enabling customers to share your content in return for an entry into a prize draw – the sharer gets the potential to win something and you get inexpensive advertising. The drawback however is that this isn’t especially targeted and often content might be shared with individuals who are completely disinterested in your offering.

Gamification – Gamification seems to be a consistent hot topic in the world of business and involves incorporating gaming elements into a non-gaming context to improve engagement and encourage action. Many companies employ gamification principles in their marketing especially with things like loyalty schemes (e.g. Mcdonalds monopoly), but you can also find more innovative examples that tap into customers’ and/or employees’ competitive spirit and desire for reward.

Internet – Using your business website to generate leads should be incorporated into any promotional marketing you do. Often organisations do this through a combinations of Search Engine Marketing (paid advertising e.g. pay per click) and Search Engine Optimisation (optimising your website to ensure it gets a higher rank on search engines e.g. Google).

Post-purchase – Looking after your customers post-purchase is a necessity as ensuring they are happy with the product/service provided will ensure they are more likely to refer you to others and you can grow organically as a result. A happy customer is more likely to do business again with you in future and will often leave favorable reviews/testimonials which you can use in future promotions to enhance your business’ reputation.

Influencer promotions – Promoting your product/service through use of an influential person in the market can also be a quick way of advertising to your target audience. For example if I was launching a new fitness product, I could look at the most popular fitness influencers on the likes of Youtube and Instagram and strike a deal with them for some sponsored content.

Paid media – Paid media is a more traditional method of promotion including television, radio, billboards etc. This often involves paying a provider to air an advertisement for you for a specific period of time. Costs can rack up pretty fast doing this, but it gives you the opportunity to advertise to a significant base of prospective customers very quickly. In that regard, if your idea is relatively innovative in a relatively new market with only a few other small players, a paid media promotion might just give you an edge and push you into a customer perception as a market leader in the space.

Referrals and affiliates – Referrals allow some of your existing customers to bring aboard new customers in return for a future discount or other incentive. To incorporate such a program quickly you might want to use a referral program software or if you are familiar with coding you can put this together yourself. Affiliate marketing is slightly different in the sense that recommendations may come from individuals or organisations that are not necessarily your customers, but who will promote your brand and provide prospective customer leads in return for a commission should that lead turn into a successful sale.

Expectation bounce – Exceeding your customer expectations can be an excellent way to bounce your reputation as it enhances your image as a quality business that not only delivers what it says, but goes the extra mile to exceed an expectation. A good example of this is Amazon – Many times they quote a delivery date 2-3 or sometimes more days further out and then end up delivering it early. In this regard they set an expectation; which they then exceeded; which in turn made you happy and gave you the impression they went the extra mile. If any issues occurred in Amazon’s delivery schedule then you likely still would have received your package in the expected timeframe and therefore still would have been happy.

Free framing – Samples, data, knowledge etc can all be given for free to attract an audience. With this technique you will essentially be giving away something that is desirable to a target customer for free as a vehicle to sell something else at a premium. For instance you might look to provide a website which looks to educate an individual on a subject e.g. the stock market. The free level of this information will be basic level, however you can up sell more premium content e.g. detailed business analysis for target stocks.

Measuring ROI when Marketing

There are a number of organisations that may treat marketing as a necessity, but monitor and control the cost centre with little or no diligence (I’m not sure how often company branded mugs result in greater sales – but I see them quite a lot).  Marketing campaigns should be clear, targeted and designed with traceable metrics to measure success.

Now there isn’t a one-size fits all approach to measuring ROI concerned with Marketing as it simply depends what objective you have in pushing the campaign. Typically, you want your marketing to drive customer awareness in order to subsequently drive more revenue; however it is important to spend some time to define exactly what it is you want from the campaign and the time horizon to measure its success.

For example I might wish to roll out a contest in order to retrieve new customers and drive some further revenue in the short term – Consequently my measures could be:

1. Revenue increase of 5% within 3 months of the campaign
2. Drive 2000 new unique page visits over the next 3 months

If I achieve these measures then my campaign was successful in line with the objectives I set for it, if not it could be back to the drawing board in order to test a different approach.

When setting your objectives/metrics for each marketing campaign you should look to ensure they follow the SMART principles – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realisitic and Time controlled. Ensuring your metrics cater to these elements will ensure you can trace and measure the success of your capital outlay.

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